By Mary L. Van Meter
Publisher
CHICAGO — Last month’s Graph Expo hinted at some intriguing technologies to come for newspapers, including so-called “lights-out” digital production and variable printing options for both press and mailrooms.
Among developments (in alphabetical order):
Agfa: Upgraded apps
Agfa introduced ApogeeX 4.0, an upgrade of its PDF- and JDF-enabled digital workflow software. Among new features is support for Adobe Systems Inc.’s PDF Print Engine, enhanced automation, a digital QuickStrip for page rendering and ink-savings capabilities. Additionally, Agfa rolled out a new version of its OptiInk ink optimization app that it contends can reduce ink costs by as much as 30 percent. Finally, Agfa showcased a high-throughput violet computer-to-plate engine for its Avalon LF XT+ platesetter. Look for Agfa to unveil a UV digital printer for newspapers at drupa 2008.
Cold Jet: Press cleaning service
Cold Jet demonstrated its system for cleaning pressrooms with dry ice blasting equipment. The system uses an air blasting technique to clean surfaces by embrittling the dirt particles to be removed.
Denex: Double-copy detection
Denex premiered its Pro double-copy-detection system. The device, outfitted with application software and mounted on the conveyor, is aimed at eliminating inserter jams caused by double copies in the gripper conveyor. It also detects single copies that can cause miscounts in bundles where there should be two copies per gripper.
Carl Carroll, Denex’ sales manager, displays the company’s laser copy sensor with Pro double-copy detection.
Dynaric: Cross-strapper
Dynaric displayed its latest automatic cross-strapping machine, the NP5000X. The equipment uses AC servo drive technology and can produce up to 20 cross-strapped bundles per minute. Touchscreen controls streamline management, Dynaric said.
Dynaric demonstrated its high-speed NP5000X cross-strapper at the show.
GMG: New color management
GMG trotted out new versions of its color management apps, GMG ColorProof, GMG ColorServer and GMG InkOptimizer. Version 4.5 of the apps feature new profile and driver updates as well as stronger image sharpening and broader inkjet printer support, among other capabilities. More than 100 U.S. newspapers use the supplier’s software for color management, including The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.
GMI: Press monitoring app
Graphics Microsystems Inc. unveiled Spectral Press Expert, a closed-loop press performance and diagnostic app that provides trend analysis and event triggers that can alert operators in the event of press problems. GMI said it engineered the software with more than 180 levels of diagnostics. It uses colorimetric measurements to assess paper, ink and the colors produced for solids, traps and grays and then compares the press’ performance against known data in an effort to match standard targets. The browser-based SPX lets users monitor press performance remotely and easily send operational data to other users, GMI said.
Nela: Slip Sheeter
Nela introduced Slip Sheeter, a device that automatically places slipsheets between plates that have been punched and bent.
Plates are then transported via conveyor to a barcode reader to determine if the plate needs to be stacked or transported into the distribution unit. If a plate is marked as “store with slipsheets,” a flip arm transports the plate in the stacker. The slipsheets rest between each plate. The unit holds approximately 30 slipsheets (depending on thickness), Nela said.
Nipson: Spot color add-on
Nipson, which counts some European newspapers among its customers, introduced spot color add-on capabilities to its line of VaryPress digital presses. The SCS Spot Color System lets users add between one and four spot colors to their production, the company said. VaryPress digital presses can support production speeds of up to 500 feet per minute on a printable web of 18.5 inches (web width of 20.5 inches) with 600 dot-per-inch quality. The press can be equipped with the Hunkeler finishing system.
Rima-System: Stackers
Rima-System exhibited its RS 51 and RS 36 high-speed stackers as well as its horizontal log stackers. The RS 51 is a non-compensating vertical lift stacker while the RS 36 is an indexing compensating stacker. It’s aimed at shingled streams. Meantime, Rima said Belarusian newspaper printer BPH installed three RS 3217 stackers behind its MAN Roland Uniset press.
Dutch newspaper printer Janssen Pers purchased an RS 830 trimming line while Italian printer Sarnub installed a system consisting of an 830 trimmer in conjunction with a 36 high-speed stacker, the firm said.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
ChiTrib launches civic sites
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The Chicago Tribune last month threw its hat into the citizen journalism ring as it launched TribLocal, an online publishing venture using software from Kodak and Advanced Technical Solutions Inc.
The newspaper’s (Monday-Friday, 576,132; Saturday, 501,324; Sunday, 937,907) pilot program consists of two new Web sites covering nine Chicago suburban communities.
“Once registered, users will be able to read and submit news stories and photos similar to other citizen journalism sites,” said Ted Biedron, president of Chicagoland Publishing Co., a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune.
