The Suffolk News-Herald announced this week it will reduce the frequency of its print edition to five days a week beginning next week.

The News-Herald will be distributed Tuesday through Friday as well as Sunday, with the Saturday edition being eliminated. Aug. 11 will be the final Saturday paper.

Readers and advertisers will benefit from a longer shelf life for the Friday and Sunday editions, Publisher John Carr said this week.

“The result should be better Friday and Sunday editions benefiting readers, with advertisers also benefiting from a longer shelf life and higher overall readership from each edition,” Carr said.

The Friday edition is expected to stay on newsstands through mid-afternoon Saturday, when the Sunday edition will be distributed.

“We realized it is popular for community newspapers to have the Sunday edition come out early and cover the whole weekend,” Carr stated.

The decision was made in response to higher newsprint costs and to allow the newspaper to better serve its readers and advertisers with more news coverage on the highest-circulation days of the week.

“Recently, a tariff on Canadian newsprint resulted in severe newsprint shortages and skyrocketing prices,” Carr said. “Newsprint is our second-highest expense behind manpower. Newspapers everywhere began aggressively seeking ways to both reduce newsprint use and to make up for the price increases.

“As always, we will have newspapers in stands every day,” Carr continued. “Earlier on Saturday, the Friday edition will still be available, and later in the day, the Sunday edition will be available. We will be planning content with that new shelf life in mind. If there is breaking news that wedges between the two editions, we have a high traffic web site and social media to get the word out until we can get a complete story in the next edition.”

Suffolk Publications’ combined print and digital audience is larger than ever before. A switch to free rack distribution in 2011 quadrupled circulation of the print edition. Two magazines, Suffolk Living and Western Branch Magazine, publish a combined 12 times per year.

The newspaper’s strong digital presence attracts more than 300,000 pageviews per month, and the Suffolk News-Herald’s social media accounts boast 12,000 followers on Facebook and 3,000 on Twitter.

A new e-edition, accessible through www.suffolknewsherald.com, also launched recently.

The newspaper will continue providing news coverage through its website 24 hours a day, seven days a week.