How to control newspaper printing costs from a management perspective

In recent years, the relevant persons in charge of foreign major newspapers such as "USA Today" and "New York Times" have all announced that they will stop the paper version of the newspaper at a certain point in the future. It was closed on July 12. In China, since 2015, including the "Beijing Times", "Morning Daily", "City Weekly", "Life Daily", "Shanghai Commercial Daily", "Changzhutan News", many paper media have announced the suspension or suspension of publications. .

A large number of traditional newspapers at home and abroad have stopped publishing paper editions. The root cause is mostly the continuous decline in circulation and the accelerated loss of advertisements, while the production costs of newspapers are increasing. This fully reflects the decisive significance of newspaper production costs for the survival and development of a newspaper in the face of the impact of new media and sluggish paper media. This article discusses how to use management methods to control the sharp rise of printing costs from the perspective of newspaper publishing management.

Newspaper printing costs

The publishing costs of newspapers can be divided into four categories according to cost categories: editing and editing costs, advertising costs, printing costs, and distribution costs. Among them, editing and advertising costs and advertising costs are fixed costs, while printing costs and distribution costs vary with the changes in newspaper circulation. It belongs to variable cost, which includes paper cost, printing fee, issuance rate, etc.

The printing costs of newspapers mainly include plate making fee, printing fee and paper fee. According to the current market price, black and white printing requires 2 CTP versions, dual color requires 8 yuan, CTP unit price is about 100 yuan / folio; black and white printing costs about 15 yuan / thousand folio, double color requires 65 yuan / thousand Folio; Double color paper consumes about 22.1 g / folio, black and white paper consumes about 21.2 g / folio, and the paper price is about 5000 yuan / ton.

Applying the above unit price, the printing cost of a newspaper can be roughly calculated based on the circulation, format and number of different newspapers. Taking 45 printing points across the country, and publishing 3 million copies of a 24-page folio national newspaper every day, with a volume of nearly 20 million folios per day, the printing cost in a year reaches more than 200 million yuan.

An Analysis of the Reasons for the Increase of Newspaper Printing Costs

In recent years, newspaper printing costs have been showing a slight upward trend. The main reasons are as follows:

The first is the rise in circulation. Judging from the development of the Chinese newspaper industry, the Metropolis Daily has experienced a severe decline, while the circulation of the party newspaper has steadily increased. The increase in the circulation of party newspapers directly led to the increase in printing costs.

The second is the expanded color printing of newspapers. In recent years, in order to cope with the impact of new media, many paper media have adopted expansion and color printing to maintain their vitality and influence and improve their readability, which has directly led to the increase in printing costs.

The third is the increase in the number of dots. Newspapers are highly time-sensitive products, and there is no value without time-effectiveness. Therefore, many newspapers, especially national newspapers, have a number of different printing points across the country. The direct method, and the new printing point printing will also increase part of the cost.

The fourth is the market price increase of paper and plate materials. Raw materials such as paper and plates are necessary for newspaper printing. After experiencing the market downturn and the bottom of prices, the prices of newspaper printing raw materials are gradually picking up.

For a huge base of hundreds of millions of printing costs, even if the increase rate is 1%, it is not a small expenditure. On the basis of market pricing, whether there is room for compressibility, and how to effectively control the printing costs of newspapers with long-distance circulation and multi-point printing through management methods is a problem that requires in-depth consideration in newspaper publishing management.

Management measures to control rising costs

Generally, the publishing management department of a newspaper office is an administrative department within the newspaper office. It undertakes the indirect management of newspaper printing and does not directly participate in production. Therefore, it cannot directly reduce costs from the production link. Management reforms such as improving the management system, reducing information asymmetry, updating settlement methods in a timely manner, and changing settlement standards will have a direct impact on printing units, and will also have a certain effect on controlling printing costs. Starting from the actual situation of the newspaper, the following measures can be used to control the increase in printing costs from a management perspective.

1. Improve the management system

It is an important job responsibility of newspaper publishing management department to manage the printing of newspapers at various printing spots. Cost-related expenditures such as the use of plate materials and paper consumption also mainly depend on the contract constraints. The information asymmetry between the printing point and the management department will weaken the management efficiency and cause cost loss. How to reduce information asymmetry is very important to control costs.

To reduce information asymmetry, on the one hand, the management department needs to formulate a more complete management system, implement its own management intention through detailed and clear contract terms, and strictly manage production and settlement work. At the same time, through irregular on-site spot checks, the implementation of the printing dot system is checked, and the production of each printing dot has a global grasp, and then the management system and the contract of printing are updated in accordance with the relevant situation.

On the other hand, technology is also an important means to reduce information asymmetry. At present, many newspapers have built their own production management platforms using technical means. Similar to the ERP system, the system data is filled in real time, so that the management department can share data with the printing point, which greatly reduces the information asymmetry. For example, the People ’s Daily Technology Department has developed the People ’s Daily News Publishing Publishing Supply and Settlement System. The system makes full use of technological innovation, integrates the production process into system management, and improves the efficiency and effectiveness of all aspects of production.