Ted Biedron
The first cluster of communities covered in the project include St. Charles, Batavia, Geneva, Elburn and Maple Park. The second consists of Orland Park, Orland Hills, Tinley Park and Homer Glen. The towns included are just a handful of the scores of suburbs in the Chicagoland area.
“The entire Chicago area contains 170-plus suburbs so with any project of this nature you’ll have to make sure you are scalable,” Biedron said.
The content on the sites is a mixture of news stories generated from TribLocal journalists as well as local residents. Two professional journalists and one sales rep will cover each cluster.
Online and print
For now, TribLocal will be an online-only venture. But Biedron said the Tribune plans to print microzoned tab editions once the TribLocal sites gain traction. Each edition will encompass about 12,000 to 15,000 copies and be produced by third-party printers.
The tabs will be delivered to home subscribers and available with single copies, he said.
The Tribune started exploring the idea of launching a citizen journalism program last spring, working with vendor mWave, which ATS acquired earlier this year.
“Last year we chose mWave, they were the original vendor and we felt they had an opportunity to create something unique,” he said.
The Tribune is the first newspaper to be using Kodak’s new Microzone Publishing Solution, which includes software that lets newspapers manage citizen journalism Web sites and associated print products.
“We worked together to develop the citizen journalism portal and Tribocal will be the first newspaper to use the new software,” he said. “There’s a lot of underlying technology that enables the site to post online quickly and efficiently.”
Kodak signed an agreement with ATS to jointly sell and support the microzone publishing software.
Kodak, ATS teaming up for venture
“We have a very tight go-to-market partnership that will see both Kodak and ATS sales people promoting and selling the Microzone solution in the industry,” said ATS New Media Group Business Development Director David Monks.
Kodak’s MPS consists of three products, Citizen Journalism, Advertising and Microzone Management.
“We think of it as a multichannel publishing system, enabling newspaper publishers to produce relevant content on the Web as well as in print,” said Monks.
Monks said the MPS’ core is the management app, which lets newspaper publishers assemble content, edit copy, format pages and publish output for print and online versions.
“It will enable publishers to have as many portals as they want,” he said. “They can target as finely as they want to their readership. It may not even be a community, it might be a specialty organization, but the portal will be configured according to those demographics.”
Monks said MPS’ features would let publishers reduce the amount of oversight needed to manage the community sites, although he doubts most publishers would relinquish control.
“My guess is that most newspaper publishers will not want to do that. They will have an editorial staff that will check the stories being published,” he said. “The solution we are delivering provides some substantial tools and automation features that enable publishers to do a number of tasks as they determine what should and shouldn’t be published.”
The Citizen Journalism app lets users submit stories, photographs and community listing events while the ad management module allows advertisers to oversee how they place, and pay for, ads slated for both online and print.
Paul Lynch, the Tribune’s senior manager of quality and commercial print, said the paper received positive feedback from communities in the TribLocal area as well as inquires from neighboring communities asking when their sites are going up.
“Without a doubt we’ll be adding to the list of communities,” he said. “Local advertisers have begun to fill our ad inventory, something that bodes well for this new publishing model. The Kodak reverse publishing module will let us deliver narrowly targeted print products economically.”
Associate Editor
The Chicago Tribune last month threw its hat into the citizen journalism ring as it launched TribLocal, an online publishing venture using software from Kodak and Advanced Technical Solutions Inc.
The newspaper’s (Monday-Friday, 576,132; Saturday, 501,324; Sunday, 937,907) pilot program consists of two new Web sites covering nine Chicago suburban communities.
“Once registered, users will be able to read and submit news stories and photos similar to other citizen journalism sites,” said Ted Biedron, president of Chicagoland Publishing Co., a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune.
Ted BiedronThe first cluster of communities covered in the project include St. Charles, Batavia, Geneva, Elburn and Maple Park. The second consists of Orland Park, Orland Hills, Tinley Park and Homer Glen. The towns included are just a handful of the scores of suburbs in the Chicagoland area.
“The entire Chicago area contains 170-plus suburbs so with any project of this nature you’ll have to make sure you are scalable,” Biedron said.
The content on the sites is a mixture of news stories generated from TribLocal journalists as well as local residents. Two professional journalists and one sales rep will cover each cluster.
Online and print
For now, TribLocal will be an online-only venture. But Biedron said the Tribune plans to print microzoned tab editions once the TribLocal sites gain traction. Each edition will encompass about 12,000 to 15,000 copies and be produced by third-party printers.
The tabs will be delivered to home subscribers and available with single copies, he said.
The Tribune started exploring the idea of launching a citizen journalism program last spring, working with vendor mWave, which ATS acquired earlier this year.
“Last year we chose mWave, they were the original vendor and we felt they had an opportunity to create something unique,” he said.
