Quay County Sun becoming weekly

To our readers,

This year and last have been the most challenging facing media companies, large and small, around the country.  As you have read or heard, the economic slump America and the world are dealing with has severely damaged economic opportunities.

For newspapers, including the Quay County Sun and its sister papers (the Clovis News Journal and Portales News-Tribune), the revenue challenge was doubly troubling because newsprint prices soared 36 percent last year.

While conditions have improved some in eastern New Mexico, including in Tucumcari, they are still off compared to a couple of years ago.

Our most effective way to offset those challenges has been to cut costs in our three New Mexico markets. In Tucumcari, a town where economic struggle is not new, we are taking another step to control costs by reducing publication days from twice a week to weekly.

Effective Aug. 5, the Quay County Sun will publish only on Wednesdays. The Saturday edition will be eliminated. The cost of the paper, from mail or racks, remains unchanged.  Subscriptions will be extended appropriately.

We chose that day because advertisers will be able to alert customers to upcoming weekend sales in a timely manner, and because the post office may eliminate Saturday deliveries. Since the mail is how subscribers get their papers it would greatly delay when they would receive their copies if Saturday was kept as a publication day.

This move is not the first cost-control measure we have implemented. In the last two years our parent corporation, Freedom Communications Inc., has consolidated and outsourced jobs across the company, negotiated new rates with several suppliers or found new vendors with lower prices, frozen 401(k) corporate contributions and implemented an unpaid week off for associates. On Tuesday, it announced a 5 percent pay reduction that will start later this month.

The purpose of all these moves is to ensure that Freedom meets its financial commitments this year and next, and survives. The good news in all this is the company is profitable and delivering on its financial commitments. But it has not come easily or without sacrifice.

We remain committed to providing the best journalism possible in Tucumcari.  In a few weeks that will be published every Wednesday.

Ray Sullivan
Publisher