Less newspaper home delivery begins

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - For the first time since about anybody can remember, many West Michigan residents will not have a newspaper on their doorsteps or boxes Friday.

It's all part of some big changes for the Grand Rapids Press, Kalamazoo Gazette and Muskegon Chronicle.

To generations the news experience includes the smell of the ink and the feel of the paper.

But for another generation, it's all about the digital delivery -- mobile phones, laptops and tablets -- which has brought us to today.

The three newspapers will now do home delivery just three days a week -- Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The papers are shifting their focus to the Internet.

You can still get the paper versions seven days a week but you have to find a place that sells it or at a box.

The announcement came in November 2011.

The change also brought job cuts to those papers -- 223 employees lost employment -- from officer managers and clerks, to press operators and technicians, to sales people and editors.

The Grand Rapids Press is moving out of its building on Michigan Street to new offices near Monroe Avenue and Pearl Street.