In the news industry today, there are several kinds of papers. National newspapers (such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and USA Today) serve a broad readership across the country. Other papers primarily serve specific geographic regions. Roughly 70 metropolitan dailies have a weekday paid circulation of approximately 100,000 (much more if we count digital hits on their Web sites). About 35 of these papers have a circulation of more than 200,000 during the workweek. In addition, about 100 daily newspapers are classified as medium dailies, with circulations between 50,000 and 100,000. By far the largest number of U.S. dailies—about 1,200 papers—fall into the small-daily category, with circulations under 50,000. While dailies serve urban and suburban centers, over 7,000 nondaily and weekly newspapers (down from 14,000 back in 1910) serve smaller communities and average over 8,000 copies per issue.21 No matter the size of the paper, each must determine its approach, target readers, and deal with ownership issues in a time of technological transition and declining revenue.

Consensus versus Conflict: Newspapers Play Different Roles

Smaller nondaily papers tend to promote social and economic harmony in their communities. Besides providing community calendars and meeting notices, nondaily papers focus on consensus-oriented journalism, carrying articles on local schools, social events, town government, property crimes, and zoning issues. Recalling the partisan spirit of an earlier era, small newspapers are often owned by business leaders who may also serve in local politics. Because consensus-oriented papers have a small advertising base, they are generally careful not to offend local advertisers, who provide the financial underpinnings for many of these papers. At their best, these small-town papers foster a sense of community; at their worst, they overlook or downplay discord and problems.

In contrast, national and metro dailies practice conflict-oriented journalism, in which front-page news is often defined primarily as events, issues, or experiences that deviate from social norms. Under this news orientation, journalists see their role not merely as neutral fact-gatherers but also as observers who monitor their city’s institutions and problems. They often maintain an adversarial relationship with local politicians and public officials. These papers offer competing perspectives on such issues as education, government, poverty, crime, and the economy; and their publishers, editors, or reporters avoid playing major, overt roles in community politics. In theory, modern newspapers believe their role in large cities is to keep a wary eye fixed on recent local and state intrigue and events.

In telling stories about complex and controversial topics, conflict-oriented journalists often turn such topics into two-dimensional accounts, pitting one idea or person against another. This convention, or “telling both sides of a story,” allows a reporter to take the position of a detached observer. Although this practice offers the appearance of balance, it usually functions to generate conflict and sustain a lively news story. Sometimes, though, good reporters ignore the notion that there are two sides to every story in order to tell the fullest and best story possible. However, often faced with deadline pressures, reporters do not always have the time—or the space—to develop a multifaceted and complex report or series of reports. But with the digital revolution releasing journalism from time and space constraints, news observers see the potential for more complex and longer stories developing online (see “Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Covering Business and Economic News” on page 286).

Newspapers Target Specific Readers

Historically, small-town weeklies and daily newspapers have served predominantly white, mainstream readers. However, ever since Benjamin Franklin launched the short-lived German-language Philadelphische Zeitung in 1732, newspapers aimed at ethnic groups have played a major role in initiating immigrants into American society. During the nineteenth century, Swedish- and Norwegian-language papers informed various immigrant communities in the Midwest. The early twentieth century gave rise to papers written in German, Yiddish, Russian, and Polish, assisting the massive influx of European immigrants.

Throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, several hundred foreign-language daily and nondaily presses published papers in at least forty different languages in the United States. Many are financially healthy today, supported by classified ads, local businesses, and increased ad revenue from long-distance phone companies and Internet services, which see the ethnic press as an ideal place to reach those customers most likely to need international communication services.22 While the financial crisis took its toll and some ethnic newspapers failed, overall, loyal readers allowed such papers to fare better than the mainstream press.23

Most of these weekly and monthly newspapers serve some of the same functions for their constituencies—minorities and immigrants, as well as disabled veterans, retired workers, gay and lesbian communities, and the homeless—that the “majority” papers do. These papers, however, are often published outside the social mainstream. Consequently, they provide viewpoints that are different from the mostly middle- and upper-class establishment attitudes that have shaped the media throughout much of America’s history. As noted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, ethnic newspapers and media “cover stories about the activities of those ethnic groups in the United States that are largely ignored by the mainstream press, they provide ethnic angles to news that actually is covered more widely, and they report on events and issues taking place back in the home countries from which those populations or their family members emigrated. These outlets have also traditionally been leaders in their communities.”24

