Star-Ledger to Cease Print Edition, Announces Digital-Only Format Starting February 2025

From USADNEWS Volume XVI, Issue 1

Advance Local, which publishes the Star-Ledger and the Jersey Journal, has announced it will discontinue the print editions of those papers and convert to a digital-only format effective February 2, 2025.

The Star-Ledger, based out of Newark, is the largest circulation newspaper in New Jersey. Its Sunday circulation is greater than the next three largest newspapers in the state combined. However, the publisher noted that their digital subscriptions now outpace their print subscriptions and that the changing subscriber trends and loss of print revenue have forced them to convert entirely to a digital format.

This is a trend that we have seen across the industry as newspapers have grappled with rising production costs and declining revenues from print subscriptions. Some daily newspapers have reduced their number of weekday print editions, although they have continued to publish their Sunday paper in print. A growing number of papers have begun to consolidate their Saturday and Sunday papers into a joint weekend edition that publishes on Saturday.

After first switching from a daily to a thrice-weekly print format, the Alabama Media Group ceased print publication altogether in February 2023 of its three flagship newspapers: the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, and the Mobile Press-Register. This change left major cities in Alabama with no viable print option and presented a major challenge to employers conducting recruitment advertising for labor certifications, as the nearest newspapers with Sunday print editions were hours away and offered only scant circulation into those areas.

The regulations at 20 C.F.R. § 656.17(e)(1)(i)(B)(1) require that employers place two print advertisements in the Sunday edition of the newspaper of general circulation in the area where the job is located. The Department of Labor (DOL) allows an employer to substitute a non-Sunday edition in rural areas where no Sunday edition exists, but they currently make no allowance for the use of digital publications in major metro areas that have ceased their print production.

USADWEB can provide suggestions for your cases in areas that are affected by this digital transition. We hope that this trend will have a minimal impact on PERM advertising. In recent years, the DOL has responded to other industry changes by approving electronic tearsheets (esheets) as acceptable original proofs of publication in lieu of hard copy tearsheets. The DOL also affirmed the use of online trade association job boards as an acceptable method of fulfilling the trade organization recruitment step. If the DOL affirms language stating that the digital publication of the entire newspaper on the publisher’s website represents the modern equivalent of a newsstand, this change may not be quite so significant.