Keep the Newsprint Coming to Community Newspapers: An Action Plan

Mar 26, 2018

Educate yourself and your staff first. Here is a fact sheet on newsprint.
Learn how tariffs are set.
The case against trade sanctions.
Educate your community. The tariffs are a threat to the services your newspaper provides your town, your county, your economy and your community life. Here is an editorial to give you a start.
Make sure your community leaders understand the gravity of the situation. If they are also concerned, they may write the Secretary of Commerce as Mayor Frank Friedman of Lexington, VA, did in this letter.
Reach out to the economic leaders in your state. Your newspaper provides more than just jobs within the newspaper and printing operation. Every business that depends upon your newspaper can be harmed. Every community that counts on your newspaper to keep people involved in community life can be harmed. All of these groups have an interest in good jobs and a good community. Here is what the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry wrote to the Department of Commerce.
Have a conversation with the offices of your Members of Congress. You can find information about your Senators here: www.senate.gov. And you can find information about your House Members here: www.house.gov. Set up an appointment to see the manager of the nearest office in your state for these important public officials and explain the importance of this issue. Members of Congress may choose to write the Department of Commerce now, as this New Mexico Delegation has already done. (link to letter.) Later, these same Members of Congress may choose to provide testimony to the International Trade Commission (ITC), which is looking into the complaints about newsprint from a single mill in Washington State. It is important for the ITC to understand that the effects on domestic newsprint producers are stemming from declining demand for paper in our industry, rather than from the trade practices of other countries—and that tariffs to try to reverse the declining demand will instead accelerate the decline.
The Steelworkers labor group sends letter supporting a tariff exemption for Canadian goods. See the letter here.
STOPP house ads NNA member newspapers can use.