San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
PRINTING PRESS CLOSURE LEAVES HOLE FOR PUBLICATIONS
Advanced Web Offset, shuttered last summer, was one of the last San Diego County-owned presses
On a recent Wednesday, Zach Dinsmore, a staff writer at The Point Weekly, unloaded two boxes carrying the Point Loma Nazarene University student newspaper from a truck that traveled 100 miles to a drop-off spot in Kearny Mesa.
Every week since the fall semester started, the college newspaper hitches a ride on a truck that also delivers printed copies of the San Diego Reader. But it wasn’t always such a long haul.
The paper used to be printed by a company in Vista called Advanced Web Offset, and it was delivered directly to the campus on Sunset Cliffs. But the North County printing press closed last summer, which meant there was nowhere else for The Point Weekly to print locally. Now, a printing press in Ontario is one of the closest options for the student newspaper and other neighborhood papers to be published.
After three decades of operation, Advanced Web Offset, one of San Diego County’s few locally owned printing presses that caters specifically to traditional newspapers, was acquired by Anaheim-based Advantage Color Graphics in August.
As a result, many local publications, from high school papers to community weeklies, were put in a precarious position on short notice. Some clients, like The Point Weekly, had their contracts dropped and were left scrambling for a new printer.
Dean Nelson directs the journalism program at PLNU and advises the student newspaper, so losing their printer two weeks before school started sent him into panic mode.
“The panic increased when I started calling around and (found) nobody in San Diego does this,” Nelson said of the scarce printing options for newspapers. “And then it increased even more when I started contacting other places that get their papers published, and they were finding out the same thing. And so it was just this panic upon panic upon panic.”
Nelson called two printers that his contact from Advanced Web Offset suggested — one in Los Angeles and the other in Ontario. Ulti
mately, Reed Printing in Ontario called him back first and agreed to squeeze the student paper into the schedule.
When everything was finally resolved, Nelson was perplexed that so many publishers couldn’t find a printer in San Diego County.
Print is alive in niche markets
In recent years, more printing presses — much like the newspapers that they manufacture — have closed and only echoed the shouts that “print is dead.” In November, the Los Angeles Times announced that it will close its downtown printing facility in 2024, which currently prints The San Diego Union-tribune as well as other local and national newspapers. After the facility closes, the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-tribune will begin working with the Southern California News Group, or SCNG, to print its newspapers in Riverside.
Even as print publications dwindle or go digital, the situation in San Diego amplified a continued demand for certain print periodicals in niche markets. And despite the shifting landscape across the industry, the few printing presses that remain in Southern California maintain a steady stream of business and profitability.
Mike Reed, 56, the president of Reed Printing, got an avalanche of calls from San Diego after Advanced Web Offset closed. The Ontario printer took on more business this past year — as a result of other printing presses closing — making it the company’s biggest sales year in its 37-year history.
In addition to taking on more business from San Diego, he said production is up 40 percent since another business — SCNG Printing, which used to print the Orange County Register at its Anaheim facility — closed at the end of 2021. (The Orange County Register is now being printed at SCNG’S facility in Riverside.)
Reed grew up in the printing business and bought Reed Printing from his father around the 2008 financial crisis and since then, there’s been a decline in the number of printing establishments across the industry. But, there has not been a decline in revenue; the industry trade group Printing United Alliance estimates that revenue rose from $91.5 billion in 2009 to $112.2 billion in 2022.
Reed’s managed to keep his printing business profitable by serving niche communities.
A majority of his clients are foreign language publications, and he noted that there’s a strong demand for Spanish-language print products. He’s also tried to accommodate smaller clients, like student newspapers. Reed said now the challenge is that they are at capacity and can’t take on more work.
“As a businessman looking at the numbers there’s no reason for me to think, at least in my corner of Southern California … print is not dying,” he said. “My heart’s really heavy because we’re actually turning people away because we just don’t have press time right now.”
One of the big constraints is labor.