African American Newspapers

Between 1827 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, forty newspapers directed at black readers and opposed to slavery struggled for survival. These papers faced not only higher rates of illiteracy among potential readers but also hostility from white society and the majority press of the day. The first black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, operated from 1827 to 1829 and opposed the racism of many New York newspapers. In addition, it offered a public voice for antislavery societies. Other notable papers included the Alienated American (1852–1856) and the New Orleans Daily Creole, which began its short life in 1856 as the first black-owned daily in the South. The most influential oppositional newspaper was Frederick Douglass’s North Star, a weekly antislavery newspaper in Rochester, New York, which was published from 1847 to 1860 and reached a circulation of three thousand. Douglass, a former slave, wrote essays on slavery and on a variety of national and international topics.

Since 1827, 5,500 newspapers have been edited or started by African Americans.25 These papers, with an average life span of nine years, have taken stands against race baiting, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan. They also promoted racial pride long before the Civil Rights movement. The most widely circulated black-owned paper was Robert C. Vann’s weekly Pittsburgh Courier, founded in 1910. Its circulation peaked at 350,000 in 1947—the year professional baseball was integrated by Jackie Robinson, thanks in part to relentless editorials in the Courier that denounced the color barrier in pro sports. As they have throughout their history, these papers offer oppositional viewpoints to the mainstream press and record the daily activities of black communities by listing weddings, births, deaths, graduations, meetings, and church functions. Today, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) reports that there are roughly two hundred African American newspapers, including Baltimore’s Afro-American, New York’s Amsterdam News, and the Chicago Defender, which celebrated its one hundredth anniversary in 2005.26 None of these publish daily editions any longer, and most are weeklies.

The circulation rates of most black papers dropped sharply after the 1960s. The combined circulation of the local and national editions of the Pittsburgh Courier, for instance, dropped from 202,080 in 1944 to 20,000 in 1966, when it was reorganized as the New Pittsburgh Courier. Several factors contributed to these declines. First, television and black radio stations tapped into the limited pool of money that businesses allocated for advertising. Second, some advertisers, to avoid controversy, withdrew their support when the black press started giving favorable coverage to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Third, the loss of industrial urban jobs in the 1970s and 1980s not only diminished readership but also hurt small neighborhood businesses, which could no longer afford to advertise in both the mainstream and the black press. Finally, after the enactment of Civil Rights and affirmative action laws, mainstream papers raided black papers, seeking to integrate their newsrooms with African American journalists. Black papers could seldom match the offers from large white-owned dailies.

While a more integrated mainstream press initially hurt black papers—an ironic effect of the Civil Rights laws—by 2011 that trend had reversed a bit, as some black reporters and editors returned to black press newsrooms.27 Overall, however, the number of African Americans in newsrooms is declining—between 2006 and 2013, African American representation fell from 5.5 to 4.7 percent. The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) reported that in 1998, about 3,000 African Americans worked as journalists at daily newspaper, but that by 2013, that number had fallen to fewer than 1,800.

According to the ASNE’s 2013 census, of the 38,000 reporters and editors at daily newspapers, “about 4,700 or 12.37 percent [were] racial minorities; the percentage of minority employees has consistently hovered between 12 and 13 percent for more than a decade.” Among the ASNE’s main goals, however, “is to have the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms nationwide reflect the percentage of the nation’s population by 2025.” In 2013, minorities made up about 37 percent of the U.S. population, and the U.S. Census Bureau has reported that the number will increase to more than 42 percent by 2025.28

