The Blade, which began publishing in 1835, two years before Toledo was founded and when Ohio was little more than a frontier, will continue its push into the new era of digital publishing this month by dropping two days a week of its printed newspaper in favor of digital delivery.

Printing and delivery of a paper edition of The Blade will cease on Mondays and Tuesdays beginning Feb. 25, but journalists at the paper will continue to produce eBlade, a complete daily digital broadsheet newspaper, seven days a week. Blade news reports will also be available on toledoblade.com and Blade NewsSlide.

Even so, we at The Blade know this transition will not be easy.

Allan Block, chairman of Block Communications, Inc., parent company of The Blade, said, “Change is hard, but we have to do this. I do not apologize for giving readers something that is superior. I do not apologize for taking readers to the future.”

In fact, Mr. Block said, Blade NewsSlide and eBlade have many advantages and work very well anywhere you travel around the world.

“I was on a cruise ship recently between Hong Kong and Singapore, and with the press of a button I was able to have the actual Toledo Blade newspaper with me. This is amazing,” he said. “Meanwhile the printed Blade doesn’t even make it to Detroit Metro airport.”

He said transitioning to “digital-only” days will be difficult for many readers, disrupting decades of tradition and a cherished daily habit.

“We appreciate the loyal support our customers have given us throughout the years, but with eBlade and Blade NewsSlide and toledoblade.com, we believe we have the most advanced digital delivery products in the United States,” he said. “The products are better than print. The business model for print is totally broken, and we must move into the future.”

Mr. Block said Block Communications, headquartered in downtown Toledo, has a long-term commitment to the city and to The Blade. “There are no layoffs planned in the news and opinion departments. What we are doing is modernizing delivery. We’re not downsizing the newspaper.”

The step away from the printed Blade comes about a year and a half after the newspaper launched NewsSlide, a truly new multimedia news medium, received by downloading a free app on your smart phones and tablets. NewsSlide allows people to not only read the news but to experience stories through photo galleries, videos, and interactive graphics that visually explain complicated subjects.

A good example was last week’s story about flooding at Side Cut Metropark. A drone video report by Blade photographer Andy Morrison showed the ice and water from the Maumee River flowing out of the river and into the park. Words can’t describe the scene as well as a drone flying feet above the river ice.

NewsSlide covers the news, sports, and features in the Toledo metro area while also keeping readers up to date on state, national, and international news. It also includes many of the features readers expect in a daily newspaper — editorials, columns, letters to the editor, obituaries, puzzles, and, of course, the comics.

NewsSlide also provides local businesses a full, 2-click, e-commerce capability to sell their products.

The Blade’s website, toledoblade.com, will be the primary site for readers to keep up with breaking news, with the ability for readers to sign up for alerts sent to their phones by The Blade newsroom concerning the latest crimes, traffic tie-ups, sports scores, and other news events.

John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Blade and the brother of Allan Block, said he is “fully supportive of the digital evolution. It is a necessity.”

“For those of us who love the news business, the once-a-day delivery was a handicap,” the publisher said. “It’s very exciting to be part of a news organization that delivers news 24 hours a day.”

Like most newspapers, The Blade faces enormous financial challenges. It has experienced circulation and advertising revenue declines going back more than a decade, resulting in annual financial losses.

But the transition to digital-only days is not a knee-jerk reaction to a couple of bad financial years.

The Block family — which has owned The Blade since 1926 when Allan Block and John Block’s grandfather, Paul Block, purchased the paper — has been subsidizing losses at the paper for years.

And the decision to drop print days is not mainly financial, according to Allan Block. “It is a marketplace decision indicative of the preferences of younger age groups. Does anyone know a person under 30 who reads the printed newspaper?” Allan Block asked.

“Technology has certainly disrupted the financial model of print newspapers. However, technology has offered a better way to deliver The Blade,” Allan Block said. He said e-delivery is also of benefit to the environment because “it is totally green. It reduces carbon emissions” and eliminates the task of disposing printed newspapers once read.

The Blade is not alone. A Pew Research Center report last year on the health of American newspapers showed that daily circulation peaked in 1984 at 63.3 million. Circulation had fallen across the country to 30.9 million by 2017, the last year numbers were available.

But the bigger driver in the transformation from print to digital news delivery in the United States is the decline in print advertising revenue, the lifeblood of any newspaper.

According to the Pew report, total newspaper ad revenue peaked at $49.4 billion in 2005 and had fallen to $16.4 billion by 2017. Along with that decline, newsroom employment nationwide fell from 74,410 in 2006 to 39,210 in 2017.

Many newspapers — including in Detroit, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, and many other cities, large and small — years ago dropped home delivery several days a week.

In that group is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also owned by Block Communications, which in August dropped its home-delivered print editions on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

But unlike many other newspapers, The Blade has not slashed its local reporting staff. The newspaper still has a food writer, an outdoors writer, an environment writer, a religion writer, several reporters covering local government and schools, a features staff, editorial writers, and a local cartoonist, as well as a sports staff covering teams ranging from high school to the Big Ten and professional sports.

“We are not reducing our commitment to the news department of The Blade,” Allan Block said.

“I expect there will be further reductions of print days in the future, but that will depend on market conditions,” he said. “Print is in an inexorable decline, but The Toledo Blade will react to conditions in the marketplace with all the resources that Block Communications commands.”

Even though he said “seven days a week of exclusive digital delivery is certainly possible in the future, this does not mean we’re going out of business.

“In fact, we are committed to staying in business,” Allan Block said.

First Published February 10, 2019, 5:15 a.m.