Soaring newsprint costs make life even harder for newspapers

“IT’S LIKE TASERING an elderly person who’s already on a pacemaker,” says a British newspaper boss of the newsprint market, where prices have risen by over 50% in a matter of months. The cost of paper that feeds into presses around the world is rising to record highs, pushing up expenses for newspapers from Mumbai to Sydney. When times were good, before ads shifted online, newspapers had a supportive partnership with paper mills. As ads departed and circulations fell, relations became more transactional. They are now at the shouting stage.Paper mills had the worst of it for years as newspapers reduced pagination, went wholly digital or shut for good. The papers were able to hammer down the cost of newsprint from firms fighting for business as demand declined. Price-taking paper mills suffered in silence. Many hesitated to shut massive machines costing hundreds of millions of dollars.