Today’s paper was the last Wednesday print edition for the immediate future. As we announced this week, we will no longer be printing a Wednesday edition of our paper as a cost-saving measure. We’ve gotten a lot of response, and a lot of questions, but I’d like to address one that keeps coming up, both from our staff and our readers.

Why Wednesdays?

Unfortunately, I don’t have a perfect answer, save for perhaps, “Why not?”. We take pride in every issue we put out, and so we certainly do not have a day which we would like to cut at all.

That said, there are a few points which we considered:

• Wednesday is the only two-section issue of our publication schedule. We publish the arts & entertainment page on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the opinion page on Mondays and Thursdays, but on Wednesdays it’s just news and sports. Cutting Wednesday means less of a disruption for our readers.
• It’s important for us to keep our sports section strong, and overwhelmingly their coverage is greatest closer to the weekends.
• So it really comes down to the last section which is most affected, our news team. The simple truth is news happens every day, and there really is no better or worse day to not have a paper. And as we move toward a 24-7 news cycle online at www.dailycal.org, we will be using our print edition more to feature long-term reporting and features, and get the breaking news to you faster on the Web.

As a reminder, you can expect full fresh content Wednesdays (and every day) online. That includes a special Web-only columnist, to be announced.

Thoroughly unsatisfied with this answer? Let me know in the comments or at editor@dailycal.org.