How much can a newspaper save in annual newsprint costs by cutting its web width? It's a simple mathematical formula:
(Old web width - New web width) / (Old web width) x (Tons used per year) x (Price per ton)
Example: A newspaper uses 100,000 tons of newsprint per year. It plans to trim its 54-inch web to 50 inches while newsprint is selling at $800 per ton. Its savings are:
(54 - 50)/54 x 100,000 x $800 = $5.9 million
There is, however, one very important caveat. This calculation assumes that the newspaper's image area also shrinks, so that the amount cut doesn't simply spill over to additional pages. The image area can be shrunk by cutting content, decreasing font sizes, shrinking pages or images using special lenses or software, or some combination of the above.
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