Madison daily moves to twice-weekly tabloid format
By Leah McBride Mensching, Friday 25 April 2008 at 23:36 :: Newspaper Data :: #1584 :: rss
Madison, Wis.-based The Capital Times will print its final daily newspaper Saturday, and next week will begin publishing two tabloids a week, the Associated Press reported Monday.
The 90-year-old afternoon daily will use the paper's online version for daily coverage, and has shrunk staff numbers.
More than 20 newsroom employees have either taken buyouts or been laid off, according to the AP article, posted by the International Herald Tribune.
“I thought before the Internet and all these other external forces wreaked their havoc on us I'd be long gone,” Dave Zweifel, the paper's editor since 1983, told the AP. “ But it's happened a lot quicker than any of us expected.”
John Nichols, a Capital times columnist who also covers politics for The Nation magazine said that the move to online and a twice weekly print version is by no means a death knell for the newspaper.
“As tough as this transition is, it's about the future,” Nichols told the AP. “The Capital Times is very well positioned to go on the Web. We're not a mealy-mouthed quiet little paper. We're noisy with big elbows and we say strong things and frankly that's what the Web is all about.”
The two 48-page tabloids will be sold on newsstands or distributed to homes with the Wisconsin State Journal. The printed Wednesday edition will focus on news and opinion, which Paul Fanlund, the paper's editor, said he hopes will become Madison's own “Newsweek or Time,” the AP reported.
Capital Newspapers Inc. is jointly owned by Lee Enterprises Inc. and The Capital Times Co.
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