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WASHINGTON, D.C. – For years, George Arwady watched as the disruptive power of the internet battered America’s newspaper industry.

But the publisher of The Republican, a daily in Springfield, Mass., believed the bleeding triggered by readers shifting to less-lucrative online news platforms had finally stabilized – after erasing thousands of jobs.

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That all changed earlier this year, he says, when duties of up to 30 per cent were slapped on imported Canadian newsprint, causing costs to suddenly spike in a still-teetering business.

At Arwady’s paper, and the seven others The Republican prints on contract, publishers have been eliminating pages – and the local news that used to appear on them – reducing the number of copies they place in newsstands and trimming jobs to cope with the inflation.

“The market is getting murdered,” Arwady told the National Post. “I see these people are literally struggling to stay in business. The little guys I print, they have a hard time to pay my bills, some of them.”