The largest city in the US w/o a daily newspaper is ...

Interesting. I didn't know that. That makes especially difficult for all the poor people who can't afford a car.

 

I understand that is int eh circulation area of a larger metro as is Tampa.

But according to Wikipedia the 2016 population for Arlington and Tampa were under 400,000. Oakland and Mesa, Arizona have populations of more than 400,000. The Oakland Tribune seems to have been rolled up into the East Bay Times and the East Valley Tribune has reduced to weekly publication. Mesa has a larger population than Oakland so I would guess that it is the largest American city without a dedicated newspaper but instead rely on a larger metro.

 

I'm probably being picky about this, but at this point I still think five days a week qualifies as a daily newspaper. Using that criterion (and discounting Arlington because it is covered by Dallas and Ft. Worth), I still posit that the largest city in the U.S. without a daily newspaper is Birmingham. The Birmingham News prints three days a week -- well, maybe you can count four days since it just started back with a bulldog edition of sorts on Saturday nights (pretty much same content as Sunday except Bama and Auburn football games, plus coupons -- only reason to buy the Sunday paper anymore).

 

What about other members of the Newhouse chain such New Orleans, Portland or Cleveland. These cities are all larger than either the City of Birmingham or the metro area. How often do these papers publish?

 

They still publish daily, AFAIK. Only the "Three Sisters" in Alabama (B'ham, Mobile, Huntsville) went to three days a week. The Times-Picayune did the same, which at the time made New Orleans the largest city without a daily, but they went back to six days a week after the new owner of The Advocate in Baton Rouge hired a lot of the laid-off Times-Pic staffers and started a daily edition in Nola. So now that city is one of the few left with TWO dailies!

The Alabama papers and New Orleans were all the first for Advance to cut back, and the results have been abysmal. I surmise that is why they did not do the same in their other markets, except Ann Arbor.

 

On the New Orleans website home delivery is only offered Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Portland and Cleveland offer home delivery four days a weeks as they also offer a Saturday paper. I think these papers may print a paper for sale on newsstands daily but don;t know for sure.

 

You are correct. New Orleans prints six days, but the the they don't deliver they call "street editions." I think it's the similar deal in Cleveland and Portland.

 

Harrisburg cut back to home delivery three days a week. I tried to check Syracuse but was unable to get to the subscription page without a promo code. Grand Rapids offers delivery two days a week.

 

I used to make fun of papers that mail to all homes in a acity fo free, but the group I freelance for does very well with that model. They only print a monthly tabloid, but the one for Hoover (the largest suburb, bigger than Tuscaloosa) had 80 pages last month, and they do a very good job with public service journalism and go heavy on prep sports. Their news hole is about 45 percent, and the other 55 pct is paid ads. They don't even bother with digital banner ads, though they have some on their morning email blast plus they have sponsors for specific high schools' coverage. They seem to be doing very well. They are blowing away the Advance paper/website.

 

It had two dailies during the late, great newspaper war of the 1990s.

 

We were still calling ourselves daily when we cut to four days but I think the only reason for that was that we thought if we could make four days work, we'd get the fifth day back. The KPA also still allowed us to enter contests in the daily category.

We couldn't make it work and now we're down to two days. But we make a bit of money now. However, sometimes our publisher says she hopes to be able to get back to three days.

 

In Detroit they publish every day but only three days are home delivery. The others are rack sales only.