Newspapers face tight supply as mills cut newsprint production

As if they didn't have enough to deal with, America's newspaper publishers are facing a tight supply of newsprint that's driving up prices.

The crunch may be temporary but it highlights the uncertainty and cost pressures straining a local news industry that's largely online nowadays but still heavily dependent on printed newspapers.

If these conditions persist, cost and supply challenges may lead more newspapers to reduce pages, as The Seattle Times is doing temporarily until supply improves, cut print frequency or accelerate plans to become entirely online products.

It's kind of a double-whammy for publishers. It's not only expensive, it's really hard to find newsprint right now," said Kevin Craig, CEO of PAGE Cooperative, a North Carolina nonprofit that purchases materials and services for around 1,200 newspapers.

As a result of mill closures and disruptions, newsprint prices "have gone haywire - they're as high as I've seen in many years," Craig said.

One of two remaining newsprint mills in the U.S., NORPAC in Longview, Wash., produced its last roll of newsprint on Tuesday. It was recently acquired by International Paper, an industry giant that's prioritizing packaging products.

The last remaining U.S. newsprint mill, Inland Empire Paper near Spokane, is booked and can't fill any additional orders until June or July, according to Stacey Cowles, president of the Cowles Company that owns the mill.

Cowles said Inland is also increasingly using its equipment to make packaging products such as bags. He didn't say so outright, but it sounds like Inland could phase out newsprint production in a few years.

"We don't have a date certain when we phase out," he said. "I suspect we're going to be making newsprint for at least another two or three years."

So could Inland fully convert to packaging within five years?

"That's where the trend is taking us," he said.

Cowles said the newsprint business has "just been pretty horrible" the last five to six years as demand has fallen. He expects prices will come up in the next year but "whether it's enough to make it profitable is still a question."

For a century the Cowles family also owned timberlands, a press and The Spokesman-Review newspaper. It closed the press last year and is in the process of donating the newspaper to a nonprofit.

A third U.S. mill, in Mississippi, closed in September.

Even if the U.S. no longer produces newsprint there's usually plenty available from Canada, which already provides around 90% of what's used by America's newspapers.

Several of Canada's 10 newsprint mills temporarily closed last year, including one in Newfoundland that halted production for several months after fires and one in Ontario that paused because of financial difficulties, according to François Chastanet, director of graphic papers for the Pulp and Paper Products Council in Montreal.

"If two or three things happen at the same time, suddenly you can have a supply disruption," he said. "But otherwise there are still quite a number of players."

If Inland stopped producing newsprint in a few years, ending U.S. production altogether, "I don't think it would be a big disruption," he said.

Chastanet said demand for newsprint fell around 15% a year in North America but only 10% to 11% a year globally in recent years. Production capacity, meanwhile, has declined only around 11% a year.

All that is little consolation, though, to some local publishers scrambling for enough paper to print the next week's newspapers.

The Lewiston Tribune in Idaho usually keeps at least eight weeks of supply. It basically ran out of some sizes recently and had to print portions of the newspaper on pricey paper that's whiter, brighter and thicker than newsprint.

"We've dwindled that down to the point where some of our widths simply weren't available," Publisher Nathan Alford said on Tuesday. "We just got a truck last week so it's day to day."

The Wenatchee World, which prints many of the region's weekly newspapers, has good supply "and we're just trying to navigate it well and be on top of things," Publisher Sean Flaherty said.

The World recently announced that it's cutting print frequency from three to two days per week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Flaherty said that wasn't because of supply, though.

"The way I look at it is that our biggest audience has been online for a very long time," he said, so that's where the World's resources are being directed.

Alford isn't planning to cut print days at The Tribune, which delivers Tuesday through Sunday.

It turned a corner and was profitable in the first quarter, after losing money in 2025, but newsprint supply and prices won't make it easy to sustain that momentum.

"We're so committed to the printed product," Alford said, "I think we're just going to cross our toes and fingers and hopefully stay supplied.

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