I worked in a newsprint mill for nearly 40 years. The downsizing of the newspaper itself greatly impacted the newsprint industry, and our mill, as well as many other mills, shut their doors forever.
A huge impact on the size of the newspaper itself was because of the decline in printed advertising. But I stopped buying or reading the liberal Oregonian fishwrap long before the shrinking advertising affected them.
Newsprint in many areas is required to have a high percentage of recycled fiber. Our mill pioneered the recycling of old newspapers into new newsprint. Eventually, it was the Chinese that put us out of business. They began buying up all the old newspapers in this country and shipping them back to China in otherwise empty shipping containers to be used in making other paper products. That drove the prices so high, and the availability so low in America for old newspapers, eventually we could not buy them at all. It killed our industry.
Some sidenotes about newsprint...
Before we went out of business, much of our newsprint production had turned to making other consumer products that were based on newsprint. For example, McDonald's became a huge customer for newsprint that was being converted into placemats and carry-out bags. Newsprint was a perfect material for this purpose. And to satisfy the treehuggers, they wanted our product not as perfectly de-inked as the publishers would require. They figured tiny little specs of ink in their bags would make it more believable that they were in fact using a recycled product.
