The newspapers, like the staff, are leaner than they were a decade ago, with fewer reporters to write about crime, the school board and youth sports and to craft obituaries for their aging readership. And now they’re facing a new and unexpected threat: President Trump’s confrontational trade policies. Last year, in one of the Trump administration’s first actions on trade, the U.S. government imposed tariffs on Canadian lumber. A few months later, it added tariffs on Canadian uncoated groundwood paper. The result has been a jump in the cost of newsprint, the second-biggest operating expense, after salaries, for most newspapers. Rogers and fellow news executives across the country are now bracing for price increases that could exceed 30 percent, forcing tough budget decisions and potentially driving some community papers out of business. “This may be the thing that pushes us across the line,” Rogers said. “We’re all kind of close to that edge.” Click Read More below for additional information.

Keep US Posted — a nonprofit advocacy group of consumers, nonprofits, newspapers, greeting card publishers, magazines, catalogs and small businesses — is calling attention to new analysis, which shows that U.S. Postal Service’s practice of raising mailing rates every six months is based on flawed economic forecasting that greatly underestimates the rate hikes’ impact on lost mail volume. The report, which was commissioned by the Greeting Card Association and the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom), has been published just weeks before USPS is expected to ask the Postal Regulatory Commission to approve the sixth stamp hike in just two years, likely occurring in July. According to the report, USPS is basing stamp hikes on a demand model which underestimates the elasticities (or price sensitivity) of its consumers —relying too heavily on historical data, among other issues.

If the early days of 2022 have been any indication, paper shortages and rising distribution costs are challenges that the industry will likely face throughout year. The seeds of the current problems were sown in the years of the pandemic, when sales of print books unexpectedly rose, increasing demand while people were leaving manufacturing jobs in droves that led to labor shortages in the printing and papermaking businesses. Those were two of the main takeaways from last week’s webinar, “The Powerful Case for U.S. Book Manufacturing in the Face of Global Supply Chain Challenges, Paper Shortages, and Rising Distribution Costs,” moderated by Chris Lyons, president and publisher of Book Business, and featuring Jim Milliot, editorial director at Publishers Weekly; Bill Rojack, v-p of Midland Paper; and Matt Baehr, executive director at Book Manufacturers’ Institute. The program was sponsored by Canon Solutions America.