As our subscribers are aware, delivery has changed for the Peninsula Daily News.
We’re delivered through the U.S. Postal Service now, which means we added a Saturday edition but no longer have a Sunday edition.
One down side of this, and this was discussed at length last spring, is that this affects sports coverage for the PDN. The biggest change is those Friday night football games won’t be in the Sunday print edition anymore.
That means we’re going to have to change how we deliver that information to you, though the actual coverage will be the same. We’re going to rely more on our online presence.
Expect to see a full slate of Friday night football stories and photos posted online at www.peninsuladailynews.com Saturday morning. If you are a subscriber, you will be able to have access to our website. Non-subscribers get a few free views per month.
It’s all part of how we’re having to adapt to changing times. Newspapers are having to move away from print for a several reasons. One reason is the cost of newsprint. This is the reason you’ve also noticed newspapers aren’t as wide as they used to be.
Secondly, more and more readers get their information online today than ever via their phones, desktops and laptops. It’s simply how the delivery of information is changing.
Twenty years ago, I said print newspapers would be gone by 2020. I was off in my prediction … by a few decades, I think. Print editions aren’t going away yet and the PDN is committed to keeping the print edition going into the foreseeable future. There’s still a lot of people out there who love the feel of the print edition in their hands and love the comics and the crossword puzzle and the Sudoku. But the truth is, younger people get almost all of their information online. Newspapers must adapt to these changes.
I’m honestly looking forward to the changes. I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting these games onto our website and ready for public consumption as early as possible Saturdays and maybe even Friday nights. You will still see lots of football photos and text dedicated to football. It’s the delivery of that information that is changing.
One good aspect to these circulation changes made in the spring is that it actually does help our coverage of Thursday sports in our print edition. In the past, Thursday prep and college sports didn’t get into the paper until our Sunday edition. Now those Thursday night games are getting in a day earlier in our Saturday edition. And there is a LOT of prep sports on Thursdays. So this is a genuine improvement for print.
So, we lose a bit in our print edition with the changes, but we’ve also gained a bit. It’s a trade off. In the big picture, football fans will still see lots of coverage of the local teams online beginning this weekend. I kind of see football coverage leading the way onward and upward into a brave new world.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at plabossiere@ peninsuladailynews.com.
