Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Chicago Defender to be weekly only

It looks like the struggling newspaper industry has claimed another victim: The Chicago Defender, the historic African-American newspaper which has struggled for years, is converting from a daily newspaper to a weekly, a move that has been speculated since last summer.

The Defender, which drastically scaled back its online presence last year, isn't laying off employees (which is good) - but the conversion to a weekly paper tells you how much the newspaper industry is hurting (thanks to readers flocking to the internet and other sources), and it seems to be affecting newspapers big and small.

The Sun-Times recently laid off employees over the last few weeks and reduced the size and pages of its editions; The Daily Southtown and Star newspapers recently merged their editions and cut some jobs; and three community papers owned by the Sun-Times recently ended publication.

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