JPEG Chart: Those Lean CanadiansU.S. publishers weigh cutting the web to 50 inches, a move that would affect every aspect of newspaper operations
September 1995. Newsprint prices have just soared to more than $800 per ton. Profits are slipping. Production and advertising managers are nervous. Stockholders are angry. Publishers are frantic.
How do you spell relief? Raise advertising and subscription rates again? Not if it can be avoided.
How about cutting your newsprint web width? This, in fact, works. Shaving off even a half-inch can save you tens of thousands to millions of dollars in newsprint costs, depending on the size of your paper.
But what are the options for additional savings once a broadsheet newspaper trims down to a 54-inch web width, as many already have? With no margins left to spare, a cut below 54 inches means a reduction in image area, a possible reconfiguration of columns and type, and the revision of the decade-old and widely used system of standardized advertising units, or SAUs.
Other minimal cost-cutting options exist, as they always have, but prodded by the astronomical rise in the price of newsprint, one radical option has risen to the top of nearly every number cruncher's list. It is to boldly go where no broadsheet newspaper in the United States has gone before---down to a 50-inch web and a 12.5-inch page.
It is a move so complex and so broad in its ramifications that scores of experts from NAA and its member newspapers have spent several months, and could spend many more, compiling information on all the issues from all perspectives. Task forces and sub-task forces are studying the economic, marketing and technical implications of what might be dubbed "the big shrink." And when all is said and done, NAA members hope to answer the most basic questions of all: What are the reader and advertiser implications of the cut? How can it be accomplished? And will it actually reap substantial savings?
The search for answers is underway. Task-force chairs presented initial findings and raised more questions at the NAA Board of Directors meeting Sept. 12 in Washington, D.C. No industry-wide decisions were made, and at this point, individual newspapers are expected to make the decision on their own. Some may be influenced by the fact that a reduction in web width from 54 inches to 50 inches could result in a 7.4 percent savings in newsprint costs (see By the Numbers, below).
Notice the word "could." These savings will be realized only if the newspaper's total image area is also cut. If the number of words and the size of the text and graphics remain the same, then the amount you save in trimming will be offset by adding more pages. In other words, you will simply end up with a thinner, longer paper that uses about the same amount of newsprint.
Think of it this way. Say you're making sandwiches and want to save bread. One easy way would be to cut off the crusts. Once you start cutting into the sandwich meat, though, you run the risk of putting your guests on a diet---unless you use any meat trimmed off to make more sandwiches.
In May, NAA sent questionnaires to 80 newspapers. Results showed 26 percent had already reduced their web widths by some amount and another 21 percent said they would do so by year's end. In all, more than half said they would support an even narrower web width and changing the current SAUs.
Even so, it is difficult to find a news organization that will comment publicly on whether it is seriously moving in this direction and what its own in-house investigations have shown.
"It's under study....I can't say anything more right now," says NAA task-force member Larry Marbert of Knight-Ridder Inc.
"There are more unknowns than knowns," says Larry Hoffman, vice president of production at Ottaway Newspapers Inc.
From Ray Douglas of the New York Times, "No conclusions yet." The Times just trimmed from 55 inches to 54 inches in the spring of this year. As for a further reduction, "It's fair to say we're looking at it," says Douglas, vice president of systems and technology.
So is Gannett Co., where Production General Executive Michael Christopher says the company is aggressively studying the possibilities. It has run a couple of financial models and is evaluating the mechanical impact on its presses. But like other newspaper executives, Christopher says he cannot comment on savings estimates yet, and he maintains no decisions have been made.
While newspaper managers ponder the savings foreseen in such scenarios, newsprint vendors are quick to cast some doubts about how real those savings will be.
"It might be a false economy," says Virgil K. Horton, vice president of the paper group at the American Forest & Paper Association. "The slower I run my paper machines, the less tons I run on my paper machines, the more my costs are affected."
Horton uses an airline-industry analogy to make his point. He compares it to flying a plane with 100 percent of the seats filled as opposed to 70 percent. You still need to perform the same maintenance, load the fuel, and pay the pilots and flight attendants, but you're getting a lot less revenue for the flight.
