I need your help. This newspaper business that I love is under attack, and it affects all of us.

There are two things you need to know about newspapers.

Newspapers are important to our community and our country. Always have been. I believe for a free society to exist it is important for all sorts of newspapers to survive — the very large and the very small ones, the liberal ones, the conservative ones, the middle-of-the-road ones, the ones with no viewpoint but just important news, all of them. America needs newspapers like we need oxygen.

The second is that even if you access The Daily Iberian “online,” the digital copy that you count on wouldn’t exist if there weren’t a printed newspaper behind it. The print newspaper supports all of the other versions economically. So, if the printed version disappeared, you can’t assume all would be well because it is online anyway. It won’t be.

These facts are important because the paper on which your newspaper is printed is under attack.

One small paper mill in Washington State is trying to use the federal trade and tariff laws to make this paper about 50 percent more expensive. This mill has complained to the U.S. Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission about international competition. If it succeeds, the prices of newspaper printing will skyrocket. The resources available for everything else The Daily Iberian may need or want to do for you will be strangled.

Canadian paper producers have supplied the U.S. for many years. They have some natural advantages over U.S. papermakers because of hydroelectric power and shipping costs. More than a dozen U.S. mills have stopped making newsprint in the last decade because demand for paper has declined.

This decline in demand has been driven by large metro newspapers. For the Daily Iberian and other smaller, daily community newspapers, the demand for paper has fallen much less dramatically as print remains our core business.

Today, even if Canadian paper disappeared because of high tariffs being proposed to the federal government, the U.S. paper mills could not supply newspapers with the paper they need. Mills cost hundreds of millions of dollars. With demand falling, no one is going to invest in a massive expansion of U.S. newsprint. Over the short term, tariffs could force the price of paper up and the New York investors who own the Washington State mill could gain.

But we will lose. Fragile newspapers will vanish. Challenged newspapers will have to cut back. We are going to have to find ways to absorb a daunting new cost. And who will pay? Everyone who relies on a newspaper to tell the local stories, cover elections, advertise sales, get pictures of the winning touchdown, and cheer the economic development people on in their work of creating new jobs.

That worries me. If you are with me, pay a visit www.stopnewsprinttariffs.org and voice your opinion.

 

Christina Pierce is publisher of The Daily Iberian.