Business Paper to Fold Back Daily Print Product

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Investor’s Business Daily is cutting one-third of its editorial staff, with half of those cuts taking place at its Playa Vista headquarters, and will cease publishing a daily print newspaper.

The national finance newspaper was expected to announce March 7 that it will eliminate 10 editorial positions there along with 20 additional employees from other parts of the business.

According to a top editor, an additional 30 employees – about half of them reporters – will be cut from the paper’s other offices across the country, in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Sunnyvale.

That move, which is expected to take effect May 2, comes amid declining circulation and shrinking profits, according to the announcement expected to be made Monday.

IBD publishes a print edition five days a week but will shift to printing only once a week beginning May 2. An online edition will continue to be published daily.

With the axing of the daily print newspaper, staffers will be able to focus more on IBD’s digital platform and premium products as today’s readers increasingly consume content on the Web. That daily online edition will aim to give readers more up-to-date information than the print edition can.

The new weekly print edition will have more of a forward-looking focus by writing about the upcoming trading week rather than just a recap of what has previously happened in the markets.

Founded in 1984 by stockbroker, author and entrepreneur William J. O’Neil as an alternative to the Wall Street Journal, the paper has served the investment community ever since.

While IBD doesn’t release current circulation numbers, the last published figure was 183,276 in March 2014, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

The paper admits circulation has fallen since then but points to that decline as a sign of the times as print media circulation has decreased across the industry for years.

Meanwhile, digital readership is on the upswing and IBD feels that’s where their future is.

“Every day, there are fewer people who want to consume financial information in print,” said Chris Gessel, former executive editor and now chief content officer at IBD. “Demographics play a role, but people of any age want their news faster and that means digital.”

The company said its recently relaunched site, Investors.com, attracts more than 4 million monthly unique visitors. IBD also publishes premium investment analysis products such as Leaderboard, an online investment tool that scans all of IBD’s proprietary stock lists and features to find stocks with the most potential for big gains. In addition, several mobile-first product launches are scheduled within the next year.

“We feel that we can now focus even more on delivering real-time, actionable data and analysis to help subscribers thrive in the fast-paced market,” said Gessel. “Many of the resources devoted towards publishing in print five days per week will be reallocated towards publishing across the mobile optimized site, Investors.com, along with the improved weekly print edition.”

IBD was one of the first publishers to install a paywall model in the early 2000s, and company leadership hopes the shift in business model will enable the business to improve profit margins while also providing subscribers with more mobile and digital offerings.

Gessel said the company doesn’t expect further staff reductions and actually anticipates to be hiring as it rolls out more premium products similar to Leaderboard and grows its overall digital business.

“The increase in growth on digital platforms indicates to us that that’s where all of the possibilities are,” said Gessel, who added that IBD will remain true to its original mission, which is to provide investing content that can’t be found elsewhere, including analysis of company fundamentals and technical resources on how to measure stock performance and volume.

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