INDIANAPOLIS (July 13, 1999) -- The Indianapolis News will cease

publication after its Friday, Oct. 1, 1999, edition, the newspaper's

publisher announced Tuesday.

Dale A. Duncan, president and publisher of The News and The Indianapolis

Star, attributed the death of the 130-year-old newspaper to changing reader

needs.

"The majority of our customers," Duncan said, "clearly prefer a newspaper

delivered in the morning. Therefore, it is time we concentrate our efforts

on making The Indianapolis Star the best it can be. While The Star

continues to grow in the morning, our employees have been waging a valiant

-- but unsuccessful -- effort to stem a long, slow decline of News

circulation."

The average daily circulation of The News has been 32,000. Ten years ago,

that figure was 111,000. Average 1999 weekday circulation of The Star has

been 239,000. The Sunday Star in 1999 has sold an average of 374,000 copies

a week.

Duncan told the company's employees early Tuesday that the closing would

result in the loss of about 20 newsroom positions and about a dozen jobs in

the transportation department. In addition, he said it would mean fewer

shifts for bargaining unit employees in production departments. The company

now has 1,350 full-time employees.

The company expects to achieve the reduction in force in the newsroom by

not filling vacant positions and by a voluntary severance offer made

Tuesday to longtime newsroom employees, Duncan said. Reductions in other

departments, he said, will be achieved under terms of collective bargaining

agreements.

Indianapolis Newspapers is owned by Central Newspapers Inc., which also

publishes newspapers in Muncie, Vincennes and Fishers, Ind., and in

Phoenix, Ariz., and Alexandria, La.

The decision to close The News mirrors decisions made in many other major

cities across the United States in recent decades. Cities that have lost

afternoon papers outright or through merger with a morning paper in the

1990s include Nashville, El Paso, Phoenix, Savannah, Norfolk, Baltimore,

San Diego and Richmond. Many major cities lost their afternoon dailies even

earlier. Only a few remain.

Frank Caperton, executive editor of The News and The Star, said, "The fact

that circulation losses made the closing inevitable does not make it less

painful. I know many readers will join newsroom staffers in mourning the

passing of this friend who came to their homes every day."

Jack Sales, assistant managing editor and a member of The News' staff for

39 years, said, "Today's announcement is a cause of great sadness for those

of us who have spent many years employed at the paper. It is no surprise

though. We have known it was inevitable, that it was just a matter of time

before economics would cause us to quit operating. I'm glad we will have

almost three more months to print."

Some of the features of The News that have appealed most to readers will

likely find a home in The Star, Caperton said, adding these might include

comics, puzzles and some other features.

"Our goal," he said, "is to convince all of our News readers to become Star

readers. He said the newspaper company would establish a committee to

review which News features should be preserved and to seek reader opinions

on those changes.

Caperton also said the final edition of The News, on Friday, Oct. 1, would

be a commemorative issue to celebrate the history of the newspaper and its

contribution to the life of the city and state.

The first edition of The News hit the street on Dec. 7, 1869, at a price of

two cents a copy, a penny less than the city's other newspapers. The

population of Indianapolis was 48,000. Three months after the first issue,

circulation had grown to 2,500 copies. In time, the newspaper would become

Indiana's largest and be known as "The Great Hoosier Daily."

John H. Holliday, a 23-year-old Civil War veteran, had planned the

establishment of The News while working as a reporter at another of the

city's newspapers. He would run it until May of 1892 when ill health forced

him to sell to the Smith-Fairbanks families. In 1948, Eugene C. Pulliam

purchased controlling interest in The News from the Fairbanks family.

Pulliam was the owner of several other newspapers, one of which was The

Star. In 1949, The News moved in with The Star at 307 N. Pennsylvania St.

Both are still published at that location.

The News had a separate newsroom staff until September 1995 when its staff

was merged with that of The Star. The staffs of the two editorial pages

have remained separate.

In 1932, The News won a Pulitzer Prize for its campaign during 1930 and

1931 to eliminate waste in city management and to reduce the tax levy.