The first day without stocks and a standalone section

Tim Steller, the business editor of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, writes Wednesday about the paper’s first day without printed stock listings and with business news tucked into the A section instead of having its own section.

Steller writes, “We do have a list of about 50 stocks that are of heightened local interest because the company is based in Southern Arizona or has significant operations here. But the list of hundreds or thousands of stocks is gone. The sole remnant of that era will be our weekly list of mutual funds, which will shrink to half a page but remain in Saturday’s paper.

“About 50 readers have called to comment on the elimination of the Market Report page, as it was called in recent years. A large number would simply like to have the stocks they follow listed in the paper again. In general, that’s not going to happen. Stock listings in newspapers are going the way of dinosaurs and dodo birds as we focus more strictly on the work we can do best: covering local news. In the business section’s case, that means covering local business news.

“The two other main reader concerns have been commodity prices and foreign exchange listings. In particular, on commodities, readers want to know the prices of copper, oil and gold. I’m very sympathetic to the idea that we could still list a few commodity prices in the space left, and we’ll be working on that. I’m not as sure about foreign currency prices, but we will consider that, too.”

Read more here.