Daily Sentinel Publisher: Cutting Paper Editions Preserves Mission More Than Layoffs

Courtesy of Colorado Secretary of State

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel will stop publishing a paper edition Mondays and Tuesdays starting next month. On those two days, readers will instead receive an online edition in their email inbox.

The recent 32 percent tariff on Canadian newsprint spurred the decision to cut down to a five day paper, but the financial struggles aren’t new for the Sentinel, which first started publishing in 1893. The cost of newsprint had gone up significantly during the same time period the paper lost 75 percent of their advertising revenue.

Daily Sentinel publisher Jay Seaton talked to Colorado Matters about how the paper came to the decision to cut the number of paper editions, as opposed to laying off staff or raising prices for subscribers. Seaton said this option would hopefully have the least impact on their First Amendment mission