Similarly, for mill operators, he says, "Costs won't decrease, but I'm going to ship less."
Newsprint costs have gone up primarily to recapture losses in previous years, when a slow economy led to less advertising and less demand for paper, says Horton.
"An attempt to put a lid on newsprint prices by using less of it will be shortlived at best," says Don Schalk, vice president of marketing at Spruce Falls Power & Paper Co. Ltd. in Canada, where some newspapers already have gone to a 50-inch web width.
"Industry needs a certain return on capital," Schalk notes. "If it can't get it, it will turn elsewhere. What isn't consumed in North America may very well be made up in the rest of the world." Newsprint vendors reportedly can get more than $1,000 per ton for newsprint overseas.
Whether a mill is hurt by the reductions in web widths may vary, however, depending on the sizes of its own machines. Those with a 300-inch paper machine will be delighted, because they can get six 50-inch rolls to fit quite economically, says Schalk. For others, like Spruce Falls, trimming would be wasteful and inefficient.
Spruce Falls has a 224-inch machine. When papers went from 57- and 58-inch webs down to 56 inches, Spruce Falls realized a 100 percent efficiency. "Life was easy," Schalk reports. But two years later, when papers went down to 55 inches, it "raised our cost and reduced our volume."
His biggest machine is 248 inches. That means if newspapers go down to a 50-inch web width, "we will be 2 inches from being perfect, but 48 inches away from easy trimming issues."
Schalk sees two possible scenarios emerging. Selling less paper could force mills to keep raising their prices, or publishers could cause producers enough pain (too much supply and less demand) that prices will have to be lowered.
"What is the net bottom line? I have no idea." In any event, he says it would be "a fool's errand" to try to stop it. "I think the publishers will do whatever they need to."
Paper mills have had their share of problems too, says Tom Hahn, president of Garden State Paper Co., in Elmwood Park, N.J. Before early 1994, very few newsprint suppliers were making money, he says. Mills were selling newsprint at less than the cost of manufacturing. Too many mills were coming on line while advertising and the economy were declining. There was an abundance of newsprint.
In addition, costs keep rising because of new environmental regulations meant to control mill emissions. Freight costs could also increase because boxcars might not be economically filled when carrying smaller rolls.
To compensate for selling less tonnage to newspapers, vendors will have to be more creative in mixing and matching roll sizes, Hahn says. Newspapers aren't their only customers they also sell to commercial printers and other users. "We will maximize the use of our paper machines."
Newspapers and NAA are not studying this issue in a vacuum. Many Canadian newspapers have gone or are going to a 50-inch web width, with an 11.5-inch page image (see "Those Lean Canadians"). So far, there seem to be no regrets.
The Leader Post in Regina, Saskatchewan, went from 55 inches to 54 inches in 1993 and to 50 inches the first of this year. They decided to make those radical cuts during a three-year planning meeting at which they discussed the anticipated hikes in newsprint costs.
Ray Turgeon, manager of operations at the paper, says the newspaper has achieved a 7 percent savings by making the change. In addition to newsprint, the paper also saved on plates, blankets and ink. "All of those have to be factored in too," he says.
"We can't play around with our prices," he says. "Advertisers will not pay twice as much for ads. You can't go to the circulation manager and say, 'Raise the price of the paper.'"
The Toronto Star trimmed to 50 inches in 1992 when it bought new presses. But it did so largely for marketing reasons, not the price of newsprint, according to management. Toronto is a commuter city and readers wanted a smaller paper that would be easier to handle and unfold in a subway, says Tom Murtha, vice president of corporate newspaper development for Torstar Corp., the parent company of the Toronto Star.
"I'm surprised it's taking you folks south of the border so long to do this," he says.
One of the stickiest problems to resolve in any slice below 54 inches is what happens to the classified-ad section, a typical newspaper's biggest money-maker per square inch.
Assuming a newspaper chooses to squeeze into a 50-inch web width and 11.5-inch page image, as opposed to its current 13- or 13.5-inch image, it can:
All of these possibilities raise additional questions. Do you charge by the word or by the line? What happens to legibility? Will the changes end up costing the newspaper more than they save?
