Oregonian cuts delivery area again, stiffing Eugene

The shrinking of metropolitan daily newspapers' circulation territories continues. The Oregonian will no longer deliver its daily edition to the state's second largest metropolitan area, Eugene-Springfield, "and apparently other, more distant areas of the state," reports Joe Mosley of The Register-Guard in Eugene.

The Oregonian will keep delivering Sunday papers in the Eugene area, where it has about 1,000 subscribers. Other areas apparently will be affected because the paper is eliminating an early press run that enabled it to truck copies 110 miloes south to Eugene, where they were distributed by The Register-Guard. The Oregonian didn't return Mosley's calls, and we couldn't find anything on the paper's Web site about it, other than a posting by reader Betsy Boyd of Eugene, who wrote: "The news hit me first like an unexpected loss in the night. But when the morning came (along with my newspapers), it felt more like a dear yet provoking and distinguished member of the community had just made an incomprehensible mistake, too strange and disastrous to overlook. The neighbors are talking. Some are angry. Everyone is aghast."

Mosley writes, "The Oregonian’s elimination of home delivery in Lane County and beyond follows a similar move by the paper two years ago, when it stopped delivering to far eastern Oregon and the southern Oregon Coast. And the move is not unique in the newspaper industry. The Medford Mail Tribune — Oregon’s fifth-largest paper — announced last week that it will cease delivery Jan. 1 in Northern California, as well as Curry County and parts of Josephine County." (Read more)