The Daily News in Palo Alto announced on its front page yesterday that it will reduce its publication schedule from three times a week to just one day beginning March 20.

Now a broadsheet, the free paper will switch to a tabloid size. With the one-day-a-week publishing schedule, the Daily News will be delivered “to most homes and targeted businesses in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton,” Publisher David Rounds said in the story.

Mercury News subscribers in Los Altos, Mountain View, Portola Valley, Redwood City and San Carlos will also get the Daily News inserted into their Friday Mercs, he said. The Merc and the Daily News are both owned by Digital First Media.

On Fridays, the Daily News will continue to be delivered to its news racks. And Rounds said that the Daily News will continue to provide breaking news coverage on its website, paloaltodailynews.com.

“We will be tripling our reach and will focus on home delivery,” Rounds said. “The redesigned tabloid-size newspaper will provide the same quality writing and editing our readers have come to expect and we will be tightly focused on the local news and sports that is so important to Peninsula residents.”

The Palo Alto Daily News operated as a six-day-a-week newspaper from its start in 1995 until March 2013 when it went to three days a week.

The Daily News competes in a three-newspaper market with the Palo Alto Weekly, which comes out on Fridays and delivers to homes, and the Daily Post, which publishes Monday through Saturday.

Meanwhile, the chain that owns the Daily News, Digital First Media, has been for sale since last fall (more).

Full disclosure: The Press Club’s webmaster is Dave Price, a former owner of the Daily News and now the editor and co-publisher of the Post.