On Tuesday, April 30^th, I attended a meet-and-greet seminar held by the Lexington Herald-Leader at the Marksbury Family Branch Library off Versailles Road. Executive Editor Richard Green was there, as was Managing Editor Lauren Gorla, who did most of the presentation work. I was standing next to Austin Horn — it was standing room only! — the Frankfort politics reporter.

There were several issues discussed, including from one seventies-looking gentleman from Mt. Sterling, who noted that there was very little coverage from his town and other places outside of Lexington. I paid special attention to him, because I grew up there, being graduated from Mt. Sterling High School shortly after we ceased using quill pens and ink bottles. A point a couple of other people, and I, made was that delivery of the newspaper outside of Lexington was spotty at best. Now living in Estill County, home delivery is not available. This is an important issue to me, because, in the late 1960s, I delivered the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in my hometown.

I have to wonder: I was not the only paperboy in Mt. Sterling, but do the fewer than 100 customers I had outnumber the total number of subscribers in Montgomery County today?

While the newspaper does have “Lexington” in the name, it was the newspaper for much of central and eastern Kentucky for years and years.

And now? Instead of taking action to make the newspaper more valuable, the Herald-Leader is making it less so:

Herald-Leader to change print publication days, delivery method in next step of digital push

by Richard A Green | Friday, May 31, 2024 | 6:00 AM EDT

The best newspapers I know are ones that forge enduring relationships with the communities they serve.

That’s certainly true when surveying the connections linking the Herald-Leader and our readers in Lexington, surrounding regional counties and all across our commonwealth since our founding in 1870.

Through our journalism, we’ve come together at times of tragedy and great triumphs. We’ve found solutions for our most daunting problems. Together, we’ve tackled economic challenges and celebrated high-profile investments that yielded new jobs and industries.

That’s three paragraphs of fluff, sort of like the kid’s third grade teacher adding some complimentary padding, before she gets down to tell you what a rotten student he is.

We also have embraced change — such as the ones unfolding around your dining room tables and our Newsroom desks. And that’s why I’m writing today.

The Herald-Leader, your 154-year-old neighbor, is taking yet another important digitally focused step this summer that brings us closer to an economically sustainable future, while also responding to readers’ changing habits.

Beginning Aug. 5, we will transition to a 24/7 digital product with three days of high-quality, locally focused print editions a week.

As we noted in an article on the Los Angeles Times laying off a fifth of their newsroom staff, if you give potential customers less reason to buy your product, fewer people will buy your product.

Then came this paragraph, sticking a knife in the heart of an old paperboy like me:

Those editions will publish Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and be delivered by mail. They will arrive on the same day as publication, in most cases, along with your regular mail delivery.

So, no more paperboys delivering the newspaper. But it also means: no more morning newspaper, even on those three printing days. If you subscribe to the print edition, there’s no getting your newspaper off the porch — or out of the mud puddle on rainy days! — and no more reading it at the kitchen table with your morning coffee. They might as well call it the return of the Lexington Leader, the afternoon newspaper which was folded into the Lexington Herald in 1983, because delivery by mail means, for many customers, a newspaper that they will not get until the afternoon. How many people will want to read a newspaper that they get to see only after they get home from a hard day at work? That’s the time of day in which many people will just sit down in the recliner and watch the local television news.

This is hardly the only story around print journalism: Sally Buzbee, the Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of The Washington Post was just fired resigned as one of our nation’s ‘newspapers of record’ lost another $77 million last year. Billionaire owner Jeff Bezos had stated that he wanted the Post to at least break even.

Mr Green told readers that the Herald-Leader would be “doubling down on delivering essential local and statewide stories,” but the proof of that will come as time passes. Right now, the Herald-Leader has not died, but it has definitely been moved into a nursing home.