Over the fading rumble of The Spokesman-Review’s production facility, Pete Negrola waxed philosophical about the loss of another newspaper press.
Negrola, 63, began printing at 15 and is now the facility’s manufacturing manager.
He’s not ready to press stop, even though he’s among 68 losing their jobs next month, when the Spokesman is closing its press and sending the work to Hagadone Media, its former archrival in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
“Oh, no, man,” he said by phone. “You get printing in your blood.”
Ten to 15 of the employees are expected to be hired by Hagadone, a family newspaper dynasty that long competed with the Cowles family publishing the Spokesman.
Negrola said there’s still demand for press operators, even though newspapers are consolidating production as the industry shrinks and moves steadily but not completely toward an online future.
“It’s just like musical chairs — keep on moving,” he said.
“Most pressmen that I know that want to work, there’s a place for them to work.”
In this new era of publishing, the Cowles and Hagadone families put aside their past rivalry and agreed to merge production starting in September.
“It’s the first time we will not be printing our own paper,” said Stacey Cowles, Spokesman publisher and president. “That’s kind of historic but definitely a sign of the times.”
His family is also shedding the newspaper that made its fortune. In April it announced plans to donate the Spokesman to a local nonprofit. But Cowles said they plan to continue producing newsprint at their paper mill, though it’s increasingly used to produce packaging.
Cowles said they were able to keep the printing operation afloat after cutting about $1 million in expenses last year but couldn’t do that again this year.
“We were stuck having to double our sales to get to a reasonable profit,” he said.
The Spokesman moved production out of its historic Chronicle building downtown to another downtown facility in the 1980s. In 2020, production moved to a new facility in the Spokane Valley just as the pandemic began.
“I think that took about 30% of our market away, just like that,” Cowles said.
The press closure affects more than the Spokesman. It prints for 43 customers, including regional daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and mailers.
One is the Tri-City Herald, which cut back to two print editions per week in 2023. The Spokesman prints six days a week and produces about 28,000 copies on Wednesdays and Sundays, Cowles said.
The Seattle Times in 2021 closed the press at its Yakima Herald-Republic and consolidated printing at its Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. The Union-Bulletin and The Wenatchee World will soon be the only dailies still operating presses in Eastern Washington.
Negrola has been through this before.
He came to Spokane from Phoenix, where the press used to just print the Phoenix paper. Then other presses in the area closed and their papers came to be printed at one central site.
“I’ve shut down Palm Springs, Calif.; Visalia, Calif.; Eugene, Ore.,” he said. “I could give you a big list. I used to work for Gannett so I’ve seen a lot.”
The Palm Springs paper continues but it’s now printed in Phoenix, and the Visalia paper is printed in Los Angeles, he explained.
Press work “doesn’t really go away but it gets smaller,” he said. “So they combine places.”
Cowles said publishers are trying to figure out the right mix of print and digital products. He thinks weekly print editions are a model that “will be strong for a long time.”
“Newspaper people struggle with that dilemma and I think the way we’re pricing now, we do persuade people that it’s cheaper and easier to use digital,” he said. “But I would say I’m sure over 50% of our revenue is dependent on some form of print product. It won’t go away anytime soon.”
That sentiment is shared by Clint Schroeder, president and executive publisher of Hagadone’s newspaper and media groups. It owns papers in Idaho and Montana, and in Moses Lake.
“As we look at our core business, print is still very much the primary product that we put out now,” Schroeder said. “We have apps, we have websites and the e-edition however, you know, people still love the tangible experience. And I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a generational thing.”
After spending all day in front of a screen “it’s sort of nice once in while to have the tactile experience that you’re fully in control of, that you can leave and come back to, and it’s relaxing,” he said.
Even so, more publishers will close their presses as the industry evolves. What’s less clear is where and when.
“I chatted with everybody about what their plans were and of course everybody’s got the same idea: ‘Well, we’ll be the last press standing,’ ” Cowles said. “Somebody gets to be last but it’s not going to be us.”
Correction: My column published online on June 25 and in print on June 26 misstated the number of votes SB 686 needed in the Oregon Senate. It needed 16 votes to pass, not 17.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.
