Newsprint

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Newsprint is low-cost, low-quality, non-archival paper. It is generally made by a mechanical milling process, without the chemical process that is usually used to remove lignin from the pulp. The lignin causes the paper to rapidly become brittle and yellow when exposed to air and/or sunlight.^[1]

Increasingly, newspaper is made from recycled news paper. Presently, more than half of the world's output of newsprint is manufactured from recycled fiber. This poses the question, whether the trend to even more recycling in newsprint is sustainable. Major paper machines, producing newsprint, now have speeds in the 2,000 m/min range. The technology requires that a certain minimum amount of reinforcing fiber (long fiber pulp) is present in the papermaking stock. Considerable quantities of newsprint in Canadian and Scandinavian mills continue to be produced from virgin fiber (softwood, i.e. long fiber species). This is virgin newsprint - this commodity is consumed, along with recycled newsprint, by newspaper publishers around the world. The worldwide recycle rate of newsprint is now well over 60 pct (FAO and RISI statistics). It appears that the long fiber content in virgin newsprint, as old newspapers are collected and recycled, is the major factor in allowing recycled news furnish (up to 100 pct recycled) to run at such paper machine speeds. Such speeds are necessary cost wise on new or recent machines. Without some long fiber content, such speeds would not be possible technically on most machines. Other factors are the mechanical pulping/bleaching processes of wood and recycled fiber, which, over the course of 20 or 30 years, have seen dramatic improvement.

Newsprint is used in the printing of newspapers, flyers, and other printed material intended for mass distribution. It usually has an off-white cast and distinctive feel.

[edit] Newsprint rolls

Modern printing facilities most efficiently print newspapers in multiples of eight pages on a newsprint roll in two sections of four pages each. The two sections are then cut in half.

A newspaper roll's width is called its web and is defined by how many front pages it can print. A roll prints four front pages with four back pages behind it (two front and back on each of the two sections).

Faced with dwindling revenue from competition with broadcast, cable and internet outlets, newspapers in the 21st century — particularly broadsheets — have begun a process of downsizing the width of their newsprint rolls to a standard size across the business.

The new broadsheet standard in the United States is the 48-inch web (which means the each page in its section is 12 inches wide). Newspapers such as USA Today have already converted to the new standard which is also considered easier to handle.

Interest in the standard increased when the Wall Street Journal said it would abandon its iconic 60-inch web (15 inch wide frontpage) format in favor of the new newspaper industry standard starting on January 2, 2007. The New York Times has also followed suit, abandoning its 54-inch web (13 1/2 inch frontpage) on August 6, 2007.^[2]

Newspapers around the world, including The Times, The Guardian and The Independent in the United Kingdom, are also downsizing their broadsheets.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Production trends

FAO reports that Canada was the top producer of newsprint in 2005 followed by the USA, Japan and China.

[edit] References