Grand Rapids Press to End Print Edition After Decades

Times are changing and sadly one of the cherished traditions of reading the printed news is going away. The printed version of the Grand Rapids Press will soon be no more!

The newspaper has been a staple of news and information for centuries. It can be traced back to ancient Rome, 59 BCE. But the modern concept of newspapers dates back to the early 17th century with the invention of the printing press.

However that is all going away here in Grand Rapids as MLive announces they will no longer "print all the news fit to print," as the New York Times would say. Yes, the printed version of the Grand Rapids and all the newspapers printed by MLive will end on Sunday, December 6.

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MLive not only prints our Grand Rapids Press, but The Ann Arbor News, The Bay City Times, The Flint Journal, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, and The Saginaw News.

WHY THE END OF THE PRINTED NEWS?

WZZM reported that the day has come when digital has taken over. MLive says that more than 99% of their readers go to their digital format. And as circulation numbers of newspapers have declined for decades, the digital versions continued to grow.

Interestingly, you would think that this would mean a massive job layoff, but that does not seem to be the case.

MLive says only one full-time job will be lost in distribution, but there are no job reductions planned at their printing facility, which is in Ohio. They moved all of their printing there in 2020.

People of a certain age remember loving to hold the newspaper to find out what was happening. The Sunday paper, huge with everything including the comics, was so fun to go through, page by page. But all of that has faded as the good old newspaper slowly became a shadow of its former self and people weren't buying it.

Time marches on.