The Kansas City Star has cut its stock listings once again, writes Chris Lester, assistant managing editor for business.
Lester wrote, “Most notably, our main stock and mutual fund tables are being trimmed from 1,000 stocks and 1,000 mutual funds to 500 stocks and 500 mutual funds. We’ve also compressed some fields in our regional stock table, our main stock tables and our commodity report.
“This is not the first time we’ve changed our financial tables, and almost certainly not the last. For the better part of a decade now, we’ve adjusted our tables intermittently to respond to declining readership of printed tables as growing numbers of readers track their investments online, and as the newspaper industry sought to save money on increasingly expensive newsprint.
“Sophisticated readers of business news understand the need to listen when market forces speak. That doesn’t make change any easier.
“If I had my druthers, I’d be happy to print every stock, mutual fund and exchange traded fund under the sun. But the simple realities of declining readership of printed tables dictate that I don’t.”
Read more here. Lester does note that readership of the business section is up.
The Star cuts its stock listings from 3,000 to 1,000 in 2006, and then changed the listed stocks last year.