Spanish-Language Newspapers

Bilingual and Spanish-language newspapers have served a variety of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Hispanic readerships since 1808, when El Misisipi was founded in New Orleans. Throughout the 1800s, Texas had more than 150 Spanish-language papers.29 Los Angeles’ La Opinión, founded in 1926, is now the nation’s largest Spanish-language daily. Other prominent publications are in Miami (La Voz and Diario Las Americas), Houston (La Información), Chicago (El Mañana Daily News and La Raza), and New York (El Diario–La Prensa). By 2011, about eight hundred Spanish-language papers operated in the United States, most of them weekly and nondaily papers, although since 2004, no new Hispanic papers have been founded.30 Until the late 1960s, mainstream newspapers virtually ignored Hispanic issues and culture. But with the influx of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants throughout the 1980s and 1990s, many mainstream papers began to feature weekly Spanish-language supplements. The first was the Miami Herald’s “El Nuevo Herald,” introduced in 1976. Other mainstream papers also joined in, but many had folded their Spanish-language supplements by the mid-1990s. In 1995, the Los Angeles Times discontinued its supplement, “Nuestro Tiempo,” and the Miami Herald trimmed budgets and staff for “El Nuevo Herald.” Spanish-language radio and television had beaten newspapers to these potential customers and advertisers. As the U.S. Hispanic population reached 17 percent in 2013, Hispanic journalists accounted for only about 4 percent of the newsroom workforce at U.S. daily newspapers.31

Asian American Newspapers

In the 1980s, hundreds of small papers emerged to serve immigrants from Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia, and China. While people of Asian descent made up only about 5.3 percent of the U.S. population in 2013, this percentage is expected to rise to 9 percent by 2050.32 Today, fifty small U.S. papers are printed in Vietnamese. Ethnic papers like these help readers both adjust to foreign surroundings and retain ties to their traditional heritage. In addition, these papers often cover major stories downplayed in the mainstream press. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, airport security teams detained thousands of Middle Eastern–looking men. The Weekly Bangla Patrika—a Long Island, New York, paper—reported on the one hundred people the Bangladeshi community lost in the 9/11 attacks and on how it feels to be innocent yet targeted by ethnic profiling.33

A growth area in newspapers is Chinese publications. Even amid a poor economy, a new Chinese newspaper, News for Chinese, started in 2008. The Chinese-language paper began as a free monthly distributed in the San Francisco area. In early 2009, it began publishing twice a week. By 2014, the World Journal, the largest U.S.-based Chinese-language paper, was publishing editions in seven U.S. and Canadian cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Vancouver, and Toronto.34 In 2013, Asian American journalists accounted for 3 percent of newsroom jobs in the United States.35

Native American Newspapers

An activist Native American press has provided oppositional voices to mainstream American media since 1828, when the Cherokee Phoenix appeared in Georgia. Another prominent early paper was the Cherokee Rose Bud, founded in 1848 by tribal women in the Oklahoma territory. The Native American Press Association has documented more than 350 Native American papers, most of them printed in English but a few in tribal languages. Currently, two national papers are the Native American Times, which offers perspectives on “sovereign rights, civil rights, and government-to-government relationships with the federal government,” and Indian Country Today, owned by the Oneida Nation in New York. In 2013, Native American journalists accounted for 0.37 percent of newsroom jobs in the United States—or about 140 reporters and editors.

To counter the neglect of Native American culture’s viewpoints by the mainstream press, Native American newspapers have helped educate various tribes about their heritage and have helped build community solidarity. These papers have also reported on both the problems and the progress among tribes that have opened casinos and gambling resorts. Overall, these smaller papers provide a forum for debates on tribal conflicts and concerns, and they often signal the mainstream press on issues—such as gambling or hunting and fishing rights—that have particular significance for the larger culture.

The Underground Press

The mid to late 1960s saw an explosion of alternative newspapers. Labeled the underground press at the time, these papers questioned mainstream political policies and conventional values, often voicing radical opinions. Generally running on shoestring budgets, they were also erratic in meeting publication schedules. Springing up on college campuses and in major cities, underground papers were inspired by the writings of socialists and intellectuals from the 1930s and 1940s and by a new wave of thinkers and artists. Particularly inspirational were poets and writers (such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, LeRoi Jones, and Eldridge Cleaver) and “protest” musicians (including Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez). In criticizing social institutions, alternative papers questioned the official reports distributed by public relations agents, government spokespeople, and the conventional press (see “Case Study: Alternative Journalism: Dorothy Day and I. F. Stone” on page 292).

