Dave Meltzer Announces Major Changes For Wrestling Observer Newsletter

For more than 40 years, writer Dave Meltzer has been publishing the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, bringing weekly wrestling news, rumors, and recaps to a wide audience of fans. In today's issue of the Observer, Meltzer revealed a big change coming to the publication — it is making the transition to online-only and will no longer receive physical printing starting next month.

Meltzer stated the change will not affect 96-97% of subscribers, who already read the Newsletter exclusively online. However, there are still some who have been receiving physical copies through the mail, and that will no longer continue as of the December 12 issue. It was stated that the printed newsletter hadn't made economic sense for some time, but Meltzer decided to continue out of loyalty to his print subscribers. Meltzer thanked his longtime print subscribers and wrote that the decision came due to increasing costs, as he would have had to start charging more per issue than he wanted.

Anyone who still subscribes to the printed newsletter will have the remaining time on their subscription transferred to the website. For those outside of North America, the extra costs associated with the print subscription will result in a bigger credit toward the website subscription.

Another significant change was revealed in Meltzer's announcement, as he stated that more exclusive news would be posted throughout the week rather than held until the publication of the newsletter. This seems to indicate that the weekly newsletter will become more of a round-up of the week's developments, though it remains to be seen how much changes going forward.