Less Paper

Paper is going to war, which means that in 1943 there will be less of it on the newsstands. Reasons: 1) because of manpower and electric-power shortages, mills are not making as much paper as they did; 2) transportation difficulties mean less paper can be moved from mills to publishers; 3) the armed forces will use in 1943 roughly 1,000,000 more tons of paper of all sorts than they used in 1942.

To find out how U.S. newspaper publishers intend to solve the paper problem Editor & Publisher recently queried hundreds of them, got answers indicating they intend to save in varied ways: by going tabloid, publishing only five days a week, eliminating special editions and "extras," reducing the amount of space now devoted to sports and society news, reducing headline sizes, reducing the size of body type, editing stories more tightly, refraining from publishing on holidays, raising advertising rates to reduce advertising volume without incurring losses, cutting out circulation in nonprofitable "fringe" districts, reducing widths of margins and column rules, eliminating special Sunday sections, dropping such features as "church pages." Many magazines will use lighter-weight paper than they have been using. Some will pare margins.

Many a publisher already had the ball rolling. The Kansas City Star has changed the appearance of its inside pages by reducing head sizes, explaining that newsprint shortage was the cause. Portland's Oregon Journal on Jan. i eliminated big inside headlines and ordered smaller picture cuts used. New York Times Managing Editor Edwin L. James said the Times would drop no departments but would tighten up all over. The Times, he said, saw the handwriting on the wall long ago, has already reduced its average daily size four pages with few complaints from readers.

For the first quarter of 1943, U.S. newspaper publishers will get only as much print paper (newsprint, rotogravure stock, etc.) as they used for their net paid circulation in the same period of 1941, plus 3% extra to allow for wrappers, press room "spoils," newsstand returns. Result will be an approximate 10% cut in the tonnage of paper the publishers use.* After that the restriction may be increased. Just as there will be fewer cars on the road and fewer radios for sale in 1943, there will be fewer words to read.

* British papers are now limited to 19 1/2% of the weight of paper they used in 1939, print mostly four-or six-(rarely eight) page editions.

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