NOTEBOOK: Politics of Print: Yes, There Is Some Of That Involved

Just the other day, I received a red, black and blue mailer—obviously printed rollfed offset on a lightweight card, flat colors, with laser personalization. The mailer instructed me about the new, paper ballots that I may find instead of touch-screen voting machines. And it told me precisely where I can walk to vote—prior to election day if I choose, or at another site on election day. This flexibility and precision of communications is made possible because all the paper records are seamlessly integrated to digital records.

It's a reminder, too, of the inextricable link between politics and the U.S. printing industry. Let me count the ways .... Ballots are one very direct link-up between politics and print. Despite the repeated mantra that we are going to an all-digital, virtual society, the fact is U.S. citizens prefer to vote with paper ballots. Ohio and Florida even cancelled their implementation of digital voting—despite its inevitability—returning to paper ballots. In the case of Florida, the state is refusing delivery on $13 million worth of touch-screen voting systems, as readers of e-GAM learned recently. In Oregon, voting participation has increased since the state moved to an all-paper, all mail-in voting system.

Political campaign printing regularly resurrects demand for the union “bug,” an increasingly rare dingbat that appears whenever candidates and parties need something produced. To qualify as a subcontractor to the Democratic National Convention, for example, print bidders are required to deliver materials—everything from bumper stickers to buttons and ad specialties—imparted with the union bug.

Only union shops can apply it, and this evolution of demand has created a caste of union trade printers who provide the service to others. Goldenrod Printing, for example, does a healthy business in Lincoln, NE, through its Website, www.unionpoliticalprinting.com, with a button just for printers buying printing. The Teamsters, who oversee print unions, can help you find dozens of GCIU shops in the U.S. and Canada at www.gciu.org/shop.shtml.

As the primary campaigns conclude, we have the convention and then general election printing seasons. Here, too, print is deeply enmeshed with the political process. Historically, presidential election years boost print revenues by 1%.

Then there is the cultural-political side to printing. Journalistic printing is often untaxed—in deference to freedom of speech—and printed periodicals enjoy reduced postal rates, as do books and other media.

A long-standing arrangement sees the printing of newspapers actively managed by the Federal Communications Commission in 11 cities, to prop up waning newspaper operations (they share print plants but have separate editors). Even now, FCC rules limit ownership of TV stations and newspapers by the same business entities within major markets. Ostensibly, when this was done in 1975 under the Newspaper Preservation Act, it was to maintain a diversity of public voices in these cities. That is a construct that has outlived its usefulness.

Our elected officials were just as interested in preserving the 50-50 odds that they might win the endorsement of at least one big-city daily in those two-paper towns. The FCC has “overlooked” the 11 metropolitan areas where it harbors a socialized newspaper manufactory. We should call for its end.

These operations should be relinquished to free-market forces, as has happened in San Francisco, and let profit makers—i.e., commercial printers—run the print side like a business, not a fiefdom. We think the efficiencies and disciplines of the free market will go much further in preserving newspapers than will the Newspaper Preservation Act.

bill.esler@reedbusiness.com