Posted by chicagomedia.org on February 17, 2009 at 22:01:30:
Kane County Chronicle to reduce size, frequency
In response to industry-wide financial woes, the Kane County Chronicle will cut costs next month by switching to a tabloid-size format and no longer publishing on Sundays and Mondays while continuing to cover news daily on its Web site, the suburban paper told its readers Tuesday.
The Chronicle's Saturday edition will be converted to a weekend edition, and the paper plans to focus its coverage more on its circulation area.
"Newspaper companies everywhere are going through severe hardships driven by a variety of factors," Don T. Bricker, publisher of Shaw Suburban Media's Chronicle News Group, explained in Tuesday's edition.
"Costs are rising across the board and newsprint prices reached historic highs in 2008. We cannot avoid the impact of the nationwide economic crisis and the steep loss of advertising revenue affecting every newspaper. However, as we rise to current challenges, we believe we can still do a better job for you."
With the changes, effective March 17, Bricker wrote that the Chronicle "will place nearly all our emphasis and resources on providing news and information specific to the Tri-Cities and western Kane County. The cornerstone of every decision going forward will be driven by a new mantra - LOCAL, LOCAL, LOCAL."
The 128-year-old Chronicle was a weekly newspaper until becoming semi-weekly in the in the 1980s. It only became a daily newspaper in 2003, having increased its frequency to five-days-a-week in the '90s.
For the half-year ending in September, the newspaper's average paid circulation Monday through Saturday was 11,341 and 11,058 copies on Sundays, down a little less than 8 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the Schaumburg-based Audit Bureau of Circulations.
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)