The Omaha World-Herald announced Monday that it will be shutting down its printing press at the end of March.
That means Nebraska’s two largest newspapers, the World-Herald and the Lincoln Journal Star, will no longer be printed in the state.
Instead, those papers, along with the Daily Nonpareil of Council Bluffs and the Sioux City Journal, will be printed at the Des Moines Register in Iowa, which has become a regional printing hub that also prints the Kansas City Star and Minnesota Star Tribune.
Nathan Bekke, Lee Enterprises’ president and interim CEO, told the World-Herald that the printing transition will help the company invest in its digital future.
“The decisions we are making are difficult, and they are not made lightly. However, we are committed to building sustainable local news media organizations,” Bekke told the paper. “Achieving that goal requires optimizing our legacy cost structure so that we can meaningfully invest in our digital future and continue providing essential, community-centered local journalism.”
Bekke did not say how many people will lose their jobs as a result of the closure.
The World-Herald said it plans to sell its downtown printing center, called the Freedom Center, which has housed its print production since 2001.
Lee, which owns the World-Herald, Journal Star and most other daily newspapers in Nebraska, has struggled financially over the past couple of years, losing $36 million in its most recent fiscal year, which ended Sept. 28.
In September it laid off close to two dozen journalists across Nebraska, including eight in Omaha and six in Lincoln.
Then in November, the Omaha and Lincoln papers stopped publishing Monday print editions.
In December, the company was thrown a lifeline in the form of a $50 million investment from a group of investors led by David Hoffmann, who has tried several times to buy the company outright. The investment triggered a move by Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway to reduce the interest rate on $455.5 million in debt it holds from 9% to 5% for five years.