The Des Moines Register announced in today’s paper that it was making some changes to the business section. The Saturday mutual fund statistics will no longer be included in the stock listings.
The paper says the move “will provide more space for articles on Iowa business and agriculture in the Saturday Business section.”
However, two different sections will be merged on Sunday, the Register said. “Iowa Agriculture and Sunday Business sections. We will continue to have a full page of Iowa agriculture news as well as multiple pages of farm classified advertisements. They will appear inside the section, which will now be called Business & Ag.”
Read the announcement here. The changes take effect next week.
Other papers to announce cuts in stock listings since the beginning of the year include the Chicago Tribune, Providence Journal, Denver Post, Indianapolis Star, Chicago Tribune and Newsday. And as I mentioned yesterday, I think such moves are shortsighted by newspapers and focus only on the short-term financial gain.
The other fear with metropolitan newspapers cutting stock listings is that smaller newspapers will see this and think that because the bigger papers are doing it they can too and not be affected.
