Volume 6; Issue 5

In this issue of Boreal Market News

1.  P&G and Domtar Step Up Sustainable Foresty Committments

Procter & Gamble and Domtar Corp. joined the North America Forest & Trade Network (NAFTN) in a bid to make their wood-based products more sustainably sourced. More...

2.  Paper Purchasing of Major Office Suppliers Shows Improvement

Major office supply companies have made progress incorporating more environmentally responsible practices, according to a new report card. More...

3.  Newspapers across North America are facing declining ad revenues because of falling readership.

Canada's newspaper conglomerates are rethinking the way they've presented the news by boosting interactivity and coming up with innovative ways to catch readers' attention and hang onto advertising dollars that have been slipping to the Internet.  The latest to boost its online presence is Torstar Corp. which, through its flagship Toronto Star, launched three new websites this week that focus on niche audiences. More...

In Depth...

1.P&G and Domtar Step Up Sustainable Foresty Committments

Article GreenBiz.com  April 11, 2008
Procter & Gamble and Domtar Corp. joined the North America Forest & Trade Network (NAFTN) in a bid to make their wood-based products more sustainably sourced.

The announcement from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on Thursday is the second development this week to cast a spotlight on the issue of sustainable forest sourcing. On Tuesday, ForestEthics and Dogwood Alliance released a report card grading five major office supply companies for their paper purchasing policies.

NAFTN is the North American arm of the Global Forest & Trade Network created by WWF as an initiative to eradicate illegal logging and better the management of fragile forests.

Members must agree to eliminate all trade in wood from illegal, unknown or controversial sources and introduce trade in wood from certain areas. Acceptable sources must be designated: recycled; known, licensed and complying with policy; verified legal; and certified or in the process of getting certified.

Domtar already is working with the WWF to make all of its managed forest land in Canada certified by Forest Stewardship Council standards. Domtar also has committed to promote FSC-certified papers, such as its EarthChoice line.

Procter & Gamble will begin by working with the group on its family care business, which includes brands such as Bounty, Charmin and Puffs.

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2.Paper Purchasing of Major Office Suppliers Shows Improvement

Article GreenBiz.com April 8, 2008 –
Major office supply companies have made progress incorporating more environmentally responsible practices, according to a new report card.

Staples and FedEx Kinkos topped the list of five major office supply companies examined by ForestEthics and Dogwood Alliance, which recently printed "Green Grades: A Report Card on the Paper Practices of the Office Supply Sector" in a splashy ad campaign in USA Today. All five companies, however, have improved their paper purchasing policies since the groups last issued a report card in September.

Staples received a B+ in the latest score card and got kudos for terminating a contract with Asia Pulp & Paper, which has a spotty environmental record. FedEx Kinkos also scored a B+, in part for its decision to shift its paper purchases away from areas in British Columbia where endangered caribou reside.

Office Depot earned a B- -- up from C+ -- for phasing out Asia Pulp & Paper products and goal of delivering more FSC paper products to market but the groups believe it needs to step up efforts in reducing products sourced from fragile Canadian Boreal Forests.

Corporate Express also moved up to C+ from a C for a new procurement policy and increase in FSC purchases. OfficeMax, the industry's "clear laggard," according to the report, scored a D+, up from a D. The company's procurement policy doesn't have strong Endangered Forest protection provisions.

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3.More buyouts and layoffs as papers consolidate

Newest websites target niche audiences and expand on interactivity to bring in ad dollars
THE CANADIAN PRESS Apr 20, 2008

Canada's newspaper conglomerates are rethinking the way they've presented the news by boosting interactivity and coming up with innovative ways to catch readers' attention and hang onto advertising dollars that have been slipping to the Internet.
The latest to boost its online presence is Torstar Corp. which, through its flagship Toronto Star, launched three new websites this week that focus on niche audiences.

