The paper newspaper has long defied its death sentence, but now the high fuel and paper prices – combined with the recession – are reaping more and more victims in the country.
In October, for example, Bohusläningen goes from six to three paper issues per week.
And in Borås, Uppsala and Östergötland, the respective local newspapers stop handing out paper copies in several outlying areas at the same time. In Strömstad, the newspaper chooses to go completely digital.
– It is an economic reality. The fewer readers we have in print, the more expensive it will be per newspaper to distribute. And now we have come to the end of the road somehow, says Gunilla Håkansson, editor-in-chief of Strömstad’s newspaper.
The newsboy loses his job
The downsizing in Bohuslän means, among other things, that around 60 of the approximately 80 newspaper couriers employed at the distribution center in Uddevalla will lose their jobs.
Strömstad’s newspaper already has 60 percent digital subscribers and now hopes that at least 70 percent of the remaining will also “log on”. Therefore, this week they have organized an open digital training for their subscribers in the Skagerack cultural center. There, many of the visitors mourn that the paper newspaper will disappear.
– It’s sad, says Kerstin Olsson, 84 years old. I think it’s better to be able to read myself. And scroll, just the feel of paper.
It is precisely the elderly in sparsely populated areas who are particularly affected by the increasing death of paper newspapers. But according to media analyst Ulrika Facht at Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg, the declining distribution can no longer be seen as a greater threat to democracy.
– Society has come so far that it is reasonable to review. Will newspapers survive? Is it preferable that we have fewer newspapers?, asks Ulrika Facht.
In the cultural center in Strömstad, Bjarne Mattsson, 81, belongs to those who – despite everything – want to learn to read the newspaper digitally.
– It is difficult to learn such novelties, he says. But I have to try.