During the 1960s, underground papers played a unique role in documenting social tension by including the voices of students, women, African Americans, Native Americans, gay men and lesbians, and others whose opinions were often excluded from the mainstream press. The first and largest underground paper, the Village Voice, was founded in Greenwich Village in 1955. It is still distributed free, surviving through advertising, though its staff has been cut heavily in recent years. But circulation figures for free alternative weeklies are often difficult to pin down. While the Pew Research Center reported the Village Voice circulation at 144,000 in 2013, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) listed the paper’s circulation at 80,000 in both 2013 and 2014.36

Among campus underground papers, the Berkeley Barb was the most influential, developing amid the free-speech movement in the mid-1960s. Despite their irreverent tone, many underground papers turned a spotlight on racial and gender inequities and occasionally goaded mainstream journalism to examine social issues. Like the black press, though, many early underground papers folded after the 1960s. Given their radical outlook, it was difficult for them to appeal to advertisers. In addition, as with the black press, mainstream papers raided alternatives and expanded their own coverage of culture by hiring the underground’s best writers. Still, today more than 130 papers, reaching 25 million readers, are members of the AAN.

Newspaper Operations

Today, a weekly paper might employ only two or three people, while a major metro daily might have a staff of more than one thousand, including workers in the newsroom and online operations, and in departments for circulation (distributing the newspaper), advertising (selling ad space), and mechanical operations (assembling and printing the paper). In either situation, however, most newspapers distinguish business operations from editorial or news functions. Journalists’ and readers’ praise or criticism usually rests on the quality of a paper’s news and editorial components, but business and advertising concerns today dictate whether papers will survive.

Most major daily papers would like to devote one-half to two-thirds of their pages to advertisements. Newspapers carry everything from full-page spreads for department stores to shrinking classified ads, which consumers can purchase for a few dollars to advertise used cars or old furniture (although many Web sites now do this for free). In most cases, ads are positioned in the paper first. The newshole—space not taken up by ads—accounts for the remaining 35 to 50 percent of the content of daily newspapers, including front-page news. The newshole and physical size of many newspapers had shrunk substantially by 2010.

News and Editorial Responsibilities

The chain of command at most larger papers starts with the publisher and owner at the top and then moves, on the news and editorial side, to the editor in chief and managing editor, who are in charge of the daily news-gathering and writing processes. Under the main editors, assistant editors have traditionally run different news divisions, including features, sports, photos, local news, state news, and wire service reports that contain major national and international news. Increasingly, many editorial positions are being eliminated or condensed to the job of a single editor, whose chief responsibility is often ensuring that stories are posted first online (to give them the immediacy that radio and TV news have always had), then updated, and then prepared for the print edition.

Reporters work for editors. General assignment reporters handle all sorts of stories that might emerge—or “break”—in a given day. Specialty reporters are assigned to particular beats (police, courts, schools, local and national government) or topics (education, religion, health, environment, technology). On large dailies, bureau reporters also file reports from other major cities. Large daily papers feature columnists and critics who cover various aspects of culture, such as politics, books, television, movies, and food. While papers used to employ a separate staff for their online operations, the current trend is to have traditional reporters file both online and print versions of their stories—accompanied by images or video they are responsible for gathering.

Recent consolidation and cutbacks have led to layoffs and the closing of bureaus outside a paper’s city limits. For example, in 1985, more than 600 newspapers had reporters stationed in Washington, D.C.; in 2013, that number was under 250. The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun—all owned now by Tribune Publishing—closed their independent bureaus in 2009, choosing instead to share reports.37 In terms of state capital reporting, a 2014 Pew research study showed that the profession “lost a total of 164 full-time statehouse reporters—a decline of 35%—between 2003 and 2014.”38 That was slightly higher than the 30 percent decline of overall newspaper staffing during roughly the same period, according to ASNE census data.

