The ink was barely dry on our obituary for the Aurelia Star when President Trump last week ordered tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China (Iowa’s top ag export markets). We understand that will include 25% tariffs on newsprint milled in Canada and aluminum for printing plates. We cannot sustain that sort of printing cost hike.
In our editorial announcing the termination of the Star on Friday, we noted that we might be forced to trim printing of the Storm Lake Times Pilot to once a week. Trump’s tariffs made the decision for us. With postage costs increasing radically, our planned transition to providing information digitally speeds up.
On Monday it was announced that the tariffs on Canada and Mexico will be suspended for 30 days. Even so, we had to make other plans while the government whipsaws.
As of March 1, the Storm Lake Times Pilot will be printed once a week, delivered to your home in Friday’s mail.
The Times Pilot will publish news as it happens, 24/7, online at www.stormlake.com. All subscribers to our print edition will have full access to our website. Paid subscribers who do not have online access should email circ@stormlake.com if they would like full digital access.
We will continue to publish the Ad Guide on Tuesdays. Its publication frequency also is under review, especially in light of printing and postage costs. We have contemplated reducing the Ad Guide’s frequency to twice a month as reading and buying patterns shift online.
Last year, we broke even thanks to reader donations. If we continue printing the Times Pilot twice a week, we will lose money. It is a very simple proposition. If we maintain a slight profit we can hold on to our excellent staff and provide you with all the news, sports and commentary to which you have been accustomed.
Our weekly edition will include all the news in multiple sections with more pages and color. Our digital edition aspires to include everything as it happens — we are working on that, and learning new ways of publishing.
The Storm Lake Times started out as a weekly in 1990, and prospered as such. We made a fateful decision to publish five days a week, which was silly, and lost money. We then converted to twice-weekly and have been publishing that way for 30 years, more or less breaking even. Everything we take in we spend on the newspaper. Donations cover our losses.
We cannot afford to lose subscribers or to cut rates. Our pride demands that we offer an excellent publication at a fair price, which gives its readers a broad and timely view of what is happening in and around Buena Vista County. We are committed to that proposition down to our marrow.
We must marshal our resources to the news. We love the printed product, and we appreciate our friends in Sheldon who do an outstanding job on the press. We take great delight in seeing tremendous color photo reproduction, sort of nerdy that way. So it will happen weekly. Print is an essential part of our value. We want to be pasted on your refrigerator. We also must be cognizant of where the eyeballs are directed — at the cellphone.
We have put off this decision for some time because we love print so much. It was inevitable, and Trump triggered it. The tariffs are stupid and unwarranted. Tariffs are a tax that foster inflation. Tariffs led us into the Great Depression and, ultimately, World War II.
What is especially ill-considered is slapping tariffs on Canada, our best friend and most intimate trading partner in the world. The tariffs may be suspended. Yet, it is impossible to predict what Trump will do in 30 days. He insists that tariffs work. We don’t know what to think except that we must contain costs.
The move did wake us up to nagging economic realities. Reading habits are changing. The advertising market has been remade in less than a decade. And, the government and postal system are doing their level best to kill newspapers. At times, the government is openly hostile. A free press must be strong. To be strong journalistically we must be strong financially. Hence, we must reduce our printing costs and direct our energies to more and deeper reporting. We appreciate your understanding and support.
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