Wall Street Journal To Kill Fewer Trees In New Year
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 01. 2.07
According to a FAQ sheet offered by the Wall Street Journal (subscription only), "The new Journal is about 20% narrower but the same depth. It is being produced on a 48” sheet of newsprint, or web, compared with the 60” sheet used before. The new size is the emerging standard in the newspaper industry". NPR is reporting today that projected savings to the Journal is approximately US$18 million per year in reduced expenditure for newsprint. Following in the steps of the oldest newspaper in the world, which we recently reported on here because it will save 100% of it's paper expenses by going all digital, the Wall Street Journal has found a way to reformat that will kill 20% fewer trees and make them more money. Good for business, customers, and environment. The bad news: many billions more trees would be better able to withstand the ravages of Climate Change through this Century, had the Journal's editorial stance on climate science been rational for the preceding decade. Image credit: de-inked newsprint pulp beater in Manitoba Canada, by Mixing Systems.
From various sources we note that the price of newsprint has risen of late; in part perhaps a reflection of disappearing Boreal Forests and in part from increased energy costs for production. Anyone see a possible feedback loop?
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While it all looks good on the surface, I'd advise you to pick up a paper before you credit Dow Jones with saving the forest. While they made the paper physically smaller to use less trees, you only have to look through the first section to see that nearly 3/4 of every two page spread is advertisements. Imagine how many trees you'd save if they just stuck to the facts.
Not only that, I also think they took a step backward in putting their content online. To read anything on WSJ.com you need to pay a subscription fee on top of the print subscription fee. I'm not a hundred percent sure on this point because I haven't had an online subscription since summer, but I remember that you use to click on a link to "Today's newspaper" and it had every article the print edition had online. Today wsj.com is free and it looks like under Today's newspaper they only have 5 or 6 articles from each section. So to get all the info, you'd HAVE to buy the print edition..., and kill all the trees...and look at all the ads.
Not news, but also a significant publication going digital.
The Thomas Register was a huge catalog for mechanical parts. I believe the last print issue just finished selling.
http://www.thomasnet.com/pressroom/news/ThomasRegister_Online.html
A big part of this story is that advertisers and readers are fleeing newspapers. While it's nice to thing Dow Jones is doing something for the environment, the bottom line is that advertisers are shifting ad dollars into online advertising which means the newspaper industry has to look for ways to cut expenses. If newspapers expected print advertising to skyrocket, they wouldn't be trimming pages.
Unlike one of the previous commentors, I realize that newspapers make their money on advertising, not subscribers. Ads, either on paper on on screen, aren't going away.
My problem is ad-related, though . . . if the pages are smaller, are they going to reduce the size of the ads? And the font size of the articles? Or the number of articles, or words per article? Because if you reduce paper size without reducing content you're going to be using more sheets per issue, aren't you?
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