Capital Times to cut daily paper

Copy editors are most vulnerable as the Madison, Wis. paper focuses on the web and cuts its print frequency to twice a week. "This is probably an intelligent response to a difficult situation," says newspaper analyst John Morton.

After 90 years, Madison's afternoon newspaper will stop daily printing and shift its focus to its Web site and a more widely distributed free weekly print edition, its top executives said Thursday.

The move at The Capital Times will end the era of two daily newspapers in Madison, one of the last U.S. cities of its size to retain what had once been a common practice. The broadsheet newspaper will stop publishing six days a week on April 26 and start publishing a tabloid-format news weekly on Wednesdays, starting April 30.

The afternoon newspaper, which began publishing on Dec. 13, 1917, faced, like other papers, declining circulation that had dipped to 17,000 from a height of about 47,000 four decades ago.

The move drew national interest Thursday because the newspaper is one of the most prominent, so far, to make the move to publishing primarily online.

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