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  3. In the newsprint market, prices have risen by over 50％ in a matter of months. The cost of paper that feeds into presses around t

In the newsprint market, prices have risen by over 50％ in a matter of months. The cost of paper that feeds into presses around t

admin2022-12-09  100
问题     In the newsprint market, prices have risen by over 50％ in a matter of months. The cost of paper that feeds into presses around the world is rising to record highs.
    When times were good, before ads shifted online, newspapers had a supportive partnership with paper mills. As ads departed and circulations fell, newspapers and paper mills are now at the shouting stage.
    Paper mills had the worst of it for years as newspapers reduced pages, went wholly digital or shut for good. The papers were able to hammer down the cost of newsprint from firms fighting for business as demand declined. Price-taking paper mills suffered in silence. Many hesitated to shut massive machines costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
    That hesitance has disappeared; mills are taking out newsprint capacity and diversifying. Many mills are converting machines to make packaging. UPM, a Finnish firm, announced this year the sale of its Shotton newsprint mill in Wales to a Turkish maker of containerboard and packaging. For JCS Volga, a Russian mill, newsprint used to account for 70％ of production; now half of what it makes is packaging.
    The pandemic, with people working from home, meant even fewer newspaper purchases, which depressed demand for newsprint and increased the pain for paper suppliers. In the past 24 months European mills have responded by shutting almost a fifth of their newsprint capacity.
    Then economies reopened. Newsprint demand shot up. That, combined with much reduced capacity and coupled with soaring energy prices, has resulted in a price shock.
    Newspaper firms reckon this amounts to breaking contracts. European newspapers will have to pay newsprint prices that are 50％—70％ higher in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the year before. As for their counterparts in Asia and Oceania, they are facing prices around 25％ to 45％ above their usual level.
    Germany’s print and media industry association has warned that mills are going to force newspapers to dump paper editions, hurting each other in the process. But mills can sell packaging instead. "We’re not going to save the publishing industry by being unprofitable ourselves," says the executive of JCS Volga.
    For some publishers, price rises will wipe out profits. They will need to do further restructuring involving axing titles and layoffs. That will lower demand and nudge the market back towards equilibrium. But newspapers will have more hard conversations about paper. More digitization is one possible reply to the soaring prices of newsprint.
In a declining market, paper mills have converted to be________.
选项 A、passive price-takers
B、capable co-participants
C、manipulators of newsprint
D、active market promoters
答案B
解析 细节题。根据顺序出题原则可定位至第八、九段。第八段第二句提到，mills can sell packaging instead(造纸厂还可以转型销售包装)，由此可知，在市场衰退的过程中，造纸厂已经从一开始的价格接受者转变为有能力的市场参与者，因此选项B正确。A项属于张冠李戴，“被动的价格接受者”是对市场衰退最初阶段造纸厂的描述，故排除该选项。C项属于过度推理，新闻用纸受到几个因素的影响而价格飙升，并非是造纸厂操纵的结果，故排除该选项。D项属于张冠李戴，最后一段提到，报社的一系列改变会推动市场回归平衡，实际上以JCS Volga主管为代表的造纸厂一方并无意愿牺牲利益推动市场回归平衡，故排除该选项。故本题答案为B项。
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