Livia Ziskey, a college student majoring in journalism, remembers the local newspaper being delivered when she was growing up in Omaha. Her father still takes the Omaha World-Herald, although he’ll be getting one fewer edition starting in early November, when the World-Herald and other daily newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises will stop printing on Mondays.
“He grew up as a paperboy delivering papers in his Omaha neighborhood,” said Ziskey, a senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Ziskey is an intern at the Lincoln Journal-Star, the Lee newspaper serving Nebraska’s state capital. It’s one of the dailies included in the no-print Monday change, but that doesn’t faze her — nor does the general uncertainty about the future of her chosen profession.
“You hear the same people say, ‘Journalism is dying,’” Ziskey said. “It’s not. It’s shape-shifting.”
That shape-shifting has Lee Enterprises and other newspaper companies on their toes, trying to adapt to changing audience habits as print readership continues to decline and people have more digital media options to choose from.
According to Lee Enterprises, it owns 12 newspapers in Nebraska, seven in Iowa and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of the largest daily metro papers in Missouri. It owns more than 70 newspapers nationwide. The company's corporate headquarters is in Davenport.
Lee uses cost-cutting to remain viable, said Todd Cooper, a former Omaha World-Herald reporter who helped unionize the newspaper in 2019.
“That's not a strategy. That's cost containment,” said Cooper, who worked as a reporter for the paper from 1997 to 2024. “You could argue that's maximizing profits, although we differed on that. The old expression: ‘You can't cut your way to prosperity?’ We have felt that.”
Some of the cost-cutting at Lee has come in the form of layoffs. As recently as September, the Omaha World-Herald laid off six employees. In 2022, hundreds of Lee employees around the country lost their jobs even as the company announced growth in digital revenue. Staffing around the region has contracted when Lee merged or shed smaller papers.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch closed its printing press in 2024, which meant the loss of more than 70 jobs. Now, the physical paper is printed in Peoria, Ill. In Iowa, the Quad-City Times printing press ran for the last time in September, causing more than 40 people to lose their jobs. That paper is now printed in Munster, Ind.
As far back as 2010, Rick Edmonds, longtime media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, called newspaper job cuts the end result of a “vicious cycle,” in which circulation drops result in advertising declines, which lead to more job cuts. Edmonds said cutting newspaper size and staff ultimately could make them less desirable to the public.
According to a 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center, print media ranked last in a review of where people in the U.S. get their news. Only 20% of survey respondents said they “often” get news from newspapers and magazines. The figure was 60% for digital consumption.
Damon Kiesow, who teaches and researches the business of news at the University of Missouri, said the printed newspaper lingers because its advertising still commands higher rates than digital advertising, a conundrum that companies like Lee are trying to resolve.
“All the things that make print a really efficient news and advertising vehicle, we have not translated to digital,” Kiesow said. “The packaging, the design, the editions. But the economics of print don't sustain it, even if it's a better product.”
Mondays and more
The no-print-Monday announcement is the latest cost-cutting measure by Lee Enterprises, but some of its newspapers had already cut back. The Sioux City Journal in northwest Iowa went to a three-day printing schedule in 2023, for example.
Articles explaining the Monday change to Lee readers around the country carried a similar theme: That the change would allow the affected newspapers to focus on the products readers “are using the most.”
Lee has touted its growth on digital platforms. In a news release about its performance for the 2024 fiscal year, the company reported digital revenue was up 11% over the previous year. Meanwhile, it said, print revenue was down by 21% from the previous year.
Kiesow said that as print readership declines, other companies have been cutting out print editions for years — some by increments and others in one fell swoop. In August, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced it would stop all print operations as of Dec. 31 and thereafter serve customers exclusively via digital platforms.
Jessica Walsh, a journalism professor and researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said a missing Monday paper might affect readers less than losing other editions.
“Having worked at daily newspapers, Monday was traditionally the thinnest paper. There’s less news on Sunday, so Monday is the lightest news day, the smallest newspaper,” she said.
Kiesow said cutting out a Monday printed edition provides a number of cost-cutting benefits to Lee: It means fewer staff are needed over the weekend as well as saving on printing the paper and getting it to customers.
“I'd love to see the numbers,” he said. “Obviously, (Lee) is not sharing the internal numbers used to make these choices. So you're sort of reading the tea leaves from the outside when you're looking at diagnosing how they made the decision, what day they made it.”
As Lee Enterprises works toward what it calls “digital transformation,” the company has big bills to pay. Lee acquired the Berkshire Hathaway Media Group’s publications — including the Omaha World-Herald — in 2020. Berkshire Hathaway provided more than $500 million in long-term financing to Lee at a 9% annual rate to pay for the deal.
In August, Lee agreed to pay $9.5 million to subscribers alleging the company shared their video-viewing information with Facebook in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act. And, now, Lee is facing three invasion-of-privacy lawsuits from current or former employees over a cyberattack they say exposed private information. According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Lee said restoring its data systems after the February attack has already cost $2 million.
Cooper, the former Omaha-World Herald reporter, had already left Lee’s World-Herald when the 2025 hack took place. But he wondered whether cost-cutting might have played a role.
“What kind of protections did they have? Were they skimping on software that would have protected the data? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know the end result is an absolute disaster.”