The downside of these money-saving measures in our nation’s capital and in various U.S. state capitals is that far fewer versions of stories are being produced, and readers must often rely on a single version of a news report. According to the ASNE, the workforce in daily U.S. newsrooms declined by 11,000 jobs in 2008 and 2009.39 A small turnaround occurred in 2010 with 100 new jobs created overall, driven by the increase of 220 jobs in “freestanding digital news organizations.”40 But ASNE reported that from 2011 to 2012, the total number of newsroom jobs fell by 3,600, from 41,600 to 38,000.41

Wire Services and Feature Syndication

Major daily papers might have one hundred or so local reporters and writers, but they still cannot cover the world or produce enough material to fill up the newshole each day. Newspapers rely on wire services and syndicated feature services to supplement local coverage. A few major dailies, such as the New York Times, run their own wire services, selling their stories to other papers to reprint. Other agencies, such as the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI), have hundreds of staffers stationed throughout major U.S. cities and world capitals. They submit stories and photos each day for distribution to newspapers across the country. Some U.S. papers also subscribe to foreign wire services, such as Agence France-Presse in Paris or Reuters in London.

Daily papers generally pay monthly fees for access to all wire stories. Although they use only a fraction of what is available over the wires, editors monitor wire services each day for important stories and ideas for local angles. Wire services have greatly expanded the reach and scope of news, as local editors depend on wire firms when they select statewide, national, or international reports for reprinting.

In addition, traditional feature syndicates, such as United Features (now known as Universal Uclick) and Tribune Media Services (now known as Gracenote), operated historically as commercial outlets that contracted with newspapers to provide work from the nation’s best political writers, editorial cartoonists, comic-strip artists, and self-help columnists. These companies served as brokers, distributing horoscopes and crossword puzzles as well as the political columns and comic strips that appealed to a wide audience. When a paper bid on and acquired the rights to a cartoonist or columnist, it signed exclusivity agreements with a syndicate to ensure that it was the only paper in the region to carry, say, Clarence Page, Maureen Dowd, Leonard Pitts, Connie Schultz, George Will, or cartoonist Mike Peters. Feature syndicates, like wire services, wielded great influence in determining which writers and cartoonists gained national prominence.

Newspaper Ownership: Chains Lose Their Grip

Edward Wyllis Scripps founded the first newspaper chain—a company that owns several papers throughout the country—in the 1890s. By the 1920s, there were about thirty chains in the United States, each owning an average of five papers. The emergence of chains paralleled the major business trend during the twentieth century: the movement toward oligopolies, in which a handful of corporations control each industry.

By the 1980s, more than 130 chains owned an average of nine papers each, with the 12 largest chains accounting for 40 percent of total circulation in the United States. By 2001, the top ten chains controlled more than one-half of the nation’s total daily newspaper circulation. Gannett, for example, the nation’s largest chain, owns over eighty daily papers (and hundreds of nondailies worldwide), ranging from small suburban papers to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Nashville Tennessean, and USA Today.

Around 2005, consolidation in newspaper ownership leveled off because the decline in newspaper circulation and ad sales panicked investors, leading to drops in the stock value of newspapers. Many newspaper chains responded by significantly reducing their newsroom staffs and selling off individual papers.

For an example of this cost cutting, consider actions at the Los Angeles Times (then owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Company chain). Continuing demands from the corporate offices for cost reductions led to the resignations of editors and publishers. Cuts also caused the departures of some of the most talented staff members, including six Pulitzer Prize winners. In 2007, Chicago real estate developer Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company for $8 billion and made it private, insulating it for a time from market demands for high profit margins. However, by 2008, the company faced declining ad revenue and a tough economy and was forced to file for bankruptcy protection, which it received until the end of 2012, when it emerged from bankruptcy. While it continues to operate—as of 2014 as separate TV and newspaper companies—Tribune’s history indicates the sorts of troubles once highly profitable major newspapers face.

About the same time, large chains started to break up, selling individual newspapers to private equity firms and big banks (like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase) that deal in distressed and overleveraged companies with too much debt. For example, in 2006, Knight Ridder—then the nation’s second-leading chain—was sold for $4.5 billion to the McClatchy Company. McClatchy then broke up the chain by selling off twelve of the thirty-two papers, including the San Jose Mercury News and Philadelphia Newspapers (which included the Philadelphia Inquirer). McClatchy also sold its leading newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, to a private equity company for $530 million, less than half of what it had paid to buy it eight years earlier.

