Bradenton Herald seeks competitor for printing help

They’ve been competitors since the beginning, but now they’ll be working together -- sort of.

The Bradenton Herald plans to have its paper printed by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a cost-savings measure that is part of an overall plan by the McClatchy Co. to snip off $100 million in expenses.

McClatchy took ownership of the Bradenton paper when it acquired Knight Ridder in 2006 for $6.5 billion in cash and debt. Earlier this week, McClatchy said it was removing 1,150 jobs from its payrolls, representing 10 percent of its work force.

Despite decades-old rivalry, the current economic climate – especially for print publications – made such a move necessary, said Diane McFarlin, publisher of the Herald-Tribune in the newspaper’s report Wednesday.

“Printing presses are so expensive and our production facilities are only 10 miles apart,” McFarlin told her paper. “We probably should have done this a long time ago, but competition got in the way.”

The Bradenton Herald boasts a 41,200 daily circulation while the Sarastoa Herald-Tribune, owned by The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT), delivers 118,300 issues every day.

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