I'm Laura Rogers with Joe Emile, who is publisher of the Bowling Green Daily News, along with several other regional newspapers as well.

And Joe, I want to ask you about a recent decision to change up your print schedule.

Tell us how things are changing there at the Daily News.

Well, start, Laura.

So, you know, The Daily News, 175 year old newspaper, we were six days a week, most recently throughout the years, you know, a hundred years ago, it was different.

But as time has gone on, we increased to six.

And recently, I made the decision to reduce our print frequency to three days a week.

And there's a lot of different reasons why implications of the the media landscape and things like that.

So we're Monday, Wednesday and the weekend right now.

But you're still The Daily News.

I want you to elaborate on you're still out there every day covering local news that is important to your readers and your subscribers and the people and the community.

The workload hasn't changed for for you and your reporters, right?

Oh, no, not at all.

It's actually increased.

So really, it's a platform choice.

Frequency was really decided by people that subscribe, you know, the cell phone here that, you know, the Swiss Army knife of communication has impacted media.

It's a it's just a shifting landscape.

And and so we reach more people now than ever, but we reach them on a different platform.

You know, we have 275,000 unique visitors a month to view almost a million pages.

And those folks that that read in print, that's a dwindling population.

I always joke that I wanted to rename my obituary section former subscribers, because every day that I see an obituary, I'm like, Oh, I lost one today.

I lost two today.

It's really younger folks are not picking up print.

It's not one day I hope that print will come back like vinyl has where, you know, it's kind of a niche thing.

But right now people choose to read on their cell phone, on their computer.

86% of our Web traffic comes from the cell phone.

And you talk about that being a changing landscape.

We're seeing that across all media.

That affects broadcast as well.

It's just it is a digital world and you are following suit with that.

And I do want to ask you about we see local journalism and how important that is.

We know people are very tuned in typically to what's going on nationally.

That's great.

Be informed.

But the importance of tuning in to your local journalists, knowing what's happening in your community or even how those national issues affect people here at home.

Do you mind to speak to that, supporting what our local reporters are out there doing every day?

Sure.

So, you know, you talked about our workload.

You asked about the workload.

It will increase because the production side of it, we've freed up three extra days that we're not, you know, producing a printed product, but we're still covering stories.

And so the Daily News has the largest staff of any media outlet in Warren County and most surrounding counties.

We have four reporters, two sports reporters, a couple editors, a photographer.

And so we continually cover all things local only do we really dip into the national scene when it reaches down into Warren County in Bowling Green?

The Daily News really is the only one that covers fiscal court, city commission, the school board.

If your taxes are going up, we're the ones that I'll tell you that in this day and age, we don't go for the low hanging fruit.

The accident, you know, if that old adage, if it bleeds, it leads you desensitizes readers when you put an accident photo out there every day and it's not timely.

You can't be timely with a print platform because we're we're printed in Knoxville.

You know, I closed our press down oh five years ago because it was 65 years old.

And the one guy that could work on it was was aged and it just didn't make sense.

And so now newspaper owners are going to large print centers where it's more economical, but we're delivered by the mail.

The USPS has raised my rates five times since I signed a contract with them and they I can't sue the federal government because I'd like to, but they can't deliver.

Same day as the contract says.

They just they have a labor issue just like I did with my carriers.

But we are focused, hyper focused.

We cover 15 high schools.

Anything that's going on, we try and be there and our staff is a good staff and this print frequency change will allow them to cover more things and we reverse publish.

We put everything on the web as soon as we can, and then the print will be the best of the stories of that that day, that couple of days.

And so, again, it's safe to say this is a shift that we're seeing across all print media.

And I know even, you know, magazines soon, not just newspapers, we're seeing some magazines that are digital only format, but this is really just the way of the future.

It is, you know, the Lexington Herald-Leader, which is printed in Knoxville, also, they went to three days a week.

You know, The Courier Journal and the Herald-Leader are the two, you know, larger papers in the state.

But the Daily News is probably the fourth, fourth largest daily, maybe fourth or fifth largest daily in the state.

And just about everybody save for maybe two daily papers have reduced their print frequency.

But that moniker, The Daily News, we still report every day, but it is just the shifting landscape of how people consume and they consume digitally.

And there are still a lot of folks that want print and we still provide that for them, but it just really wasn't economical or even timely to continue six days a week.

Well, really excellent insight from you, Joe.

We appreciate it.

And just thank you for what you do in the Bowling Green Daily News.

And just a titan in local journalism.

You mentioned, I believe, was it 175 year history of doing?

Yeah.

The the Gaines family owned it for 148, and there was some ownership before that, but they owned it for the last 248.

And then they sold it to Carpenter Media Group.

And Carpenter Media Group owns 267 titles in what I call the Legacy South and Canada, British Columbia and Hawaii.

We owned the Honolulu Advertiser.

So aside from Bowling Green, I am I run papers in Nicholas Ville, Winchester, Stanford, Frankfort, Ironton, Ohio.

Tazewell, Tennessee.

Stanford.

And so Danville, if I didn't mention that and we're seeing the same thing, you know, our company is invested in small local papers, and local journalism is where it's at.

If people want national news.

And that national news really overshadows everything.

And I hope that people will get back to knowing what's going on in their community.

And there's people like our staff at the Daily News, like you and others that are carrying the torch locally.

And when it's gone, people will realize what what they really missed until it is gone.

But we'll be here another dozens of years and we'll leave it.

Joe Schmo, publisher for the Bowling Green Daily News, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate it.