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‘Seattle Times’ Axes Stock Tables

The Seattle Times will be eighty-sixing its stock and mutual fund tables from their slot in the paper from Tuesdays through Fridays, but will retain the A-to-Z stock listings in its Saturday edition.

According to editor in chief Mike Fancher’s column in the Sunday Seattle Times, the move was being made in response to research showing that steadily declining numbers of readers were getting their market information from print sources, writes Editor & Publisher.

Instead, the paper will carry a Money & Markets page that will include Northwest stock prices and key summary market numbers from the day before, for stocks, mutual funds and bonds.

The paper will save money by dropping the stock tables and is, like many papers across the country, focusing on axing any content that can be found elsewhere and giving readers content they can’t find anywhere else.

Fancher’s column pointed out the struggles newspapers across the nation are having with declining circulations and flat or falling ad revenue. “That’s pretty much the experience in Seattle,” he wrote, though he added that readership and circulation at The Times have been better than the situation nationally.

On the downside, he wrote, “We’re still in costly litigation concerning the future of the joint operation between The Times and The Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”

The Chicago Tribune, facing similar challenges, stopped carrying stock tables early in 2006.