2. Update billing method

An important feature of management is lag, and newspaper publishing management and settlement are no exception. First, technological development, then market price changes, and finally management. When the time is ripe, the settlement method is updated in accordance with technological development and market conditions in a timely manner, so that the printing cost of newspapers can be as close to the market price as possible, which is an important aspect of controlling printing costs. .

With the development of printing technology, the traditional film and PS plate-making methods have been basically converted to CTP direct plate-making systems. The price of CTP has been stabilized at a low point from the strange goods when it was just raised, which is of great significance to the reduction of printing costs. . However, many newspapers still use the traditional film and PS version to calculate the settlement method. Updating this settlement method can save a lot of costs for newspapers.

3. Change the settlement standard

The settlement standards of the newspaper office and each printing point are mostly set by the publishing management departments according to the relevant conditions at the time of establishing the printing point. They are generally used for many years and need to be changed, such as the printing fee per thousand folio newspapers, the settlement price of the plate and the number of sets used. ,and many more. However, changing the settlement standard is an important change in the industry. It involves the whole body at once, and the change must be based on the premise of stability and gradually transition.

Ten years ago, the printing of newspapers was dominated by black and white. Now, the printing technology of color newspapers is very mature. There are more and more color newspapers. Most newspapers have more color printed sheets than black and white printed sheets. More than three times the black and white printing fee. However, the offset printing fee for color newspapers has been maintained at a relatively high level, and most of them are fixed wages, and no floating wage management of high quality and excellent prices has been implemented. If the reform of floating wages for color newspapers is carried out and the fixed wages are changed to high-quality premium prices, it will not only promote the improvement of the printing quality of newspapers, but also reduce printing costs to a certain extent by formulating new settlement standards.

4. Low-cost establishment of new stamps

Timeliness is the life of a newspaper. The most direct and effective way to increase the timeliness of newspapers is to create new printing points, but new printing points mean increased costs. How to balance the relationship between the two is of great significance to control printing costs and expenditures.

With the decline in the volume of metropolitan newspapers, some printing factories will have surplus printing power, and the enthusiasm for printing foreign newspapers is very high. In this case, the newspaper office can actively explore ways to establish new printing points at low cost through cooperation and joint construction. , To achieve the purpose of improving the timeliness of reporting under the premise of controlling costs and expenses.

For example, a newspaper office constructs a sub-printing point. By cooperating with a local newspaper, the one-time cost of the new printing point is borne by the local newspaper, and the annual plate cost is offset by the revenue of the outdoor LED billboard cooperation between the two media. It can be described as a model of low-cost establishment of printing points, and is also a successful example of cooperation between the Central Party Newspaper and the local Party Newspaper.

5. Choose the printing bidding mechanism in time

The adoption of a bidding mechanism is an important symbol of the complete marketization of newspaper printing. Tendering and bidding are organized, procedural, and standardized market transactions. Tendering, as one of the most important procurement methods, is a means to select the most reasonable labor provider and the premise for the most reasonable allocation of resources.

For the printing work of newspapers, the introduction of the bidding mechanism can control the rise of printing costs to the greatest extent. At present, the China Civil Aviation News and the China Women ’s Daily adopt a printing bidding mechanism, and select the printing unit of the next year through bidding and tendering each year.

6. Reasonably arrange the layout

From the perspective of newspaper printing costs, double-sided color printing is higher than single-sided color printing and higher than black-and-white printing, and the cost of two single-sided color printing is higher than a double-sided color plus a black-and-white version. Therefore, a reasonable arrangement of the color version can be Reduce printing costs. However, most newspaper editors and editors do not have this awareness in the layout arrangement, and can be strengthened appropriately.

On the other hand, as an important source of income for newspapers, the printing cost is also an important part of the urgent need to strengthen management. The analysis of advertising costs generally does not include printing costs. It is true that black-and-white advertisements do not require additional printing costs, but newspaper advertisements are predominantly in color editions, and color-page advertisements need to bear the extra printing costs of newspapers changing from black-and-white printing to color printing. According to estimates, the increase in printing fees for a national newspaper due to color advertisements accounted for more than 70% of the total increase in newspaper printing costs throughout the year, and there was very little left after offsetting the revenue paid by advertising companies. In response to this situation, the newspaper office can calculate the correlation function between the number of color advertisements published and the printing fee expenditure according to the specific conditions of advertising and the revenues handed over to obtain the best ratio, so as to moderately control the Printing costs rose.

To sum up, effective management can produce economic benefits, break the routine, conduct in-depth research, strengthen management innovation, work harder to improve the work scientifically, institutionalize and save printing costs, and control newspaper printing costs from a management perspective. It is feasible and effective to increase and reduce the cost and expenditure between the various aspects of newspaper production.

(The author unit is the Publishing Management Office of People's Daily)

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