NEWSPAPER DIFFICULTIES

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 188, 4 July 1916, Page 4

NEWSPAPER DIFFICULTIES

One of the most popular Australasian magazines, in its current issue, makes feeling reference to the threatened paper famine, and the consequent effect ou magazine and newspaper production. In alluding to what it describes as the *' sudden and alarming crisis in the paper markets of the world," it goes on to Bay that England has forbidden the importation of pulp necessary for paper making except under special restrictions. She finds it necessary to reserve the 2,000,000 tons of

space for other goods ; thus a paper famine threatens the newspapers and magazines of the Empire, " and the price of paper in Australia hits been lixed by the paper merchants at an advance of nearly -0U per cent on that prevailing before the war" But this increase in the price of paper is only one of the burdens which the war has thrust upon the Australasian publisher and printer. The purchase of paper at any price is daily becoming more ditticult. In England more than one old established journal has had to cease publication, and quite a large number of the most prominent newspapers have found it necessary to greatly curtail the size of their daily issues. For instance, not only has "the size of the " Daily Mail " been reduced, but the proprietors have altogether suspended what was known as its " Greater Loudon, edition." In New Zealand the position threatens to become equally, if not even more acute. Here not only have publishers to contend with the increased price and growing scarcity of paper, but the expense of publication has been 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 boon doubled. Several of our contemporaries have already considered it advisable to cut down their size, and, unless tha position becomes easier in the near iuture — of which there is not tho slightest apparent prospect —it is to bo feared that some newspapers will be compelled to take even more drastic measures to meet the emergency.