the Montreal Journal and the Quebec newspaper will stop publishing their paper edition on Sundays in 2023. “Globalized competition from the giants of the Web” and the difficulties linked to street vendors partly explain this decision.
“As of 2023, we will no longer publish a paper edition on Sundays,” the daily confirmed Thursday evening in a written publication, under the pen of Lyne Robitaille, president of the Montreal Journal.
The last issue of the Sunday edition of Quebecor’s newspapers will be sent to homes on December 18.
Difficulties in recruiting street vendors to deliver paper newspapers partly explain this decision. “It will also allow us to offer some respite to our home delivery people,” says Lyne Robitaille.
These “adjustments” [au] business model” are accompanied by an “enhanced edition” in the Saturday publication.
“By introducing this new weekend edition, The newspaper follows a trend adopted by the vast majority of daily newspapers in North America, which have long since stopped printing paper newspapers on Sundays,” she notes.
Earlier this year, in October,Montreal Gazette retired from its Monday edition along with Postmedia’s other Canadian newspapers in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. In Quebec, the regional newspapers of the Coopératives de l’information in Québec, Gatineau, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Saguenay and Granby are no longer printed except on Saturdays, with some exceptions. The Press has already ended all its paper editions in 2017.
These declines in paper newspapers follow a heavy trend in consumer preferences. While in 2017, 40% of regular readers aged 18 and over in Quebec read newspapers exclusively for information, this number has dropped to 18% in 2021, according to the Center for Media Studies.