The United States’ second-oldest – and “the South’s oldest” – daily newspaper is to drop two days in what it calls a “strategic shift” in its print delivery schedule

The Charleston, South Carolina-based Post and Courier, which has roots to 1803, says the move to five-day print publishing reflects digital growth and evolution.

Effective April 7, the decision “allows us to align our resources with evolving reader preferences while maintaining our commitment to high-quality journalism,” it said in an announcement this week.

However digital offerings are being expanded, with the addition of exclusive content to Monday and Tuesday e-papers. The masthead has almost doubled digital subscriptions in the past four years, reaching more than two million readers monthly, and its digital replica e-paper has shown “remarkable adoption”.

The paper says more than 3200 US newspapers have closed since 2005, including nine in South Carolina in the last two years.

The Post and Courier traces its ancestry to the Charleston Courier, founded in 1803, the Charleston Daily News (1865) and the Evening Post (1894). Publisher Evening Post Industries is owned by the Manigault family, fourth-generation descendants of rice planter Arthur Manigault, who stepped in to rescue the evening paper when it got into trouble in 1896. The Courier and the Daily News had merged in 1873, but continued as a separate morning paper until 1991, despite having shared the same editorial staff since the 1980s.

Plans to split the Post and Courier’s parent into three separate companies were announced in 2021.

Pictured top: The Post and Courier opened a new office in Greenville in 2023, as part of expansion including daily digital editions for the city and Spartanburg; (below) Civil war Confederate brigadier general Arthur Manigault, whose grandfather had been “the richest person in British North America” in 1770