In 2022, Lee Enterprises fended off a takeover attempt by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, a company known for gutting the news outlets it buys. Jeff Gordon, president of the union that represents staffers at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said the union's members voted their combined 300 shares to reelect Lee’s nominees.
“As we always tell Lee, they’re less terrible than the alternative — the half-hearted compliment we often give Lee,” Gordon said at the time.
While Lee was able to fend off Alden, Kiesow said there’s no guarantee that Alden won’t try again, not to mention other potential buyers.
“Alden has not shown itself to be a polite acquirer,” he said. “If they thought they could pick up Lee, they would. The only thing that would keep them from having interest is if there's literally nothing, no real estate left to sell.”
The Midwest Newsroom contacted Lee Enterprises to request an interview for this article. Spokeswoman Tracy Rouch declined.
Living in a news desert
Walsh, the UNL journalism professor, studies the news media landscape in Nebraska. In 2025, she and her colleagues mapped the state’s news ecosystem, identifying communities that are underserved by news outlets, or not served at all. These communities are referred to as news deserts.
Walsh’s research found that nine Nebraska counties have no local news organizations. What most dismayed her about the findings, she said, is the low number of journalists working in the state.
“The presence of a newspaper is one metric of local news health, but I think an even more important metric is the number of journalists that are working there in that county,” Walsh said. “We have almost 43,000 Nebraskans who are living in counties that do not have any full-time or part-time local journalists.”
The highest concentration of journalists is found in the eastern part of the state, where the state’s major newspapers, the Omaha World-Herald and the Lincoln Journal-Star, are located. These papers traditionally covered issues beyond their immediate metro areas. The World-Herald, for example, once printed multiple editions to reach the readers around the state.
“If we already have a deficit of local journalists in the western and central part of the state, if now we're also seeing that in the eastern part of the state, that’s concerning,” Walsh said. “If there are fewer local journalists working at the World-Herald or the Journal-Star, that means there's less content for newspapers that would rely on content produced by reporters at those papers.”
Walsh said that Lee Enterprises owns 80% of Nebraska’s newspapers.
The future
Logan Moseley, a journalism student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, covers news and sports for the campus newspaper and is hoping to land a sports journalism job after graduation. Still, given the challenges newspapers are facing, he’s covering all his bases as a triple major: journalism, broadcasting and sports media communications.
Moseley, a sophomore who grew up in Omaha, wonders if sports might save newspapers — or at least provide some lifeblood for a time.
“Readers in St. Louis or Omaha might not care about the news, but if they see a name they know from sports, they’re like, ‘Oh, my god, I went to middle school or elementary school with them.’ That's gonna be able to keep some sort of readership going.”
In fact, sports coverage often dominates the printed and digital front pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Omaha World-Herald. The Post-Dispatch staff page lists about 60 newsroom personnel, of which 13 are sports staff. Of the Omaha newsroom staff of 30, 12 employees are dedicated to sports coverage.
Kiesow, the University of Missouri educator, said that leaning into sports coverage might be a winning tactic in the short term.
“If sports stories are driving significant conversions to new subscriptions and retention, especially in digital, that could very well be a very smart place to invest more staff,” he said. “But the rest of the community is also kind of important. Accountability coverage isn't work that always drives a lot of subscriptions, doesn't always drive a lot of page views, but it's critical civic infrastructure.”
Walsh plans to use the Nebraska news study as a baseline to measure coming changes to the media ecosystem.
“I just wish more people realized how serious the situation is for a lot of local newspapers,” she said. “If you're not paying for local news, think about paying for local news. Think about at least getting a digital subscription to your local newspaper, and help keep local news alive, because it really needs our help right now.”
Editor’s note: Daniel Wheaton, senior data journalist for The Midwest Newsroom, collaborated with Jessica Walsh on the Nebraska News Map project. Members of The Midwest Newsroom collaborated with Livia Ziskey and several of her fellow students on a class project in early 2025.
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here.
The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODS
Holly Edgell interviewed experts who study journalism and the business of journalism for this article. She also spoke to a former employee who was active in the Omaha World-Herald union and negotiated with Lee Enterprises executives in that capacity. In addition, Edgell interviewed journalism students for their perspectives on the news landscape. As part of her reporting, Edgell reviewed Lee Enterprises news releases and other public statements. She consulted studies from the Pew Research Center, as well as articles about the business of news from the Poynter Institute and Nieman Labs.
REFERENCES
Lee Enterprises continues to show fast digital subscription growth, but revenues lag (Poynter | Feb. 3, 2022)
Lee Enterprises forces furloughs in latest cost-cutting move (Axios | Feb. 14, 2023)
Lee Enterprises Reports Fourth Quarter and Full-Year FY24 results (Lee Enterprises | Dec. 12, 2024)
Nebraska News Map (University of Nebraska-Lincoln | Feb. 17, 2025)
Lee Enterprises agrees to $9.5 million payout, faces new class-action claims (Nebraska Examiner | July 17, 2025)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution to Quit Print Cold Turkey (New York Times | Aug. 28. 2025)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch ends Monday paper as subscriptions plummet (STLPR | Oct. 3, 2025)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
News — Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
