The complexity of updating North America’s depressed print newspaper industry is brought home by news from Charlotte, North Carolina (writes Peter Coleman).

There, the daily Observer has announced plans to buy Dow Jones’ Wall Street Journal plant in the city, and print both titles.

The apparent win-win deal enables the McClatchy title to escape flexo production in favour of more colourful and cost-effective offset… and frees it to sell real estate to which it was anchored by the obsolete presses.

Dow Jones – which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s “new” News Corp – prints North and South Carolina editions of the WSJ and Barron’s business magazine on TKS presses in the University district.

The deal was announced on Wednesday and is expected to close “within a few weeks”.

Dow Jones has about 22 full-time employees at its plant, and the Observer plans to move about 20 of its approximately 38 full-time press-related workers to the new facility. But publisher Ann Caulkins says the number could rise if Dow Jones workers who are already trained on the presses there elect not to stay on. Observer employees who aren’t offered jobs at either facility will be given a severance package.

So how many people does it take to print a couple of daily newspapers? Hopefully there will be some cash on the size to take advantage of modern control technology.

Sweetening the deal of course – in theory, at least – is the real estate side story:

The Observer picks up a nine-acre site, but finally has the opportunity to leave its longstanding premises in a fashionable part of the city. A 2011 tax valuation put the main building at US$21 million, less than half the total the McClatchy pension fund owns in the city.

Instead of accommodation “set up for the old school newspaper” Calkins says they’re eyeing premises that reflect its digital future – and reduced staff numbers – preferably still in the business district. Readership however, is higher than ever, she says, counting both print and online at 842,000 a week.

A report in the newspaper details that Sacramento-based McClatchy Co turned over the Observer’s property, together with that of six other newspapers, to the pension fund in 2011 to cover a $50 million obligation. It pays the fund $4 million a year to rent the property of the seven newspapers under a ten-year lease.

At least the fund, which would have to approve any sale of the property, is provided for. And the newspaper gets to escape an oversize and obsolete plant while still discharging its obligations to the past.