80% Price Hike in Printing Services: The Death of Print Newspapers in Egypt?

Who reads print anymore? Of course, reading print newspapers and magazines has been slowly decreasing with the rise of the digitalisation of news and words. But that hasn't stopped Egyptian press from distributing their issues in print, with a large sector of citizens reading them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This explains the outrage that a few entities have had when they were faced with Al Ahram Printing Services's decision to raise prices up to 80 percent, fearing the disappearance of print press in Egypt by early 2017.

Needless to say, the decision is linked to the Egyptian pound devaluation - and, since most of the printing materials are imported and must be paid for in dollars, the costs have surged. Daily News Egypt sought out two sides of the story and, interestingly enough, the privately-owned outlets are more concerned than state-owned Al Ahram.

Essam Kamel, Editor-in-Chief of privately-owned Veto newspaper, expressed to Daily News Egypt that his newspaper's board refused to increase the cost of their publication, saying it will be too much of a burden to bear on the average Egyptian reader. Ultimately, they have resolved to print less copies to cover the cost. Privately-run newspaper El Mesryoon's Editor-in-Chief, Gamal Sultan, expressed similar concerns, telling Daily News Egypt, “It will lead numerous print media outlets to declare bankruptcy as the average Egyptian citizen will not be able to afford all these price hikes.”

The real obstacle here becomes those who cannot afford internet or may not be very technologically literate - like senior citizens who depend on reading print for keeping up with global and local issues. However, Editor–in-Chief of state-run newspaper Al-Ahram Mohamed Abdel Al-Hadi stated the obvious reality of the USD verses EGP scenario, and asserted that print journalism will not see a downfall as it is still favoured.

It's not a matter of favour anymore as much as it is a matter of affordability for both the seller and buyer - soon enough, in 2017, we may witness the gradual disappearance of print from kiosks and book stands.