The Lawrence Journal-World is moving delivery of its newspaper to the U.S. Postal Service and will replace its Sunday print edition with a new Weekend Edition that publishes on Saturdays.

Postal delivery will begin on Tuesday, Sept. 8 and the new Weekend Edition will debut on Saturday, Sept. 12. The first day without a Sunday edition of the Journal-World will be Sept. 13. The Journal-World will use a specific postal program that will allow subscribers in the Lawrence area to receive same-day delivery of their newspapers. Subscribers will start receiving their newspapers at the same time they receive the rest of their mail, Tuesdays through Saturdays.

Journal-World Editor & Publisher Chad Lawhorn said the changes are driven by challenges in hiring enough carriers to staff the Journal-World’s home-delivery operations.

“The carriers we have are great,” Lawhorn said. “We just don’t have enough of them.”

For more than a year, the Journal-World has been operating its carrier program at reduced staffing levels due to the hiring challenges, Lawhorn said. The staffing situation has become unsustainable as the challenges have persisted.

“It has been a difficult decision to move our delivery to the postal service and to stop publishing a newspaper on Sundays,” Lawhorn said. “Ultimately we determined this was the best way to ensure reliable, timely delivery of the newspaper for years to come.”

The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t deliver mail on Sundays, which drove the decision to stop publishing a newspaper on Sundays.

“We know a lot of the content in our Sunday newspaper is beloved, and we have kept that in mind as we’ve designed the new Weekend Edition,” Lawhorn said.

The Weekend Edition will include the full offering of comics that have appeared in the Sunday newspaper. It also will include The New York Times crossword puzzle and other similar features that have appeared weekly in the Sunday edition.

Most importantly, Lawhorn said, the Weekend Edition will focus on local news in the tradition of the Sunday edition. The changes in delivery methods and publication dates do not involve any reduction in the Journal-World’s newsroom, Lawhorn said.

“The Journal-World continues to be well-supported by subscribers and advertisers who really value the importance of local news,” Lawhorn said. “We take very seriously our responsibility to provide accurate, timely, important news to our community. We have a robust operation that delivers that news continuously at LJWorld.com, but providing the news in a traditional newspaper format remains very important to us. We are proud to have an operation that will publish a newspaper five days per week, which continues to keep us as one of the largest newspapers in the state.”

The Journal-World’s digital operations include the production of a digital replica of each day’s newspaper. That digital replica is available for viewing at 4:30 a.m. each day that the Journal-World is published. Every subscriber to the Journal-World has access to that digital replica as part of their subscription at no extra charge. Subscribers can access the digital replica by going to LJWorld.com and clicking the Today’s Paper tab at the top of the screen. Subscribers who don’t yet have a username and password can receive one by emailing subs@ljworld.com

“We’ve received good responses from readers who use the digital edition,” Lawhorn said. “It has some of the conveniences of online but the organization and structure of the print newspaper. It really is a replica of the print edition. You see each page, each headline, each photo, each ad that appears in the print edition.”

The move to the postal service will impact the employment of approximately 15 independent contractors who serve as newspaper carriers for the Journal-World.

“A transition like this is tough on the people who do the work day-in-and-day-out,” Lawhorn said. “We will work hard to treat each of them with respect as we make this change in business operations. If you have a chance to thank a carrier, I would urge you to do so. They have been a linchpin to the Journal-World’s success for decades.”

In recent years, rising costs and staffing shortages have driven an industry trend toward utilizing the U.S. Postal Service for newspaper delivery rather than independent carriers. Data from the Kansas Press Association show the vast majority of newspaper companies in the state now use the postal service as their delivery method.