By Frank Boles
Historical documentation is often an afterthought. People
“in the moment” are usually not thinking about history or historical
documentation – they are thinking about and recording things they need or learning
about things they want to know. One of the primary examples of this phenomena
is local newspapers. No one publishes or buys a local newspaper for historical
reasons, but one of the Clarke Historical Library’s premier projects has been
to preserve and distribute historical copies of Michigan’s local newspapers,
which almost always serve as the most complete record of community history.
How fully local history is recorded in daily papers is the
result of a wide variety of things; things no one would often connect to local
history. The amount of local history found in newspapers is often an unintended
consequence.
One example of this situation is the often proclaimed death
of the newspaper as we have known it. I have read many a story proclaiming the end
of printed newspapers. Others who read those same articles told me that if the
trend continued the Clarke would soon be out of the “historical newspaper
business.”
What we have seen, instead, is that many newspapers have remain
financially successful, and that the vast majority of those financially
successful papers have adopted a laser focus on local news. Although they can’t
compete with CNN to report the latest events in Washington, they can make money
covering local government, local schools, and local sports, things CNN never
talks about. Although newspapers adopted a local-news focused business model as a way to survive financially, we at the Clarke quietly smiled at the unintended historical consequences of the change. Local papers with rich local coverage become a rich local historical resource. From our point of view, the often advertised “death” of the newspaper has resulted in a renaissance of local reporting in newspapers and a resurgence of material for local history. Times have been good for those of us in the historical newspaper business!
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Workmen positioning newsprint
rolls in a warehouse.
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But unintended benefits bestowed by one set of circumstances
can be taken away by another. One ingredient of the plethora of local news
appearing in today’s newspapers is cheap newsprint. Newsprint, however, has
become a casualty in the growing trade war between the United States and
Canada.
In the United States today there are only five paper mills
which still make newsprint. The last newsprint manufacturer in Michigan,
Manistique Paper, closed in 2011. American capacity to produce newsprint has
atrophied because most American paper mills now produce other, more profitable
paper products, particularly cardboard. Online purchasing has been very
profitable not only for Amazon, but for the people making the cardboard and the
boxes in which those purchases are shipped.
This migration of American paper mills away from newsprint production
resulted in unmet demand that was answered by increased Canadian production and
sales of newsprint in the U.S. Today about 60 percent of U.S. newsprint needs are
met by Canadian paper mills. Given our state’s geographic nearness to Canada
and easy access to Canadian markets over three international bridges, Michigan newspapers
have usually turned to Canadian sources of newsprint. New tariffs on imported
Canadian newsprint have significant financial implications for Michigan
newspapers.
By way of example, Stafford Printing and Publishing, located
in Greenville, which publishes a number of local newspapers, including the Grand Haven Tribune, the Lansing Pulse, the Ann Arbor Observer, two Spanish language newspapers (one
distributed in Detroit and the other in Grand Rapids) and a newspaper for the
Amish community, has seen newsprint prices soar. Stafford’s newsprint costs
have increased about 30 percent; by about $2,400 for each truckload of paper
they purchase. They purchase about ten loads a month. The papers they print, to
which these costs are passed along, are cutting page count and taking any other
steps they can think of to reduce the amount of paper they use.
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| A cartoon about the Tariff of 1842. |
The unintended consequence of tariffs imposed on Canadian newsprint is less local news now, and less information for future local historians. Unintended consequences are everywhere – even in things so seemingly different as a trade war between the U.S. and Canada and documenting Michigan local history.