By Mark Scott
Buffalo, NY – Tuesday's announcement that the Buffalo News will become a morning delivered newspaper came as little surprise. Many in the newspaper industry had been predicting such a move for several years now.
A 127 year-old tradition will soon end. What for many years had been known as the "Buffalo Evening News" will cease publication of its afternoon editions and will become a morning delivered paper by Spring 2007. Lee Coppola, dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Bonaventure University, says changes in jobs and lifestyles dictated that the shift to morning delivery was inevitable.
"I think that the readership of the 'Buffalo News' and all evening newspapers has changed, especially in this area," Coppola said. "This is no longer a blue-collar town. This is no longer a town of factory workers who get home at 4:30 and want their evening paper. This is a town now filled with clerical workers and professionals -- a morning paper audience."
It's likely the number of kids who deliver the "News" will drop once the change is made. Not many will want to get up to deliver papers between 5:30 and 6am, and the law prohibits anyone under 18 from working before 5. But spokeswoman Dottie Gallagher-Cohen says the number of youth careers has already dwindled. She says they'll likely employ more adults to deliver the paper to homes.
"We actually have 70 percent fewer youth carriers today than we did five years ago," Gallagher-Cohen said. "We think this change will give us a much bigger pool of carriers to solicit from. What we heard in other markets is that morning delivery attracts people like teachers who can deliver a route before they go to school in the morning."
Gallagher-Cohen says there could be some employee layoffs among truck drivers once the afternoon editions end.
She says the "News" will continue to have separate editions for various parts of the region and that the price of the paper will remain the same.