Press: All-Day Dailies

Some P.M.s are rising earlier

The tired gray lady of Philadelphia suddenly showed signs of youthful abandon. She underwent a facelift, retook her maiden name, and declared she would no longer laze around for half the day. So, late last year, the decorous but declining Evening Bulletin (circ. 517,000) rechristened itself the Bulletin and emerged with a crisp new design enlivened by extensive use of color, a greater emphasis on sports and local news and, most important, a new edition on the newsstands by 7 a.m., three hours earlier than before.

The Bulletin thus joined a small but growing number of "all-day" papers that produce both morning and afternoon editions. Only two dozen of the nation's 1,753 dailies publish all day, and most are in relatively small, one-paper cities. But in the past couple of years some big-city afternoon papers have added morning editions: the Detroit News (circ. 634,000), Dallas Times Herald (251,000), and Oakland Tribune (164,000). Other papers are considering the move, among them the financially beset Washington Star (329,000), which has renegotiated its union contracts as part of a long-term campaign for revival (see following story).

More Americans still read afternoon rather than morning papers; indeed, afternoon papers account for about 57% of total daily circulation. For the past few years, however, city P.M.s have been generally losing circulation while many A.M.s have been gaining. Publishers attribute this attrition to the scourges of the afternoon: heightened competition from television news and suburban dailies, traffic jams that make midday delivery difficult, and readers' morning habits. Says Dallas Times Herald Publisher Lee Guittar: "People are acclimated to having their newspaper with their morning coffee."

Because of world time differences, stories from abroad sometimes appear first in evening papers. But since P.M.s usually start their presses before noon, they often can print only updated versions of stories that first appeared in competing morning papers. Says Dallas Times Herald Managing Editor Will Jarrett, whose paper in September introduced a morning edition to do battle with the bigger morning News (circ. 283,000): "Before, everyone was beating us, no matter how hard the writers and editors tried." Now, he adds, "we can get out with the breaking news, then go back and do some interpretation in the later editions. It's fun." The move has boosted the paper's circulation by 7,000 readers.

Many afternoon papers that entered the morning field have shown similar gains. The Detroit News, which in the 1960s had a readership advantage of 174,000 over the morning Free Press, lost its lead in late 1975. The News then launched an "AM Edition" that has helped put it back in front of the Free Press by 25,000.