La Presse publishes final weekday edition

CTV Montreal: End of an era at La Presse La Presse's final weekday print edition hit newsstands today – it will now only be printed Saturdays.

It is an historic day for La Presse – a weekday edition of the newspaper went to print Thursday for the last time.

After 131 years, the paper is going almost all-digital in the new year, which makes it the first paper in the world to make the leap.

The paper is now focusing on their tablet app, La Presse+. The paper will still be printed on Saturdays. The Sunday edition was discontinued in 2009.

While other newspapers have flirted with different digital initatives, La Presse is the first to go all in, so to speak.

"These are smart people. They know what they're doing, and they wouldn't have done this unless they were sure of this move, said Concordia journalism professor Wayne Larsen.

"If this works out, you can be sure you'll see other publications going this way."

According to the paper, 80 per cent of advertising sales are now for the app. The advantage, it says, is that with the digital version, advertisers can better target their audience because they can track who is reading what.

La Presse+ attracts close to 250,000 readers per day, which is about three times more than the paper edition. The move will allow the paper to save about $30 million in operating costs.

A week after announcing the decision to go digital six days a week in September, the paper announced it was eliminating 158 jobs – 102 full-time jobs and 56 freelance and contract positions, some unionized, some non-unionized and some management.