Gazette to cease publication on Sundays

Montreal’s The Gazette will cease
publishing a print version on Sundays, an internal memo from the
publisher says, although it will continue to publish online.

The memo, which was posted on The Gazette‘s site:

After long and serious consideration, we have decided that The Gazette will cease publishing a print version of the paper on Sundays as of Aug. 8.

However, The Gazette will continue to provide full coverage of news, entertainment and sports throughout the weekend on montrealgazette.com, as well as on habsinsideout.com and alsinsideout.com.

In its 22-year existence, the Sunday Gazette has struggled to find significant advertising support to cover the costs of printing and distribution. Subscription rates and single-copy sales cover only a small percentage of total costs; therefore, The Gazette has decided to focus its resources on the six remaining print editions and on the Web.

La Presse made a similar decision last year and other newspapers, both in Canada and the U.S., have reduced their print editions in recent times.

The Gazette will be adding its most popular Sunday features to an expanded Saturday newspaper, making it – once again – the Weekend Gazette. Among features to be moved are Social Notes, the Puzzles and comics pages, the Sports Opinion page and some elements of the Insight pages.

The expanded Weekend Gazette will hit your doorsteps on Saturday, August 7.

We welcome your comments at: sundays@thegazette.canwest.com

Alan Allnutt

Publisher & Editor-in chief