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Charlotte Observer To End Printed Saturday Paper Next Year

Charlotte Observer
COURTESY OF NATE RYAN

The era of Charlotte having a newspaper printed each day will end next year.

McClatchy, the parent company of the Charlotte Observer, announced in an earnings call Wednesday that it will stop printing the Saturday newspaper at all of its 30 newspapers at some point in 2020.

The Sacramento, California-based company has already phased out the printed newspaper in 12 cities. 

The last Saturday printed paper of the Rock Hill Herald – which is a McClatchy newspaper — will be in January. The company said it will announce later when Charlotte will end the Saturday newspaper.

The company is transitioning from delivering the news from print to the web. The company said in its earnings call that it faces a “significant liquidity challenge” in 2020 after the IRS declined its request to defer making payments to its pension plan.

McClatchy also owns the News & Observer of Raleigh and The State in Columbia, South Carolina. 

Steve Harrison is WFAE's politics and government reporter. Prior to joining WFAE, Steve worked at the Charlotte Observer, where he started on the business desk, then covered politics extensively as the Observer’s lead city government reporter. Steve also spent 10 years with the Miami Herald. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated.