Posted on 11/26/2007 7:41:00 AM PST by Milhous
The other obvious recourse, trying to pass costs along to advertisers, just won't work well enough for everyone, said Malcolm Campbell, publisher of Spin. "It's going to put some people out of business," he said.
And he didn't just mean the indies. "Don't kid yourself," he said. "There are a lot of large-publishing-company old titles that are very marginal anyway. You're going to see a lot of icons going down if paper prices go up that much." AdAge
ping
Thanks
I have a friend who does two catalogs a year for the company he works for.
Medical supplies, nuclear medicine, etc. They were shocked at the rise in cost for the paper required. With their budget, the paper they got was vastly inferior to last year’s stock.
If you’ve been following advances in electronic media you would not be investing in paper companies.
Interesting in that last week there was a post about the price of newspaper pulp going down in price due to less demand.
Yeah.....Weyerhaeuser got out of the fine paper business because it just wasn’t worth it to them. I don’t get this either....unless....someone misjudged the market, or the making of paper just became so unprofitable and so many got out of its production that now there is a shortage of makers.
Either this writer is lying or spinning or the reports below re the decreases in newsprint prices are wrong:
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/forestwebs_archive.jsp
science has been sitting on technology that uses plastic
thinner than paper,just as recycleable and a 1/3 cheaper cost per run....... know why it isn’t used ?
The tree industry and lobbyist.....liberals need a straw
dog in the environment
of course he is lying......it ain’t costs killing the rags...it’s content
“Yeah.....Weyerhaeuser got out of the fine paper business because it just wasnt worth it to them. I dont get this either....unless....someone misjudged the market, or the making of paper just became so unprofitable and so many got out of its production that now there is a shortage of makers.”
Thanks for your comments.
There is something wrong here:
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/forestwebs_archive.jsp
It's possible that gloss (magazine) paper costs are going up while newsprint (newspaper) costs are going down.
Newsprint in Flux
Overcapacity threatens the health of the industry
By Chris Cook
First Published: PRESSTIME August 2007
North America’s newsprint industry is in crisis, with many mills struggling in the face of dwindling demand and collapsing prices. At hand are dramatic structural changes that promise to reshape the manufacturing landscape and influence purchasing decisions for publishers across the continent.
excerpt - go to the link below for complete story:
It ain't gonna get them to support drilling ANWAR.
But we may have heard the last on "the plight of the spotted owl" and "the sanctity of old growth forests".
Both stories can be correct. Magazines and catalogs and such use “coated” paper. Coated paper literally has a thin layer of clay smeared on its surface to make it nice and white so print and pictures show up clearly.
Newsprint is a rather low grade paper. Much of the pulp is recycled and has low strength because the pulp fibers are short and weak.
In recent years, many paper consumers import paper from foreign producers and mills. The weak dollar would tend to make imports more expensive.
Instead, it concerns so-called "coated stock" or "glossy paper" -- substantially higher on the quality scale.
There are two things which would need to happen to wipe out the paper catalogs/news.
1. Cheaper, lighter hardware for viewing. Get something the weight of a paperback book and an 8.5 x 11 inch viewing area. With the ability to cram more than 4 GB on a SD card, memory and the space required for it really isn't a problem.
2. A better reading program than the current Acrobat. Allow easy user annotation (like notes in the margins on paper) and multiple, user selectable viewing locations in the document (equivanlent to dog-earing pages or keeping fingers at the interesting pages) and I would have no reason to get paper catalogs or newspapers any more.
Thanks for the feedback.
The only glossy slick color paper out here is in the ads stuffed in the newpapers and particuliar on the weekends and like this pre Black Friday. Everything else is on what appears to be regular news print including color photos and a lot of color ads.
If the costs go up with the slick paper, the advertisers have to make the decision to stick with the more costly paper or to use regular news print. We are seeing more of the later choice. I doubt if the fishwraps get involved in anything besides stuffing their papers with these expensive glossy ads. The high dollar advertisers are probably the ones dealing with the increase purchase prices of the slick paper.
Linerboard paper is still doing pretty well. Calendared paper (like magazines use) is going up because the coatings are going up. Newsprint sucks because newspaper circulation is down. Don’t see many afternoon dailies anymore...
I am willing to bet that if asked, most everyone that post on this forum could provide suggestions that would save the print media. I will go first.
1. Don’t piss off half your potential market by taking sides. Report the news fairly, honestly. You will be surprised how many would be interested in subscribing.
2. Hard copies of your product are going away. There may be a need for some, then make them pay extra. Put your content on line.
3. Want to charge for on line content, provide those extras that a user would not get anywhere else. Such as the ability to search your entire archive of contents going back to the first issue.
4. Allow forums such as FreeRepublic to pull articles out for discussions. This will generate traffic as people go to your site to read the article and then perhaps stay for something else.
5. Report the news, not opinions (I know I have listed this one already but it should be repeated since this more then anything else that is killing the print news media.)
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