The Press: Needed: More Newsprint

For more than ten years, newspapers all over the world have felt the squeeze of newsprint shortages. Last week, after three years of investigation, a House Judiciary Subcommittee reported: “Supplies of newsprint during the year are more favorable than they have been for many months, [but] the time has not yet been reached where efforts to assure adequate supplies of newsprint can be in any way relaxed.”

With about 80% of U.S. newsprint coming from Canada, the subcommittee’s chief recommendation to overcome the scarcity and the high prices that result (up 150% in the past ten years) is to increase U.S. newsprint output by 1) expanding newsprint mills by granting more fast tax write-offs to newsprint producers; 2) making newsprint from sugar-cane waste (bagasse), which “could well transform the [world’s] pattern of newsprint production”; 3) encouraging other new sources of newsprint, using more hardwood instead of softwood for pulp. If these and other recommendations are followed, concluded the subcommittee, newsprint supply, which is now “far from reassuring,” may become ample.