Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - It was a week ago when The Buffalo News reported it was intending to shift its printing and production operations to Cleveland, Ohio sometime later this year. The move would affect 160 employees with the newspaper, and would see its two printing presses decommissioned.
While it's not a done deal at this time to shift operations to The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, union leaders with the News are preparing for the move, with one union president telling WBEN the News "Really want to get out of the print end of things." That union president also says the News would like to get the transition officially completed by Oct. 1.
For many other printing companies, like BNP Empowered Print on Broadway in Buffalo, the news regarding the future of The Buffalo News was not all that surprising.
"This type of consolidation in the newspaper industry has been happening for several years," said President of BNP Empowered Print, Tom Majerski. "I believe that it was in the works for a long time when Lee [Enterprises] bought them out, and we're seeing it a lot. Recent examples are the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester - recently announced they're going to be moving their print production to New Jersey - and most recently the Toronto Star - they're closing their last printing facility in Toronto and they're going to be moving their newspaper production to Transcontinental Printing, which is a major printer up in Canada."
While last Monday's news was certainly disheartening for the local print and newspaper industry, it was also a negative for the 160 workers that will eventually be unemployed with this transition.
However, there is some benefit for BNP Empowered Print with this move coming from the News.
"There's some work that we could probably take over some more local publications that The Buffalo News produces now," Majerski said. "We're not predominantly a publication printer, in fact, it's a small part of what we do, maybe 5% of our sales. We're mainly retail, grocery flyers, and direct mail, but we do have some limited capacity and capability to print local papers, college papers, local Pennysavers, things of that nature."
In addition, Majerski feels there will be a chance for him to be able to speak with some of the employees that will be without a job later this year, especially for the press floor for printing.
While that may be a benefit at this time for Majerski, he does acknowledge that kind of work is going away.
"There really isn't a lot of publication work left," he said. "I think it's diminished and keeps diminishing over the years. So there isn't quite a bit, and there isn't really a lot of commercial work. What we would do is deemed commercial work, and there isn't a lot of commercial work that I believe the News was producing."
In addition, the amount of new business that could come Majerski's way wouldn't be much different than what they were already doing. That's also including the News looking at BNP Empowered Print as a resource for some printing needs of their own.
"We print a process called 'heatset', as opposed to a newspaper, which is 'coldset. It's a little bit better of a process where you can print on slicker papers and things of that nature. So those newspaper circulars are something that we focus on, that's our core business," Majerski said. "They would subcontract that work out to us regardless, so their presses weren't a fit for that work. So really, as far as the newspaper, and I imagine they had some limited number of customers they were printing for locally for college papers and things of that like, we're probably a decent fit for some of that work."
While BNP Empowered Print does print for a number of local publications in Western New York, Majerski says there isn't a lot of that work locally. The company does print for some customers locally like Valu Home Centers, but a lot of the work is actually for publications and other companies in Canada and the Northeast.
"We probably cover an 800-mile radius, so not a lot of it's local anymore, except for the direct mail products that we print, which the News, they're not in that realm anymore," Majerski said. "They were for a bit of time, but we do a lot of direct mail-type products, so there's a lot of smaller businesses locally that can benefit from that. But I don't believe they were really doing any of that type of work anymore."
While the move for The Buffalo News is seen as mostly a negative for the print industry, Majerski points out it is more so shift for the industry, especially with the use of the direct mailing.
"It's really the only effective vehicle to get your print product to people," he said. "There's a lot of saturation in the digital print market now, so print is making a comeback in that regard because tangible advertising is so rare now, it has more of an impact than digital marketing. I think print is shifting. This is part of that transition with the News doing what they're doing, and I think it's only going to continue, sadly. But again, I think it's a transformation of the industry, not necessarily a decline of the print industry. It's just a change."
