By Donald R. Winslow
MADISON, WI (February 7, 2008) - The Capital Times newspaper in Madison today told readers that they are making a "major shift" to the Internet to reflect the "changing habits of afternoon newspaper readers." The 90-year-old newspaper will cease six-day publication and shift to publishing a tabloid-sized edition only twice per week while "dramatically enhancing" its Web site.
That was big news today in Wisconsin not only to the newspaper's readers but to The Capital Times' staff as well, who didn't know anything about the announcement until a 8:30 a.m. meeting was called this morning.
"It was a surprise to the staff," chief photographer Rich Rygh told News Photographer magazine today. "We came in this morning for the usual news meeting and were told there would be a staff meeting at 8:30. We had no idea at all."
Rygh has been at The Capital Times for 30 years.
"For photo, it's a major change in our department. There's me and four full-time photographers. In the new plan there's only going to be two staff photographers." Rygh and three others will take the severance package the paper offered today. "And those two photographers that are left, they're going to be run to death covering everything seven days a week."
"We don't have much of an option," he said. "It was basically, 'Take your buy-out and go,' so unless something changes I'm going to take the buy-out. I'm 57 years old and I had hoped to retire here, but I can't see working in the situation where it's going to be 'grab a photo anywhere you can and use it regardless of quality,' that's unprofessional. They're also going to have freelancers shoot, and the reporters were told they'll be shooting for themselves," Rygh said.
Employees were told that the buy-out was based on how many years they had worked at the newspaper, up to a threshold of 26. At the top, an employee with 26 years of service will receive one year's pay.
Rygh said he doesn't think this change was in management's planning until recently because the newspaper, a broadsheet, just underwent a total broadsheet re-design at the end of last year. "Now they're ditching that to go tabloid and twice a week," the chief photographer said.
Capital Times publisher Clayton Frink told readers the newspaper's Web site will have "increased volume, depth and timeliness of news, opinion, and other information." Frink also said the twice-weekly printed paper will be distributed to an area about five times the current circulation zone.
Beginning at the end of April the news and opinion section of The Capital Times will be published on Wednesdays and distributed along with home-delivered subscriptions to the Wisconsin State Journal. The paper will be free in newspaper racks in the Madison area.
A weekly arts, entertainment, and culture section will be distributed on Thursdays with the Wisconsin State Journal and will also be free in racks in the Madison area.
Today's story in The Capital Times didn't say how many employees total would be lost from the newspaper in the transition.
In an Editorial today that accompanied the news story of the paper's changing future, The Capital Times said:
"Today we begin the process of taking the next logical step for a newspaper that intends to be around for another 90 years ... Over the next few months, The Capital Times will shift from distributing news via piles of papers distributed on trucks that must traverse the snow-clogged streets of our winter wonderland to the information superhighway. We'll continue to have one of the largest news-gathering and editing staffs of any newspaper our size in the country, but we'll get the stories to Wisconsinites faster, more reliably and in more detail.
"But the urgency of the moment requires that we leave nostalgia to others."
Frink said the paper's current circulation is 17,072 but with the new plan The Capital Times will be distributed to more than 80,000. The final day for daily Capital Times publication is Saturday April 26.
With the announcement a new editor was named, Paul Fanlund. He's been executive editor of The Capital Times since 2006. "This move is vital to ensuring the long-term relevance of the Cap Times," Fanlund is quoted as saying in today's announcement.
Fanlund replaces 67-year-old editor Dave Zweifel, who becomes the paper's editor emeritus and will continue writing a column. Zweifel said in today's paper, "Moving our resources to the Web is the wave of the future ... putting the full force of our newsroom on the site will extend the reach and relevance of The Capital Times for years and years to come."
The newspaper's circulation was at its highest in 1966, a time when America had many healthy afternoon newspapers that were consumed mostly by people getting off work from blue collar jobs, or coming home from work and school, in an era before television and electronic news flourished and the morning's paper was filled with news that was already 12 or more hours old.