The websites – parentcentral.ca, healthzone.ca and yourhome.ca – primarily reuse content from the Star and other traditional newspapers, but they also serve to entice target audiences that could be a boon for advertising dollars.
The concepts build on the success of Wheels, which made the leap to online with its own sister website, and brought along with it the interest of major car companies that ultimately bought ad space.

"Some of these brands began in the paper and took off on their own, but now we're finding that because the Wheels example works so well ... maybe we can replicate that success and create some new brands as well," said Fred Kuntz, editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star, Canada's largest-circulation daily.

Like newspapers across North America, the Star has faced declining revenues that are impacted by lower advertising dollars, due to falling readership, and weakening profits from its classified ad section. Readership at the daily fell three per cent in 2007, while visits to the paper's website hit 545,000 per week, an increase of 5.4 per cent year over year.

"As the readership declines in newspapers, (advertisers) are finding other places to find eyeballs," said Jeff Vidler of Solutions Research Group, a Toronto-based media research firm. "Certainly online is taking up a lot of that."

Readers who might have paid for a classified listing 10 years ago are turning to popular free websites like Craigslist these days.

That has left newspapers, and their parent companies, looking at new ways to boost ad revenues.

Sun Media, owned by the Quebecor group, has focused mainly on boosting its Canoe.ca brand with online video, interactive content and entertainment portal Canoe.tv.

CanWest Global Communications Corp. has beefed up its online presence with elaborate versions of its local newspapers' classified sections. Specific sites deal with auto, real estate and job-hunting themes. But despite the effort to plug the leaking holes of advertising revenues, news companies are still feeling the pinch.

Last November, Sun Media laid off 16 editorial employees as it continued the technology-driven centralization of its newspaper group's operations.
A union official said this week that CanWest's Montreal Gazette is cutting about 45 jobs as the company moves customer services operations to a private call centre in Winnipeg.

At Torstar, the new websites were unveiled the same week 160 jobs were cut in an effort to save $12 million in operating costs a year as it deals with a squeeze on revenues. The job cuts included buyouts and some layoffs. The company has been reworking its operations, which included laying off a 10-person Internet production staff that primarily resized and reworked photographs posted to the web. The online department layoffs do not directly affect the Star's editorial web operations, but instead dissolve a legacy operation that had existed since the formation of the website back in the 1990s.

Kuntz said two Internet departments will continue to exist – a 21-person editorial team in the Toronto office (which could increase to 28 by the end of the year), and a separate digital team that hosts the websites. Despite all the attention being paid to the Internet, traditional newspapers shouldn't be considered an outdated medium any time soon, suggests one ad buyer.

"You'll probably find newspapers bounce back in the next little while because they've finally figured out how to publish online editions that are not replica editions" of the newspaper, said Robert Troutbeck, president of Toronto-based media buyer Troutbeck-Chernoff. He said he still believes the print versions of newspapers will continue to be popular because their advertising is less invasive to readers – something he calls "permission marketing" – while online ads are often "an annoying interruption."

Traditional newspapers are also supported by analyst Duncan Stewart of the Deloitte consulting firm. "There remains a significant and large business of people who buy newspapers, read them, find them portable and convenient," he said.

"On the other hand, it is in our view that the contraction (of media companies) is not over." Stewart said newspapers need to reinvent themselves by not only integrating their content, but by hiring tech-savvy staff who aren't necessarily journalists, but can repackage data to make "incredibly compelling applications."

He said the future of online local media would flourish with more interactive content, such as a online map of a crime scene that could take readers through the events.

"One of the real challenges for newspapers is that they need fewer people who write perfect prose and pyramid leads," he said.

"They have a lot of people who do that and they don't have a lot of people who know how to build a searchable database."

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Boreal Market News is a publication of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society - Northern Alberta Chapter.   Our intent is to provide information to decision makers on new developments in forest management, focusing on changing market forces.   For more information or to be added or removed from the mailing list contact the Editor, Helene Walsh