The Tribune is the first newspaper to be using Kodak’s new Microzone Publishing Solution, which includes software that lets newspapers manage citizen journalism Web sites and associated print products.
“We worked together to develop the citizen journalism portal and Tribocal will be the first newspaper to use the new software,” he said. “There’s a lot of underlying technology that enables the site to post online quickly and efficiently.”
Kodak signed an agreement with ATS to jointly sell and support the microzone publishing software.
Kodak, ATS teaming up for venture
“We have a very tight go-to-market partnership that will see both Kodak and ATS sales people promoting and selling the Microzone solution in the industry,” said ATS New Media Group Business Development Director David Monks.
Kodak’s MPS consists of three products, Citizen Journalism, Advertising and Microzone Management.
“We think of it as a multichannel publishing system, enabling newspaper publishers to produce relevant content on the Web as well as in print,” said Monks.
Monks said the MPS’ core is the management app, which lets newspaper publishers assemble content, edit copy, format pages and publish output for print and online versions.
“It will enable publishers to have as many portals as they want,” he said. “They can target as finely as they want to their readership. It may not even be a community, it might be a specialty organization, but the portal will be configured according to those demographics.”
Monks said MPS’ features would let publishers reduce the amount of oversight needed to manage the community sites, although he doubts most publishers would relinquish control.
“My guess is that most newspaper publishers will not want to do that. They will have an editorial staff that will check the stories being published,” he said. “The solution we are delivering provides some substantial tools and automation features that enable publishers to do a number of tasks as they determine what should and shouldn’t be published.”
The Citizen Journalism app lets users submit stories, photographs and community listing events while the ad management module allows advertisers to oversee how they place, and pay for, ads slated for both online and print.
Paul Lynch, the Tribune’s senior manager of quality and commercial print, said the paper received positive feedback from communities in the TribLocal area as well as inquires from neighboring communities asking when their sites are going up.
“Without a doubt we’ll be adding to the list of communities,” he said. “Local advertisers have begun to fill our ad inventory, something that bodes well for this new publishing model. The Kodak reverse publishing module will let us deliver narrowly targeted print products economically.”
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Economics still stymie potential of digital printing
By Charlotte Janischewski
Special to Newspapers & Technology
The printed newspaper — most media experts agree — will be with us for many years to come.
However, it is not clear how it will look in 10 or 20 years’ time. The Internet and mobile-based offerings take serious consideration of the trend towards individualization among the population — surely the newspaper will adapt. In the future, will the general newspaper be replaced by a series of newspapers aimed at target audiences, oriented towards specific areas of interest, age groups or even smaller geographical units? Will free newspapers, e-paper editions and download possibilities further hurt print circulations? Developments such as these could benefit digital printing.
Jean-Luc Renaud, technical director of Republicain Lorrain in Metz, France, checks a copy of a newspaper printed on a Kodak digital press during last year’s IfraExpo.
Where do we stand today?
“At drupa 1995, KBA, together with Scitex, showed an inkjet imprinting unit as a component of a conventional newspaper rotary press. It was thought at that time that digital non-impact printing could someday take over parts of the newspaper as an integral component of newspaper production,” said Ifra Research Director Manfred Werfel.
Clearly, that hasn’t happened. Were the expectations of digital printing too great?
Productivity versus flexibility
Although the digital process has been implemented into the newspaper production environment, it was not specifically developed for newspaper applications and is (still) not optimized for it. In newspaper printing, the top priority was to produce a consistent print product on a mass scale and within the shortest possible time; therefore the focus was put on maximum speed. In contrast, with digital, which has its origins in the office sector, the aim was to produce many different single documents as efficiently as possible. Consequently, there are very different tasks and concepts concerned here. Simply exchanging the processes for these applications inevitably leads to disappointing results on both sides.
Among the most critical issues: speed.
The speed of the digital process has increased dramatically, but it is still much slower than offset printing.
If it is only the web speeds that are compared, offset printing, with about 50 feet per second, is six times faster than the fastest inkjet digital printer (which is why digital/offset combinations are not worthy of consideration at the present time).
On top of this, it should not be forgotten that an offset press prints not just on one web (as a digital press does) and one page on each side of the web (as a digital press does), but in a 4-by-2 configuration, it can print two times four pages, multiplied by the number of webs used.
Another issue: cost.
Cost considerations
Digital printing’s so-called click-charge model drives the cost digital production.
This use-dependent charge (per 1,000 copies) covers the maintenance costs and is, in a manner of speaking, calculated into the selling price of the system.
The click charge is a thorn in the side of the publishers, as it raises the per-item production costs. Fortunately, manufacturers, including Kodak and Oce, have now indicated their openness toward different price models that are appropriate to a commercial utilization of the systems.
