NEWSPAPER COSTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18457, 19 January 1922, Page 2

NEWSPAPER COSTS

A London newspaper wiiich was urging manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers to cut their losses and get bade to normal business was lately invited by a retailer to apply the same medicine to its own affairs. Its reply was simply, “We are doing so.” A writer in one of the trade weeklies carries the a little further by stating that, in his opinion, not half a dozen newspapers in the United Kingdom will this year show a real profit. The newspapers are envied, ha says, because they are maintaining both selling price and the price of advertising space. His reply is that they help themselves. Materials are still away above pre-war prices. It costs as much to-day to buy paper in the United Kingdom for one day’s issue as it would have cost eight years ago to buy paper for three days’ issues, assuming the same sizes of page and numbers of pages to be maintained. Even if prices recede through the importation of cheap German newsprint, the price lor next year will be twice the pre-war figure, and only a few very big buyers will be on that mark. Moreover, the public are demanding and competition is providing bigger papers than over before. Much the same conditions apply in America. The current cost of newsprint is 130 per cent, above the pre-war price at the mill, and transportation charges are higher in proportion. Wages are in the neighbourhood of 100 per cent, over the old figure. New Zealand conditions show the same features in an exaggerated form (says the Lyttelton Times). _ Prior to the war the charge for wages in an average city newspaper office were 50 per cent, more than the charges for materials. Now the position is reversed, and materials are 50 per cent, above wages. Newspapers are to-day working on materials |that cost, landed, more than throe time® peak price for newsprint landed during the past 12 months was lOd per lb, as against the old price of a fraction over a penny. The most fortunate buyers had still to stock their stores at a price 430 pier cent, higher than the pre-war cost, and every newspaper in the country has in store paper bought on that basis—because no newspaper can afford to work without a reserve supply. The, best basis on which paper can be bought to-day for future delivery is 100 per cent, higher at the mill than the average pre-war figure, and the cost in store shows a still bigger advance. All other costs have advancod similarly. Thus the cost of carriage of newspapers is 105 per cent, higher and the general cost of distribution more thwi double the former cost.