The Maui News is going back to afternoon home delivery for many newspaper subscribers and will cease producing a Sunday paper in a move to cut costs.
Joe Bradley, the newspaper’s publisher, announced the plan in a note to readers in Friday’s edition of the paper.
The change, scheduled to take effect Nov. 13, will end home delivery by newspaper carriers and instead use the U.S. Postal Service to get papers to those subscribers.
“We are looking for ways to cut costs,” Bradley said in an interview. “We’re doing this hopefully so we can continue to provide a robust news product.”
The newspaper will continue to be published online at 2 a.m. and will still be available in news racks and stores in the early morning. Home subscribers, however, won’t have their papers delivered until later.
Mail delivery in Hawaii can range from fairly early in the morning to late afternoon depending on when postal carriers receive loads from their distribution network, when they begin deliveries and where homes are on routes, according to USPS spokesman Duke Gonzales.
Because the postal service doesn’t deliver mail on Sundays, the Maui News said it will expand Saturday’s edition into what it calls a weekend edition that has all features traditionally found on Sunday.
Bradley acknowledged that the change for readers is big, but he noted that in a way the shift is a return to afternoon delivery that was once common for Hawaii newspapers when many residents worked on pineapple and sugar cane plantations and read newspapers after work.
The Maui News, according to Bradley, switched from afternoon publication to morning publication in 2000 when the paper was bought by The Ogden Newspapers, a West Virginia-based chain with about 100 publications in 16 states. At that time a Saturday edition was added, increasing publication to seven days a week, he added.
Delivering newspapers to households by mail is not common in the industry, though at least a couple of mainland newspapers have adopted the practice.
Two years ago the Goshen News, a small Indiana newspaper owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., announced the switch because it was frustrated with poor service from carriers.
In April the Brookhaven, Miss.-based Daily Leader, owned by Boone Newspapers, said it was opting for mail delivery as a way to get its paper, which was previously published in the afternoon, to readers earlier.
USA Today also delivers some papers to home subscribers via the mail.
The Maui News dates to 1900 and most recently had an audited average circulation of 15,565 for its Sunday paper (8,936 home delivery) and 13,775 daily (8,099 home delivery). These figures, from the Alliance for Audited Media, were for 24 months ended March 31. These most recent circulation figures were about 24 percent lower than they were in 2012, according to unaudited figures Maui News submitted to the Audit Bureau of Circulation for six months ended March 31, 2012.
At the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, average circulation declined over a similar period between 2012 and 2016 — by about 7 percent to 165,538 on Sunday and 7 percent to 151,585 daily, according to audited statements from the Alliance for Audited Media. For home delivery, drops were similar between 2012 and 2016: 4 percent to 97,688 on Sunday and 7 percent to 84,754 daily.
The Star-Advertiser, owned by Oahu Publications Inc., competes with the Maui News on home delivery on the Valley Isle.
Bradley said the cost-saving move around the coming new publication and delivery schedules was done to preserve as much staff at the Maui News as possible. He declined to say how many staff or newspaper carriers will be affected by the change.
