The Independent and its Sunday sister title will cut a quarter of their editorial staff as management attempts to save ten million pounds in what many are calling one of the most brutal cuts to hit the United Kingdom newspaper industry in recent years. By early 2009, a total of 90 employees out of 424 in its London office will be made redundant.

The majority of the cuts – approximately 60 jobs – will come from the 250 editorial staff. Simon Kelner, managing editor of Independent News and Media UK, said that there was no other way to safeguard the future of the newspapers. According to Kelner, the business had been struggling with the decline in advertising and circulation as the effects of the recession hit.

There is also structural pressure from the migration of revenues and readers onto the Internet. Analysts believe that the titles are losing up to ten million pounds a year. Most of the redundancies will probably be in its production processes, in particular sub-editors. The Independent and Independent on Sunday have the smallest circulations of any quality UK newspaper and lose less than The Guardian, Observer, and The Times.

Presidential candidate Barrack Obama has stormed the election race, utilising the power of the internet.

The senator has used blogs, Facebook, and YouTube, resulting in what some believe to be the key to his lead in popularity.
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The groundwork for Hewlett Packard’s Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab was set in place in March 2008 when the company restructured its Research and Development division known as HP Labs, to intensify its focus on fewer project. To aid in this endeavor, 23 labs were set up all over the world with an attention to “information explosion,” dynamic cloud services, content transformation, and intelligent infrastructure.

HP has identified their immediate problem as pursuing a green agenda, predicting a possible conflict between IT departments and facilities teams – productive workers utilizing more powerful servers and PCs vs. requirements that often pay the energy bills. Common ground may be reached before focusing on the wider business needed to save costs in the datacenter. Rising power requirements will force some companies to relocate their datacenters due to power shortages with some relocating as far as Norway for their wind energy and Iceland for its geothermal energy.

United States companies are criticized for over-cooling their datacenters because the cost of cooling has surpassed the cost of powering the actual equipment. A recent survey found that 44% of United Kingdom-based IT leaders believe that sustainability is a board-level issue and 30% anticipate increases in their budget for technologies that support this issue. Sustainable practices include virtualization and datacenter consolidation.

Wapping, the United Kingdom’s most iconic print site closed its doors in April 2008 with a final run of approximately 60,000 copies of The Sunday Times, ending a 22-year stint. All of the newspapers previously printed at Wapping moved to News International’s supersite in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, the biggest newspaper print plant on the planet. The Sun and The News of the World had already made the move earlier this year.

In the mid-1980s News International’s owner Rupert Murdoch decided to move the company and presses out of Fleet Street to Wapping. This move provoked 6,000 trade unionists to go on strike on January 24, 1986 in protest. News International countered by serving dismissal notices to everyone who took part and replaced them with non-printers – a controversial move as most of Fleet Street’s print sites could only employ union members. Several of the marches and protests turned violent with 393 police officers injured and 900 people convicted of offences associated with the protests. The strike finally ended in February 1987.

Murdoch decided in 2004 that a new, 660 million pound facility would be built in Broxbourne and unlike the previous move, there were no incidents. The final night in Wapping was an emotional one for many as it signaled the end of an era.

In an effort to survive in an increasingly competitive marketplace, companies have become one-stop print shops that offer products outside of their core range. For example, paper merchants have not only diversified and increased their product range, but also run the risk of spreading themselves too thin and this is a potentially risky move. There is also the danger of diversifying resources and moving into an unknown market that can be very competitive filled with companies that have more expertise and experience.

Robert Horne and PaperCo are two examples of paper merchants who have diversified over the years and established one-stop shops. Horne stocks all kinds of paper from all over the world. PaperCo has expanded its product range with the purchase of several companies including Donington Packaging, 1st Class Packaging and Parkside Packaging – all part of the industrial packaging industry. This has made PaperCo a single source option.

However, the general trend among printers is to resist becoming a one-stop shop because of credit issues with a desire to get back to basics with simpler business models.