NEWSPAPER DIFFICULTIES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 181, 9 June 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWSPAPER DIFFICULTIES.

Oho of the mo>t popular Australasian magazines, in its current issue, makes fooling reference to the threatened paper famine, and the consequent effect on magazine ai.id newspaper production. In alluding to what it. describes as tlio "sudden and alarming crisis 111 the paper markets of the world," it goes on to say that England has forbidden the importation of pulp necessary for paper making except under special restrictions. She liads it necessary to reserve the 2,000,000 tons of space for other goods; thus a paper famine threatens the nowspapcrs and magazines of the Empire, "and tho price of paper in Australia has been fixed by the paper merchants at an advance of nearly 200 per cent on that prevailing before the war." But this increase in tho price of paper is only ono of the burdens which the war has thrust upon the Australasian publisher and printer. Tho purchase of paper at any price is daily becoming more difficult. In England more than ono old established journal has had to ceaso publication, and quite a large number of the most prominent newspapers have found it necessary to greatly curtail tho size of their daily issues. For instance, not only has the sizo of tho "Daily Mail'' been reduced, but tho proprietors have altogether suspended what was known as its

"Greater London edition." In New Zealand the position threatens to bocomo equally, if not even more acute. Hero not only have publishers to contend with the increased price and growing scarcity of paper, but the expense of publication has teen still further heavily increased by the war tax which the Government has imposed on press telegrams, by which the cost of all the news received by "wire" has been doubled. Several of our contemporaries have a'ready considered it advisable to cut down their size, and, unless the position becomes easier m the near future—of which there is not the slightest apparent prospect—it s to be feared that somo newspapers will be compelled to take even more drastic measures to meet the eindigene*..