With the sale of News Gazette Media to Community Media Group complete, the new owners have made changes to the paper’s operation.
Starting this week the company will no longer publish a paper on Mondays. From the story in Sunday’s News-Gazette the company indicated that the cancellation of the Monday paper was made with the paper’s financials in mind:
“Eliminating Mondays helps us reduce costs and get the paper back on solid footing,” Barrett said. “We appreciate the incredible support of our readers as we move forward.”
Content will instead be funneled to The News-Gazette’s award-winning website, news-gazette.com.
“While we won’t have a Monday print edition, we will have all of Sunday’s news online, just as we do today,” said Jim Rossow, vice president of news.
The company will also change delivery structure to rural areas. Those subscribers outside of the Champaign-Urbana area will receive their papers in the mail. This means on Sundays, those subscribers will no longer receive a Sunday paper. Those affected will receive the Sunday ads and inserts on Saturday. Instead, they will receive a weekend news summary in the mail on Monday. No delivery changes are expected for customers in the Champaign-Urbana area.
The News-Gazette was officially sold to Community Media Group on Sunday.
The sale of the News-Gazette ends more than one hundred years of local ownership. The previous owner, News-Gazette Media, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year and sold the paper and it’s assets to Frankfort, IL based Community Media Group. CMG owns newspapers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New York, & Pennsylvania.
