The last 30 days, to say the least, have not been kind to the newspaper industry.

Where to begin?

How about McClatchy, which laid off 10 percent of its workforce — some 1,400 employees — and said it would shift production of papers it owns in Idaho and Washington state to a rival publisher?

Or Gannett, which posted an 11 percent decline in revenue during May, after announcing it would freeze its pension plan?

Or Media General Inc., which shed more than 250 jobs at The Tampa Tribune and other Florida properties?

I don’t even want to mention the dreary news the Newspaper Association of America “released:” that first quarter ad revenues at U.S. newspapers plunged 14 percent, to just over $8 billion. (I put the word “released” in quotes because the NAA said it will no longer issue press releases disclosing quarterly ad sales.)


Chuck Moozakis, Editor-In-Chief
Newspapers & Technology Magazine

At the same time all of this was happening came the proclamation by Tribune honchos Sam Zell and Randy Michaels that the publisher would cut as much as 500 pages per week from its stable of newspapers in an effort to “right-size” the company.

Nothing wrong with finding a new strategy, I suppose, but claims that Trib can cut the pages as well as rid itself of the reporters and editors responsible for filling those pages without harming the value of its franchise seems a bit, well, naive.

As in: Are you kidding me?

Which brings me to drupa. (Trust me, this will all make sense in a moment.)

While publishers are wondering where the bottom may lie, many of the vendors that support the newspaper industry were wondering the same thing. At drupa, the quadrennial printing exposition in Dusseldorf, Germany, companies such as Goss, Muller Martini, manroland and Koenig & Bauer, among others, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and Euros to showcase their wares to prospective customers.