Daily News, Tribune will eliminate their print editions on Mondays

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Lewiston Tribune have not escaped the economic impact of a worldwide pandemic.

In a cost-cutting step, the two newspapers will no longer publish Monday print editions starting Jan. 11. That means the Daily News will publish Tuesday through Saturday editions, and the Tribune will publish Tuesday through Sunday.

In addition to the reduction of print publication days, TPC Holdings, the family- and employee-owned parent company for the Tribune and Daily News, also has reduced the size of its workforce by approximately 10 full-time equivalent employees.

Nathan Alford, editor and publisher of the Tribune and Daily News, and A.L. “Butch” Alford Jr., president of TPC Holdings, announced the changes Friday.

“The only way we’re getting around the uncertainty of the pandemic is to work our way through it openly, creatively and thoughtfully with a willingness to make timely and difficult choices to stay on track,” Nathan Alford said.

Job cuts at the Daily News include a full-time photographer position, which was eliminated to be replaced by a part-time photographer. The soon-to-be vacant news clerk position at the Daily News will go unfilled.

In the Tribune newsroom, reductions include one news reporter and one sports reporter/editor along with one news desk editor/page designer, Alford said. Two additional newsroom positions will go unfilled consisting of a sports reporter position that was initially cut on a temporary basis in the spring and a news desk editor/page designer who retired earlier this fall.

Butch Alford said the decision to lay off employees companywide and reduce the number of publication days each week at the Tribune and Daily News was difficult but necessary to offset the advertising losses in the last year brought on by the closure of several major national chain outlets, including Macy’s, J.C. Penney, Kmart, Shopko and others.

Since COVID-19 hit in March, a number of locally-based advertisers also have either quit or reduced the frequency in which they advertise as their own businesses have suffered financially.

“Our small newspaper-media-publishing company has excelled in growth in the last decade. Circumstances require a period of selective cutback. It is with reticence that we eliminate a Monday publication day for the Lewiston Tribune, ending 115 years of seven-day home delivery, and moving our Daily News to five quality days,” Butch Alford said. “It is even more difficult to eliminate positions in order to manage expense. The laid off employees are family and part of our mission to serve and inform in our eight-county region. In doing so, we recognize what so many retail and general businesses, plus our four colleges and universities, have done in past months. Like them, our rebound will start when the national pandemic ends.”

Management tried to choose reductions that would have the least impact on the papers’ ability to gather news, Nathan Alford said, but subscribers at the Daily News and Tribune will see some additional changes needed to offset the reduced workforce.

The Morning Report, a Monday-through-Friday podcast on the papers’ websites, is being eliminated. Wednesday’s Close to Home section in the Tribune will go from four pages to one.

The Tribune and Daily News will survive the pandemic, Nathan Alford stressed, and continue to provide the quality local journalism its readers expect.

“It’s an intriguing dynamic — we’re serving a near record number of Daily News readers, some 18,000 folks every day, while at the same time tightening our budget,” he said. “Our family- and employee-owned newspaper has kept up the chase through four generations, two world wars, two depressions, 19 presidents and four pandemics, all spanning 109-years. And we’ll continue to chart the course for an independent local press and meet our obligation to you — the reader — and deliver the first draft of history for our towns amid the global pandemic and economic downturn.”