Big changes coming to The (Everett) Herald

In another sign of challenges facing local newspapers in Washington and the rest of the nation, The (Everett) Herald is dropping two daily editions and shifting to mail delivery.

The Herald plans to announce the changes the week of Dec. 26. Delivery by mail will begin Jan. 3, according to an email to staff from Publisher Rudi Alcott that I viewed.

Alcott told employees the paper will end Sunday and Monday print editions. Saturday editions will expand to include material that’s now published Sundays. Monday “will become a digital-only day” with the edition available via its website or app.

“We understand this change is going to be hard for some staff and our readers,” he wrote. “This may take some getting used to but please bear with us as we work through the changes.”

A series of cutbacks happened in recent years at The Herald and other newspapers owned by Sound Publishing, a subsidiary of Canadian publishing giant Black Press.

Sound Publishing in April stopped printing The Herald in Everett, ending a 121-year run. It consolidated printing at a new facility in Lakewood, Pierce County, where it installed a refurbished press from Iowa. After temporarily using a press in Skagit County, it began printing The Herald in Lakewood on Tuesday.

The Herald is the state’s fifth largest daily, after those based in Seattle, Spokane, Vancouver and Tacoma, per a recent report by the League of Women Voters. It noted that The Herald’s circulation fell from 50,320 in 2004 to 33,543 this year.

Sound Publishing also dropped Sunday editions of The Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles when it shifted its delivery, and that of The Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum weeklies, to mail last March. It also owns The Daily World in Aberdeen, which switched to primarily mail delivery in 2020.

Alcott declined to comment on the email, saying, “We’re not ready to announce that externally.”

Shifting to mail can trim costs and sustain delivery but it’s not the same experience, especially for those used to early morning and Sunday newspaper deliveries. Sundays are traditionally newspapers’ biggest and most lucrative edition but the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t deliver them on Sunday.

This is where the journalism crisis really becomes apparent in places that still have local newspapers. Expect more such changes as remaining papers, large and small, look for ways to survive after losing much of the advertising business that used to help cover the cost of producing and delivering papers.

Drastic changes are happening now because of the combination of high fuel and newsprint prices, and a tight labor market that’s made it difficult to find and retain carriers. Papers are reducing circulation areas, cutting print editions and in some cases canceling print outright and pointing readers to online versions, with sometimes mixed results.

Earlier this month the three largest newspapers in Alabama announced that they’ll stop producing print editions in early 2023.

These changes are also affecting The Seattle Times, which in recent months turned to mail delivery in a few areas where it had trouble finding carriers. Its subsidiaries in Yakima and Walla Walla also cut print production to three editions per week earlier this year.

Mail was a key delivery system for early newspapers in the U.S.

The Founding Fathers chose to support the press this way because they understood that an informed public was necessary for the country’s democracy to survive. George Washington wanted to fully cover delivery costs; Congress didn’t go that far but affirmed this national priority with low, subsidized rates in the Postal Act of 1792.

Congress has another chance, this time to help save what’s left of the local newspaper industry. Two bills under consideration would stabilize the industry while it retools and give it a better chance of competing with dominant tech companies.

One is the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would allow local papers and broadcasters to collectively bargain content usage agreements with tech platforms. The other is the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would provide temporary tax credits to outlets retaining or hiring journalists.

The policies won’t come soon enough to stop changes at The Herald but they should prevent more drastic cuts.

Ideally, these policies will enable local newspapers to restore their gutted newsrooms, increase coverage, grow readership and perhaps restore lost editions and delivery services.

Alcott told me that federal support would help local newspapers, which are all looking for ways to both survive and hopefully restore what’s being lost.

“As a publisher of a daily newspaper that is my ultimate goal,” he said, “to stabilize and regrow the industry.”