Decatur Daily moving to postal service delivery

The newspaper will continue to have print editions five days a week. As part of the change in distribution, the newspaper will switch to an expanded weekend edition that will be delivered on Saturday instead of Sunday, starting April 8.

The Tuesday through Friday editions will continue to be delivered the day they are published. Subscribers in Hartselle, Athens, Limestone County and Lawrence County have been receiving mail delivery on weekdays for the past 18 to 36 months. Now delivery for each day of publication in all areas will be by mail. 

Subscribers also will have access to an enhanced digital replica of the newspaper early each morning of publication.

“In some ways it’s a very difficult decision,” Shelton said of switching to mail delivery. “Loyal employees and carriers are impacted. That’s the toughest part. But in many ways it just makes sense. For some time we have offered an exact replica of our newspaper pages digitally with virtually no delivery cost.

"The Decatur Daily is launching an app today that improves the digital experience tremendously. We haven’t even finalized the app and more than 200 people have installed the app in Decatur and over 400 at our newspaper property in Florence.”

The newspaper’s mission to provide local news and advertising information about our community will not change, he said.

Carrier delivery had become more challenging, and the switch to mail delivery aims in part to ensure more consistent delivery of The Decatur Daily, the newspaper said. As in other parts of the country, newspaper carriers in The Daily's delivery areas have been more difficult to contract and retain.

In come cases, delivery routes have had substitute carriers for more than a year, and higher gasoline prices over the past two years haven’t helped, Shelton said.

“Delivering a newspaper to someone’s home for less than $1 per day just isn’t feasible," he said.

More than 25% of The Daily's subscribers are getting their newspaper digitally.

Each Decatur Daily subscriber automatically receives 24-hour unlimited online access to DecaturDaily.com, the enhanced E-edition and the new Decatur Daily app, available in an app store to download on any mobile device. The E-Edition is a complete replica of the newspaper.

The weekend paper delivered on Saturdays will look like what subscribers' Sunday paper has been — multiple sections, comics, inserts and fliers and coupons. Gameday will continue to publish on Fridays during football season. The weekend edition will include all local, state, and national news, high school and other sports results, and features that readers can enjoy the entire weekend.

Over the past several years many newspapers nationally have switched to delivery via the U.S. Postal Service, and the trend is expected to expand in the coming months for publications that continue to invest in a printed edition of the newspaper.

The change will also allow The Decatur Daily to be available for delivery in more locations and provide it with the ability to continue to invest more in continuing its role as the primary news source in Decatur and surrounding communities.

“By utilizing the postal service, we can ensure that each subscriber will get The Decatur Daily every day at the same time you get your mail," said Walter Goggins, circulation director for The Decatur Daily. "By moving to the postal service delivery, we can focus more of our resources on continuing to reliably gather and deliver the most important community news to our readers.”