Both Detroit daily papers, the Free Press and The Detroit News, say they’re making a big change come March.  They’ll only throw the hard copy to the doorstep on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.  They’ll still sell copies at newsstands every day, but if you want the dead tree version on a Tuesday you’ll have to go get it.  ”I don’t think we’re ever going back,” said David Hunke, who is publisher of the Free Press and also heads the JOA which manages the business sides of both papers.  They also say they’re going to put more focus on their sites.

On Freep.com they’re calling it a “groundbreaking move for newspapers.”  It’s a big move, but I don’t know that it qualifies as groundbreaking.  The Christian Science Monitor recently said it will kill its print edition in April and the Capital Times in Madison dumped its print edition earlier this year.  The real question for the Detroit papers–which both lost subscribers over the past year–is whether this will keep them in business long-term.

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