The environmental case for newspaper abolishment

There was also bad news on the cost side of the ledger in 2005. Newsprint prices, so soft in 2003 and early 2004 that they may have masked deteriorating fundamentals, were up another 5% to 10% in 2005. More of the same is expected in 2006.13 Watch for a continuing wave of reductions in paper weight, newshole and page width to cushion the cost impact. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, plans to shrink the size of its broadsheet from 60 inches to 48 in 2007.

source: State of the News Media 2006

A metro newspaper uses approximately 200,000 tons of newsprint each year. At current newsprint prices, a typical publisher spends about $150 per reader on the manufacture of a daily newspaper. It might therefore prove cost-effective for the newspaper to add value by offering a reading device as part of a print/electronic subscription package.

source: Peter G. Marsh, Newspapers and Technology

After reading numerous Star Tribune editorials about saving forests and stopping global warming - I thought it odd that a major newspaper that needs a lot of fresh forest every day to make their paper would write an editorial about saving forests.

Newsprint, which is what newspapers are made of, runs between 70 percent and 100 percent virgin forests. Though more than 60 percent of newsprint is recycled, not much of it again becomes newsprint. Virgin newsprint is much cheaper. A lot of recycled newsprint in the United States goes to China, recycled newsprint is one of the largest exported products in America. Even though we are recycling more, overall we are using more, much more. Americans average more than 300 pounds of paper used per person per year - compare that with Angola where a person averages 7 pounds per year.
source: The Minnesota Daily

If there is any reason to cheer shrinking news holes, disappearing stock pages, smaller and smaller broadsheets, and declining newspaper circulation, it's that less newsprint is being used.

The energy industry gets a lot of criticism for being socially irresponsible in not finding innovative ways to produce energy while looking to stabilize carbon emissions. They are criticized as lacking in vision or initiative. I submit that the news industry has not had the vision to think of ways to speed up the process of eliminating newsprint. Of course, the foresting industry would have problems with this. But forests are an important storage of carbon sources, which puts a damper on global warming. Also, forests will become ever more important as storms increase in intensity and communities risk damage from heavy flooding.

Newspaper companies could buy recycled newsprint, but that's more expensive, and clearly they are already concerned about their bottom-lines as they take more efforts to reduce the amount of newsprint they buy. It seems that if newsprint producers keep increasing prices, news pages will continue to shrink. Most broadsheet papers are now 12 inches across, when closed. The Wall Street Journal is 15 inches across, but it will go down to 12 in 2007. It won't feel like the Wall Street Journal anymore.

Newspaper companies could work with other stakeholders on Internet access initiatives, to address the digital divide problem. As access increases, circulation goes down, newsprint consumption decreases, forests are saved. Perhaps this is a simplistic view, but it seems that from a social and environmental responsibility perspective, elimination of the physical newspaper shouldn't be resisted, it should be considered a goal.

According to Conservatree.com, one ton of newsprint takes about 12 trees. A metro paper uses about 200,000 tons of newsprint each year. That's 2.4 million trees each year for one metropolitan region. So we could potentially save millions and millions of trees, at a time we need them most.