THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 15, 1995 TAG: 9507150338
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
The Ledger-Star, which essentially has been published as the afternoon edition of The Virginian-Pilot for the past 18 months, will cease publication Friday, Aug. 25.
Current Ledger-Star subscribers will receive The Virginian-Pilot.
The switch to producing only a morning edition follows a decade-long trend of declining circulation for the afternoon edition.
In recent months, individual afternoon paper routes have been converted to morning routes as the number of afternoon subscribers per route fell below the level required to provide paper carriers enough money for their efforts.
Afternoon circulation is about 10,000 a day. The Virginian-Pilot's circulation has grown to 188,000 a day and is expected to increase to 200,000 a day in late August. The change to morning-only publication is not expected to have a significant impact on overall circulation.
As afternoon circulation has shrunk, and morning circulation has grown, resources formerly devoted to the afternoon edition have been reallocated to the morning edition. Therefore, the change to morning-only publication will not produce significant cost savings. Employees who work exclusively with the afternoon edition have been offered jobs related to the morning edition.
``The change to morning-only publication will help us focus our attention on improving The Pilot,'' Publisher Frank Batten Jr. said. ``Improvements that will be in place by late August include new ways of presenting the news inside each section and a greater focus on respecting readers' time.
``Other improvements will follow in the months to come as we use the results from a comprehensive new survey of readers.''
Batten noted that the paper has made a number of recent improvements, including the addition of the Sunday Flavor and Real Life sections, the expansion of the daily Business News section, the revamping of Hampton Roads Business Weekly and the redesign of the classified advertising section.
Afternoon newspapers have been disappearing across the country for the past several decades. The Baltimore Evening Sun will cease publishing Sept. 15. The Evening Bulletin of Providence, R.I., and the Houston Post closed earlier this year.
The Ledger-Star officially was born in 1962, from a lineage that began Aug. 3, 1876, with the first issue of the Public Ledger. The paper merged with the Norfolk Dispatch in 1906, and the Ledger-Dispatch merged with the Portsmouth Star in 1955.
The reporting staffs of The Ledger-Star and The Virginian-Pilot were merged on Aug. 29, 1982. The Saturday editions were merged Sept. 1, 1984. The editorial pages were merged April 1, 1987. by CNB