"The classified issue is one of the biggest in web-width reduction," says Terry Hebert, director of advertising for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. "The main thing in classified is readability. Throughout the years, we've always had problems with this." If you try to maintain a readable point size, you create a squeeze that could lead to an increase in the number of classified pages. That, in turn, could negate any savings in newsprint, says Hebert.
The Toronto Star trimmed to a 50-inch web width a few years ago and kept its classified section at 10 columns. Because the columns are narrower, the paper reduced the type size to get the same number of letters in a column.
Nick Cannistraro, NAA senior vice president and chief marketing officer, finds the narrower 10-column format very, very dense and gray. Hebert also finds the Star's classified section difficult to read, although he says some of his colleagues consider it acceptable.
While many papers are interested in cutting web width, some feel their type faces simply can't get any smaller without damaging quality, Cannistraro says. You can go to fewer columns, of course, but then you also have to add another page to achieve the same amount of advertising revenue, he points out.
"From a classified perspective, in that case you would not save any money from a 50-inch web width."
But the Canadian newspapers that have gone to 50 inches say they have saved money while receiving very few complaints from advertisers.
The Leader Post maintained a six-column format. It narrowed its columns from 12.5 picas to 11 picas and is getting basically the same revenue from its classified pages as before. Rates went up slightly because an ad may fill one more line than it would in the wider format, but the newspaper has not had any complaints, says Turgeon.
"I don't have an answer," says The Plain Dealer's Hebert. But he does say that shrinking the classifieds with an anamorphic or "shrink" lens has been ruled out as an option. He also feels, "In my humble opinion, you can't go down in type size."
A healthy classified section should contain more than 30 percent private party or so-called "transient" ads---those from people selling a car or a computer, says Hebert. Unfortunately, though, this is the most price-sensitive group. If your price goes up an and you lose that segment of classified advertisers, then you have a real problem.
For web-width reduction to work, a solution that keeps rates and quality steady must be found. Or else, Hebert asserts, "The money could work out so that you would be losing more than you're gaining, and that could kill the whole deal."
When you look at display advertising, the first thing that comes to mind is the possible dismantling of standardized advertising units, which allow retail advertisers to place the same ad in many papers without having to create different designs or mechanicals.
SAUs were developed when most widths were 58 inches. They are based on a page of six columns, each 2-1/16 inches wide with one-eighth of an inch in between. The SAUs, implemented in 1984, took many years to develop and could be tough to change. But it is a task that cannot be avoided if the trimming continues.
NAA members are studying several scenarios to resolve the advertising and redesign problems. Larry Hoffman, vice president of production at Ottaway Newspapers Inc., and a member of the pre-press subcommittee of the NAA Web Width Technical Advisory Task Force, is working on these four:
Hoffman and the other task-force members are supplying NAA with details on each scenario, including cost estimates and quality assessments.
As the population ages and baby boomers begin to don reading glasses, any reduction in the size of type in newspapers is an important consideration for publishers.
Paul Lynch, manager of quality and technical training for the Chicago Tribune, is conducting quality tests for NAA. He has put together a test page and will run it through various possible scenarios. "There are a number of image elements sensitive to quality issues," says Lynch.
Among the issues he is looking at are reverse type, agate type, screen-dot distortion, photo images and general legibility.
Even logos in advertising can be a problem if pages are shrunk anamorphically rather than proportionally. For example, the Mercedes or Ford emblems could change shapes, Lynch says.
One thing, however, is certain when it comes to cutting: Research is key.
The leaner paper is popular in Toronto because its commuter readers do not want to learn origami in order to read it in a crowded subway. But the smaller size may not be desirable in other types of markets, says NAA's Cannistraro. We will be advising newspapers to do their own research."
Bill Moore, director of operations at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, says it is still too early to predict the future. "Two weeks ago, I would have bet everyone would have gone to 50 inches. Now, I don't know. There are so many things to consider....No matter what you do, you affect quality."
