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THE SUNDAY PAPER PART TWO
Feature sections may drive circulation on Sunday, but what happens when revenue does not match readership?
THE SUNDAY PAPER, LONG THE MOST profitable part of the newspaper business, is starting to suffer from cash-cow disease. As chronicled by Lucia Moses in our Aug. 11 issue, circulation has been flagging faster on Sunday than on weekdays for several years. Demographic and lifestyle changes bode ill for Sunday reading. In response, editors are shaking up content, attempting to find the right mix for the modern, time-challenged reader - eliminating some features, and tweaking or dramatically revising others. "We want to engage people who might migrate to another medium," says John Yemma, deputy managing editor/Sunday for The Boston Globe. Here's a report on changes in several important components of the Sunday paper, from the TV book to travel.
SUNDAY MAGAZINE
IF YOU SIMPLY LOOK AT NUMBERS, THE FUTURE of Sunday newspaper magazines is dark. Since 1981, when 50 newspapers had their own weekend magazines, the count has dropped dramatically, according to the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, which kept tabs - until its own demise two years ago. The number dwindled to 28 in 1999, and to fewer than 20 today. Some of the holdouts have shrunk or switched to newsprint or broadsheet to save money. "It wasn't doing well," explains Jim Crutchfield, publisher of the Akron (OH) Beacon-Journal, which closed its Sunday magazine in 2001....