Sunday Surprise at the Waterbury Republican-American

Sunday morning’s Republican-American ran this “Note to Readers” on the front of the Commentary section:

” Beginning April 12 we are eliminating the Sun­day Commentary section and moving the editorial pages to the main news section. Sunday business pages will be moved to the Local News section.
This enables us to main­tain our core content: business news, editorials and commentaries and columns from staff writ­ers such as Greg Hanisek and Howard Fielding, but reduces our overall con­sumption of newsprint.
We’ll be making similar changes to the Sunday Accent and Arts & Enter­tainment sections: keep­ing the important local content while eliminating some features such as the Travel and Broadway pages that do not repre­sent our core mission.
As you know, newspa­pers, along with many segments of the national economy, are struggling with this recession. Ad­vertising revenue, our primary source of in­come, is down consider­ably (as it is for all forms of media: magazines, tele­vision and radio), while operating costs continue to climb. Thus, we contin­ue to be forced to make difficult decisions about content in the Republi­can- American and Sun­day Republican. The volume of advertising carried in the newspaper is a significant factor in how much space is avail­able for news.
Our mission is to con­tinue to provide as much local news coverage as possible for the 41 cities and towns within our cir­culation area. In these tough times that means eliminating features and sections that are not cen­tral to that mission or do not have sufficient adver­tising support.
We appreciate your continued support. As al­ways, your comments are welcome.
JONATHAN KELLOGG EXECUTIVE EDITOR”