Herald-Whig to reduce printed publication to two days a week in some areas

QUINCY — The Herald-Whig, once a daily newspaper with the largest circulation in a 100-mile radius, recently told its rural subscribers it will reduce its printing schedule to twice a week.

Citing rising fuel, postage and delivery costs, the e-mailed notice said the company would eliminate its Tuesday, Thursday and Friday editions in the rural areas, leaving only the Wednesday and Saturday editions to arrive by mail.

The Herald-Whig will continue to be five days a week in Quincy “for now” according to Jim Hart, publisher of The Herald-Whig and The Courier-Post.

Hart said the move mostly affects the rural areas in Illinois. Subscribers in Missouri with zip codes starting with 634 will not be affected by change and all subscribers will still have access to the five day a week online edition newspaper. The Courier-Post’s printed distribution will remain the same at two days a week, Wednesday and Saturday.

The change takes place starting on November 1.

With the newspaper industry struggling as a whole, The Herald-Whig has seen many recent changes.

In 2020, the newspaper switched from carriers to U.S. mail delivery. Although officials with the company touted they were shifting from an afternoon to morning paper, most subscribers still received the paper in the afternoon in the mail. It had also switched from an afternoon to a morning paper and did its first publication reductions, first dropping its Monday edition then eliminating the Sunday paper.

Phillips Media purchased The Herald-Whig and The Courier-Post in 2021 from Quincy Media in a move that preceded the company’s sale of its broadcast properties to Gray Media Group later that year. The sale ended 95 years of newspaper publishing by Quincy Media, which had previously been known as Quincy Newspapers Inc. until 2016. The company acquired The Hannibal Courier-Post in 2019, swapping The New Jersey Herald for it in a trade with Gatehouse (now Gannett) Media.

Phillips eliminated 23 jobs between the two papers following its purchase.

Data from the U.S. Postal Service shows The Herald-Whig averaged fewer than 6,000 editions mailed on five publication days that Muddy River News surveyed in June 2023. The Courier-Post was less than 750 editions mailed on each of its two publication days.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story did not offer a distinction between the new distribution policy between the rural areas and Quincy. We at Muddy River News regret the confusion the previous story caused. JRG