On a more promising note, in 2012, billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett, CEO of the investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, spent $344 million and bought more than sixty newspapers (the company planned to retain about thirty). A newspaper junkie and former paperboy, Buffett has owned the Buffalo News in New York since 1977 and has run it profitably. In 2011, he also bought his hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald, for $200 million. Buffett has argued that many smaller and regional newspapers will thrive if they have a strong sense of their local communities and do a good job of mixing their print and digital products. The New York Times reported that Buffett planned to buy more papers—“three years after telling shareholders that he would not buy a newspaper at any price.”42 In 2013, Buffett’s BH Media Group bought the Tulsa World in Oklahoma and the Roanoke Times in Virginia. By 2014, Buffett retained ownership of twenty-nine small and midsize daily newspapers.

While Warren Buffett concentrated on purchasing smaller regional papers, ownership of one of the nation’s three national newspapers also changed hands. Back in 2007, the Wall Street Journal, held by the Bancroft family for more than one hundred years, accepted a bid of nearly $5.8 billion from News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch (News Corp. also owns the New York Post and many papers in the United Kingdom and Australia). At the time, critics raised serious concerns about takeovers of newspapers by large entertainment conglomerates (Murdoch’s company at the time also owned TV stations, a network, cable channels, and a movie studio). As small subsidiaries in large media empires, newspapers are increasingly treated as just another product line that is expected to perform in the same way that a movie or TV program does. But in 2012, News Corp. decided to split its news and entertainment divisions, leading some critics to hope that Murdoch’s news operations would no longer be subject to the same high-profit expectations of Hollywood movies and sitcoms.

As chains lose their grip, there are concerns about who will own papers in the future and the effect the papers’ owners will have on content and press freedoms. Recent purchases by private equity groups are alarming, since these companies are usually more interested in turning a profit than supporting journalism. However, ideas exist for how to avoid this fate. For example, more support could be rallied for small independent owners, who could then make decisions based on what’s best for the paper—not just what’s best for the quarterly report. (For more on how newspapers and owners are trying new business models, see “New Models for Journalism” on pages 300–302.)

Joint Operating Agreements Combat Declining Competition

Although the amount of regulation preventing newspaper monopolies has decreased, the government continues to monitor the declining number of newspapers in various American cities as well as mergers in cities where competition among papers might be endangered. In the mid-1920s, about five hundred American cities had two or more newspapers with separate owners. However, by 2010, fewer than fifteen cities had independent, competing papers.

In 1970, Congress passed the Newspaper Preservation Act, which enabled failing papers to continue operating through a joint operating agreement (JOA). Under a JOA, two competing papers keep separate news divisions while merging business and production operations for a period of years. Since the act’s passage, twenty-eight cities have adopted JOAs. By 2003, sixteen of those JOAs had been terminated. By 2014, just six JOAs remained in place—in Charleston, West Virginia; Detroit; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City; and York, Pennsylvania. Although JOAs and mergers have monopolistic tendencies, they have sometimes been the only way to maintain competition between newspapers.

For example, Detroit was one of the most competitive newspaper cities in the nation until 1989. The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, then owned by Gannett and Knight Ridder, respectively, both ranked among the ten most widely circulated papers in the country and sold their weekday editions for just fifteen cents a copy. Faced with declining revenue and increased costs, the papers’ managers asked for and received a JOA in 1989. But problems continued. Then, in 1995, a prolonged and bitter strike by several unions sharply reduced circulation, as the strikers formed a union-backed paper to compete against the existing newspapers. Many readers dropped their subscriptions to the News and the Free Press to support the strikers. Before the strike (and the rise of the Internet), Gannett and Knight Ridder had both reported profit margins of well over 15 percent on all their newspaper holdings.43 By 2010, Knight Ridder was out of the newspaper chain business, and neither Detroit paper ranked in the Top 20. In addition, the News and the Free Press became the first major papers to stop daily home delivery for part of the week, instead directing readers to the Web or to brief newsstand editions.