At any point in the previous century this would have been earth-shattering news: The Des Moines Register is not going to print Saturday editions. Its last physical Saturday paper was March 5.
Given developments over the past two years in the journalism industry, I thought it was time to put together a chart on the state of things.
(Note/disclaimer: Although I work for one of the publications [The Gazette] and am involved in another [SEIU], nothing here is proprietary. This blog is down to three a week, too.)
When the Audit Bureau of Circulations became the Alliance for Audited Media nearly a decade ago, there was a serious clamp-down on public distribution of circulation numbers. However, the Iowa Newspaper Association has an interactive map covering every publication down to the smallest weekly, which is where I went to make the chart above. Necessarily, that means an omission of at least two papers, the Omaha World-Herald and Sioux Falls Argus Leader, that have substantial presence in Iowa. The latter is also cutting Saturdays, but not all Gannett papers are; the reductions may be just from the set that, as of New Year’s Day 2022, printed seven days a week.
The map from the INA link may look somewhat sparse in south-central Iowa. That’s because May 2020 saw two weeklies and a once-daily close up shop. The Ottumwa Courier doesn’t seem to report to the INA for whatever reason. If you’re wondering where the Newton Daily News or Carroll Times Herald are in the chart, they don’t qualify anymore.
If you really want a shock, in conjunction with the numbers above, check out this list of Iowa newspapers’ circulation in fall 1999 on a website that’s frozen in time from shortly after the 2000 presidential election. Check out the whole website, really.
UPDATE 4/6: The Cherokee Chronicle-Times is being reduced to twice a week, as part of a multi-newspaper ownership shuffle involving the Storm Lake Times (story 1, story 2) and what could be called an angel investor (story 3).