Tucson CitizenTucson Citizen

Newspapers offer fresh face amid industry turmoil

NEW YORK — Four major daily newspapers sported makeovers Monday as they grapple with life in a world of digital news.

Some of the biggest changes were happening in Detroit, where the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News offered free copies of their newly slimmed-down Monday editions. The newspapers now will be delivering to homes just three days a week — Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, the most popular days for advertisers.

The newspapers also were promoting electronic versions that are laid out like the printed editions. Those online versions eventually will be available only for home subscribers, but for now they are open for free to anyone. The newspapers said higher-than-expected demand caused delays in the digital editions’ loading times.

Elsewhere, The Washington Post put out its first newspaper with business news folded into the front section. And The International Herald Tribune introduced a redesigned print edition and took on a new form online, merging with the Web site of The New York Times, which is published by the same company.

The Detroit newspapers found themselves giving out free copies on a particularly busy news day, with the White House ousting General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner and the Michigan State Spartans winning a spot in the NCAA Final Four.

Gannett Co. and MediaNews Group Inc., which publish the Free Press and the News in partnership, said more than 500,000 copies were distributed free for the first time in those newspapers’ history. The Free Press had a weekday circulation of 298,243 at last count, while the News had 178,280.

Both newspapers will be kept shorter than usual — about 32 pages — on the four days they don’t deliver.

The Detroit newspapers hope their strategy slashes production and delivery costs but maintains enough print ad revenue to sustain vibrant newsgathering operations.

“We believe in great newspapers seven days a week,” Dave Hunke, chief executive of Detroit Media Partnership and publisher of the Free Press, said in a statement. “Both the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News have been redesigned with readers’ needs in mind. You will find more local news within these pages quickly and easily and content that no other source in Michigan can provide.”

Meanwhile, the Web site of the New York Times Co.’s International Herald Tribune moved to global.nytimes.com. A link from the Times’ Web site offers readers its “global” online edition, which features the IHT masthead over a Web site that looks almost identical to nytimes.com, but features international news more prominently.

Times officials hope that by combining the two sites, IHT’s content will reach millions more readers, and the company could boost online traffic overall.

The print edition got a revamp with the word “International” looming larger over its front page, a new typeface and layouts and the addition of a weekend culture section.

At The Washington Post, business and economic coverage moved inside the “A” section, and a daily page on Washington business news replaced a weekly one that used to run on Mondays. An index of headlines also appeared on page A2 with a list of the most popular stories online.

The print edition of the newspaper’s Style section lost some of its comic strips, which will still run online.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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