Tom Ling, 55, the president and CEO of Advantage Color Graphics — the Anaheim company that acquired Advanced Web Offset in San Diego — echoed that maintaining a pipeline of new skilled workers in an aging industry like print is not easy.
While the rising cost of labor is one thing all businesses have dealt with, the printing industry contends with an aging workforce and a business model that relies on passing on the craft of printing. Both Reed and Ling said they avoided layoffs during the pandemic and credit their employees for carrying on the printing trade.
Ling said his company has acquired printing presses — like in the case of Advanced Web Offset — as a way to grow his business and help other business owners who want to exit the printing industry. Ling’s company has a strong presence in California and he said the owners of Advanced Web Offset approached him about buying the business last summer. In addition to periodicals, his company prints everything from promotional pamphlets to packaging and books.
He said that as more people in the industry retire, he has acquired businesses to keep printing operations going.
Throughout the pandemic, paper shortages have plagued the industry and even after supply chains smoothed out, the costs have skyrocketed. Other industry challenges include managing the logistics and tight deadlines of print publications as well as rising prices for ink and gasoline.
Ultimately, keeping printing ventures sustainable relies on navigating these factors and making business decisions that pencil out. Ling said that when Advantage Color Graphics acquired Advanced Web Offset in San Diego, they had to temporarily stop printing some papers and some smaller accounts.
“It’s never personal,” he said, but it’s “the financial pressures, the business pressures .... that leads us to that conclusion of not printing.”
Ling said they had to make those decisions while the businesses changed hands. He says they have since been able to print some smaller publications like school newspapers.
But for some publications, Ling’s company was not a good fit.
What newspapers mean to the community
For 40 years Semanario Zeta was printed in San Diego County and delivered across the border to Mexico. Printing in San Diego alleviated the risk of potential censorship as Zeta publishes investigative and accountability reporting about powerful people in Tijuana, said Gaby Olivares, a manager at the weekly newspaper.
She said Zeta tried working with Advantage Color Graphics, but encountered logistical issues at the border, scheduling snags and what she described as a lack of timely responses from the company, which led the publication to search for a new printer.
Zeta hit the same wall as the San Diego publications when they realized that there were no other options for printing newspapers in the county.
“The pandemic ... created a lot of chaos, and it’s understandable. But I mean, the main thing is, how do you put publications … at risk like this? Because everything felt out of the blue,” Olivares said.
Zeta stopped working with Advantage Color Graphics, and is now being printed in Mexico for the first time. Despite the challenges to find a new printer, Olivares said it’s been going well and it was important for Zeta to keep the print tradition alive.
While the newspaper has a website, Olivares said print remains a reputable source for people to understand what’s going on in the region, especially while misinformation can run rampant online. Every Friday, Zeta is purchased at convenience stores, and generations of families hawk newspapers on the street and sell them to people waiting to cross the border. It’s part of the community’s way of life.
Phyllis Pfeiffer, publisher of the U-T Community Press, manages the production of 11 San Diego County publications that stretch from Ramona to La Jolla. When she was told by Advantage Color Graphics that her publications would temporarily not be printed for a couple of weeks, she knew taking a break was never an option.
She sees publishing these newspapers as a matter of preserving the identity of a community.
The U-T Community Press is owned by the same company as The San Diego Union-tribune and Los Angeles Times. This relationship helped Pfeiffer secure a spot at the Los Angeles Times’ downtown printing facility on short notice.
But, it was a stressful process to completely reformat all of the newspapers to fit the new machines. In order to meet deadlines and obligations to advertisers, she said her team did a month’s worth of work in just four days.
Despite the challenges, Pfeiffer is optimistic that print isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“We are basically the tie that binds a community together,” she said. “People say they live in La Jolla. People say they live in Encinitas. People say they live in Rancho Santa Fe. They don’t say they live in San Diego. So where there is that strong sense of identity, having a local newspaper helps perpetuate that.”