In April 1994, The Plain Dealer started operating its new $200 million printing plant. Though still at a 55-inch web width, the plant's state-of-the-art technology would make it much easier to go down to a 50-inch web than papers with older presses.
At the NEXPO®'95 conference, held in Atlanta in June, NAA Senior Vice President of Technology Eric Wolferman called a meeting of newspaper executives to discuss the technical implications of narrowing web widths. The technical advisory task force then was created with Eugene Falk, executive vice president and general manager of The Los Angeles Times, as chairman.
Several people at the meeting expressed concerns about how quickly manufacturers could make the necessary technical adjustments. Some suggested conversions could take as long as a year in the case of older presses, depending on availability of parts, and added that NAA should coordinate supplier resources. Some smaller-market papers with only one press said they might find it impossible to convert because they couldn't find the downtime to make adjustments.
Over the coming months, NAA members will be evaluating the information generated by its web-width task force, headed by John Madigan, president and chief executive officer of the Tribune Co. in Chicago. Reports have been submitted from sub-task forces on technology, financial planning and advertising. Technology sub-committees on pre-press, press and post-press issues have reported on how to achieve web-width reduction and the costs expected.
The task forces will not make recommendations, however. They'll just explore the options and issues. NAA will provide members information on how to do it and estimates of potential savings.
Any industry-wide implementation will take time. The NAA task force embraced the notion that there will be a transition period, says Gannett's Christopher. During this period, he believes many newspapers will shrink ad pages either digitally or through anamorphic lenses. This will allow time for revising the SAUs while still achieving savings.
NAA's Cannistraro worries about turning away from advertising standards. One of NAA's goals has been to try to maintain standards and their benefits. But Cannistraro too foresees a period of transition when some papers could be wider and some narrower.
To cut or not to cut---that is the question. It's a simple question, really, but one that demands many complex considerations and calculations, and one whose answer is bound to affect newspapers, their suppliers and their customers for years to come.
Judy Grande is a free-lance writer in McLean, Va. Phone is (703) 759-0241.
Michael Christopher, Gannett Co., 1100 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, Va. 22231-0001. E-mail, mchristopher@gci1. gannett.com; phone, (703) 284-6653; fax, (703) 247-3189.
Ray Douglas, The New York Times, 228 W. 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036-3913. E-mail, rdouglas@nytimes.com ; phone, (212)556-1234; fax, (212) 556-1636.
Eugene Falk, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053. E-mail, gene.falk@latimes.com ; phone, (213) 237-5000; fax, (213) 237-7696.
Terry Hebert, The Plain Dealer, 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44114. E-mail, thebert@plaind.com; phone, (216) 999-4350; fax, (216) 999-6356.
Larry Hoffman, Ottaway Newspapers, Inc., P.O. Box 401, Campbell Hall, N.Y. 10916. E-mail, larry.hoffman@cor.com ; phone, (914) 294-8181; fax, (914) 294-1659.
John Madigan, The Tribune Company, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. E-mail, jmadigan@tribune.com; phone, (312) 222-3232; fax, (312) 222-9670.
Larry Marbet, Knight-Ridder, Inc., One Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132. Phone, (305) 376-3922; fax, (305) 376-3919.
Scott Messer, A.H. Belo Corp., 400 South Record St., Dallas, Texas 75202-4841. Phone, (214) 977-7750; fax, (214) 977-8209.
Bill Moore, The Plain Dealer, 180 Superior Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44114. E-mail, bmoore@plaind.com; phone, (216) 1999-6643; fax, (216) 999-5644.
Tom Murtha, Torstar Corp., 1 Yonge St., 6th floor, Toronto M5E 1P9. Phone, (416) 869-4046; fax, (416) 869-4183.
Don Schalk, Spruce Falls Power & Paper Co. Ltd., 2 Carlton St., Suite 605, Toronto M5B 1J9. Phone, (416) 977-0211; fax, (416) 977-4780.
Ray Turgeon, The Leader Post, 1964 Park St., Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4P 3G4. Phone, (306) 565-8211; fax, (306) 565-7484.977-4780.
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JPEG Chart: Those Lean Canadians©1997 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.