Daily newspapers in Richmond, Roanoke, Lynchburg and Fredericksburg will eliminate their Monday print editions starting Nov. 3.
Editors of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Roanoke Times, The (Lynchburg) News & Advance and The (Fredericksburg) Free-Lance Star posted notices Friday about the change on their websites.
The move comes as subscriptions at all four papers are decreasing. About two and a half years ago, six other Virginia newspapers announced they would reduce printing to three days per week.
All of the papers are owned by Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises.
“Our commitment to delivering the news is unchanged. Reporters and photographers will still produce crucial content for every day, and we will alert you to breaking news as soon as it develops,” the editors of the four Virginia daily papers wrote in their online notices, which shared some identical language.
Although the four papers will no longer have a Monday print edition, they will continue to produce a Monday E-Edition, which is Lee’s term for its online news product that is arranged and formatted similarly to a print newspaper.
The cutbacks in print frequency aren’t limited to Lee’s Virginia papers. Others, including the Omaha World-Herald in Nebraska, the Buffalo News in New York and the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, announced similar moves on Friday.
The announcements came after the departures of multiple newsroom staffers at Lee-owned papers last month.
In Virginia, those include four reporters and the opinion editor at the Times-Dispatch, according to The Richmonder. The News & Advance’s sports editor published a farewell column on Sept. 28.
Subscription figures have been declining at the Richmond, Roanoke, Lynchburg and Fredericksburg papers, according to legally required annual notices that were most recently published last month.
For example, last year, The Roanoke Times reported 10,321 digital subscribers and 10,091 print customers. This year, it reported 9,533 digital subscribers and 8,041 print customers, marking an 8% decrease for digital and a 20% decrease for print.
In May 2023, the newspapers in Bristol, Charlottesville, Culpeper, Danville, Martinsville and Waynesboro announced that they would join more than two dozen other Lee-owned papers in reducing their printing frequency to three days a week. Four of those six Virginia newspapers printed daily before that change.
Lee Enterprises (NASDAQ:LEE) most recently reported its quarterly earnings on Aug. 7, when it posted a third-quarter net loss of $2 million on $141 million of total operating revenue.