From Tribune staff reports
BIRMINGHAM — Three of Alabama’s largest cities, Huntsville, Birmingham, and Mobile will soon be without a printed newspaper. According to the Wall Street Journal, Advance Media will shutdown print versions of the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register in February. The three cities were already among the largest in America without a daily newspaper.
Todd Bates of Advance Local said the print side of the business did not make sense in Alabama where the three newspapers saw subscriptions drop from 260,000 to a combined circulation of 30,000 in the last decade.
The Birmingham News will end print edition in February.
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Bates told the WSJ that the print facility in Mobile would lay off 110 employees, including 74 in the print operation and 36 in circulation and sales.
Advance Publications operates 24 newspapers across the country, but announcement ending print newspapers only applies to the three in Alabama.
News content in the Alabama cities will continue to be published on the website al.com.
The Birmingham News was first published in 1888 as the Evening News, later changing the name to the Daily News before settling in as the Birmingham News in 1895.
In 2006, the Birmingham News moved into a new 110,000 square foot, four-story building on 4th Avenue North in downtown. But by 2009, the newspaper reduced the physical size of the newspaper and moved out of the new building, which was put on the market, and into a former warehouse on 1st Avenue North.
In 2012, the Birmingham News reduced the print schedule to three days a week making Birmingham the second largest city in the United States without a daily newspaper. Birmingham became the largest city in the U.S. without a daily newspaper when the Baton Rouge Advocate opened a newspaper New Orleans. The Advocate later purchased NewOrleans’ thrice a week Times-Picayune, another newspaper ravaged by Advance Media cutbacks.
All of the newspapers in Alabama’s five largest cities of Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile and Tuscaloosa have out of state owners.
