By Nate Abraham Jr.
COMMENTARY
By the time you read this, the Trump Administration will have implemented a major tariff increase on newsprint imported from Canada. This is similar to what he did during his first administration.
These tariffs are expected to raise the cost of printing our newspapers by at least 15 percent, maybe more. That is going to put a lot of financial pressure on every newspaper in the United States.
Some newspapers have stopped printing or gone out of business altogether. Approximately two newspapers close their doors every week in America.
Many newspapers have already cut back on the number of times they print per week. In Columbia, The State newspaper now only prints three days a week. Fifty years ago, they regularly printed four 24-page sections a day (96 pages). Now they don’t print that many pages in an entire week. In Charleston, the Post & Courier newspaper announced that they are only going to print 5 days a week starting on April 7.
According to a December 9th article in the Wall Street Journal, in 2024 worldwide advertising expenditures topped $1 trillion for the first time in history. Approximately $379 billion was spent in the United States.
When this newspaper was founded in 1986, newspapers received 23 percent of all advertising revenue. Today, newspapers receive only 2.7 percent of all advertising revenue.
For nearly 40 years, we have worked hard to bring you news of interest to our community, and we will do everything in our power to continue that mission. We are adapting to the new media landscape. For instance, in addition to our printed newspaper, you can read a digital edition of the newspaper on our website, access all of the news online, and even have every article
read to you on your mobile devices through via audios link on our website (Just click on the “Listen to This Article Now” button over each article). We are also increasing our video content, and plan to create even more in the future. We want to be able to provide our community with news, regardless of how they want to receive it.
But there are many people in our community who prefer the old-fashion printed newspaper. We will continue to deliver news via print as long as we can.
In order to do that, we need to diversify our sources of revenue. We can no longer rely on an increasingly smaller amounts of print advertising to keep us afloat, especially since we are a free weekly newspaper.
You can help in several ways:
– If you need to build a website for your business, or digital ads for your social media pages, visit us at https://carolinapanorama.cmsbot.com You can log on and build a website for free, or you can have us build one for you. You can try it out for 7 days, and only pay a small monthly fee if you decide to keep it.
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If you have been featured in our newspaper over the past 40 years, we can produce plaques, photos and posters featuring your article or an obituary of a loved one. Call us at (803) 256-4015 to get started.
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Later this month we will be launching an ecommerce site to enable you to purchase Panorama merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs and hoodies. We will announce the launch in the printed newspaper and our website very soon.
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If you are hosting an event, please list your event on the Carolina Box Office ticketing portal (www.CarolinaBoxOffice.com) to sell your tickets. You will get more attentive service than you will get on national ticketing sites, and we will promote your events through our newspaper, website and other regional event listings and calendars.
