NEWPORT – The Newport News-Times, which has been publishing twice a week since 1993, will cut back to a one day a week on Friday, Feb. 10.
The paper announced the change in a news story Friday. Publisher Jeremy Burke said a significant decline in advertising due to the pandemic, staff shortages and increasing production costs led to the “difficult decision.”
The newspaper currently publishes on Wednesdays and Fridays. It has a circulation of 6,500, although a much greater readership via its website.
The News-Times is owned by the News Media Corp. of Rochelle, Ill., which focuses on newspapers in smaller, rural communities in eight states. In Oregon, the company also publishes weekly papers in Cottage Grove and Florence.
The News-Times stopped using the press at its Newport offices last fall to produce the paper locally and do other contract printing. It is now printed in Vancouver, Wash. The announcement did not say how the decision will affect staffing.
The diminished print schedule is not unique to Newport as more newspapers transition away from a daily or weekly print schedule to online.
The Oregonian newspaper is produced seven days a week by a contract printer, for example, but only offers home delivery four days. It has a robust online presence on OregonLive, however.
Papers in Eugene and Salem have stopped Saturday editions and their owner – the Gannett Corp. — last year closed weekly papers in Stayton and Silverton. Iowa-based Lee Enterprises, which publishes papers in Albany and Corvallis, shuttered the weekly Lebanon Express on Wednesday. It had been published for 136 years.
Last week, the Medford Mail Tribune announced it was ceasing its operations entirely after going entirely online last fall. On Friday, the Oregon newspaper group EO Media said it would open a 14-person news operation in Medford, publishing a newspaper three days a week and establishing an online website.
In south Lincoln County, YachatsNews went online with a local news website in 2019, received its 501c3 nonprofit status last October and hired its first, full-time reporter in December. In the last four years it has published nearly 4,000 stories and its website now averages nearly 130,000 page views a month.
