May 21, 2023: The fifth-to-last Sunday Mason City Globe Gazette carries an editor’s note about the paper eliminating three of its six print publication days. I bought this at the Lake Mills Casey’s for $4.
Four of Iowa’s 11 newspapers that print Sunday editions, including two of the largest in the state, are dropping to three print days a week.
The Council Bluffs, Mason City, Sioux City, and Waterloo papers, all owned by Lee, will have print editions only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The changes, starting tomorrow, were announced last month and covered by Bleeding Heartland. I found out about it through the purchase of a print newspaper (above), which seems both fitting and ironic.
I am not entirely a disinterested party here, since I work at what is now one of only two Iowa-based newspapers that print on both Saturday and Sunday. Besides the Gazette, the Quad-City Times is still seven days a week, as is the Omaha World-Herald, which has significant circulation in Iowa.
The affected papers will be delivered by mail instead of by carriers, meaning those white rectangles with the paper’s name on them are now fit only for museums. This is a bigger change for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, since it has traditionally been an afternoon paper.