Locally, the latest casualty is Portland Tribune, which has announced that it's cutting back its print edition to once a week, beginning next month. Beginning January 1, it's also paywalling its site.
In a letter to readers, Pamplin Media Group President Mark Garber said reducing the number of publication days "will save us money, it's not so much a retreat, but a shift in how we can best cover local news."
The print edition will - for now - continue to be free of charge at outlets in the city of Portland; suburban editions will cost $1 per copy. In essence, they want suburbanites to pay a buck to peruse printed ads, as those now constitute roughly half of the "newspaper's" content. It's unclear as to how they've come to think that this approach will keep them in business:
Advertising revenue for U.S. newspapers peaked in 2000 at $49.4 billion, according to the Pew Research Center. Since then it's fallen 70 percent to an estimated $14.3 billion.
Garber claims that Tribune publications continue to receive strong advertising support from local businesses. Alrighty, then.