Absent the click-charge, production costs now depend on the price of the printers themselves — which can range from $1.7 million for an Oce VarioStream 9230 to more than $5 million for a Kodak Versamark VX5000 — the costs for consumables, especially ink or toner (the latter considerably more expensive); the length of print run/system utilization, and the maintenance contract model.
Under the most favorable conditions, the costs will be about $1.30 per copy. With offset, production costs are estimated at 20 to 25 cents (depending on wage costs).
Today, three main business models are used:
•Decentralized production of small print runs to be able to offer the newspaper the same day — The advantages of so-called distribute and print (first distribute, then print digitally on location) lie in the time saved and economized transport costs, which are felt mostly only with small print runs and long distances.
Digital Newspaper Network, for example, produces 15 titles with thousands of copies each day at seven locations on four continents, according to Oce, which launched DNN in 2001.
SatelliteNewspapers, meantime, plans to use Kodak Versamark systems, among others, to launch its own network.
•Financial and business news as a service for business travelers in airplanes and trains.
•Print-on-demand, where single copies produced on automatic printing systems are distributed at hotels, public areas, or on cruise ships — Hundreds of newspaper titles are offered today worldwide as print-on-demand copies via partner companies, such as NewspaperDirect and SatelliteNewspapers. (Alternatively, there is the possibility to download PDFs from the Internet, an option that is becoming increasingly popular.) Even though many hundreds of thousands of copies are sold monthly worldwide in this way, the bottom line impact at the individual newspaper is almost negligible.
Instead, the main consideration here is customer service and image promotion.
The personal newspaper
Because digital printing is a plateless process, each page can be altered, giving rise to the notion of variable printing.
But how much sense would the individual newspaper make? On the one hand, it would allow a publisher to truly fulfill the personal interests of individual readers, but it would also filter information the reader may not want.
Is that what the newspaper reader really wants: no surprises?
A second aspect concerns costs: Would the reader be willing to pay for this service? Or what would it be worth to the advertiser to be able to address his target audience directly? One-to-one marketing in the newspaper — that would indeed be highly attractive for the advertising industry and lucrative for the publishing house.
Yet the idea is sufficiently appealing to give rise to various concepts, including one called PersonalNews, backed by German software firm Syntops.
According to Gregor Dorsch, Syntops’ director, “PersonalNews enables the customer to compile his own individual newspaper from the pages and sections of international newspaper titles. The product is then digitally printed and delivered to the customer by 7 a.m. on the same day via the regular newspaper delivery channels.”
A pilot test involving about 20 newspapers is scheduled to take place this summer, he said. Among the papers expressing a desire to participate: The Washington Post and Washington Times.
Blending of feeds
Another idea, dubbed Improo, is a “synthesis between the online and offline world,” according to backer Detlef Schoder, a professor at Cologne University.
Improo text will come from a wide range of sources, including newspapers, supplemented by blogs and RSS feeds. The concept will be tested later this year.
Finally, MyObserver, a digitally printed companion to The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, is currently under development (see sidebar, page 46).
Also of interest is a new service provided by the Swiss Post Office (PostMail division), which now offers newspaper printing and distribution from a single source.
Since September, a part of the circulation of the business title L’Agefi for Tessin has been produced and distributed under the direction of PostMail. Before this development, the paper was not delivered on the day of publication in the respective region, which is thought to have motivated many readers to cancel their subscriptions.
Economic efficiency decides
In June 2005, The New York Times launched a digitally printed edition in London. According to Raymond Pearce, vice president of circulation fulfillment, this step did not represent a major venture from the strategy point of view. “It was simply cheaper and faster to print the small European circulation in London instead of flying the copies over from the United States.”
Financial Times — in addition to Borsen in Denmark, Borsenzeitung and Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and Neue Zurcher Zeitung in Switzerland — is one of the pioneers of newspaper digital printing.
In 2002, FT began printing several hundred digital copies for distribution in Johannesburg, South Africa.
However, in 2005, when the circulation rose to 2,500 copies, it went back to offset. “In a manner of speaking, digital printing was a victim of its own success,” said Operations Director Richard Boulton.
The experience in South Africa showed that digital printing is a viable way to enter and develop a market, and then to change to the lower-cost production process after a corresponding level of circulation has been reached.
My Observer: Charlotte’s Web
“Direct marketing on steroids,” is how Peter Vandevanter, former vice president of new ventures for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, describes the company’s My Observer personalized newspaper project (Vandevanter recently moved to MediaNews Group in Denver, where he will serve as vice president of targeted products).
The Charlotte Observer’s My Observer digital printing test involves two dozen subscribers who receive personalized editions wrapped around their home-delivered dailies.
Essentially, The Observer is testing the waters for personalized printing, sending the personalized publication to 24 of its subscribers as part of a test. Each day, the subscribers receive a one-page (two-sided) personalized edition that’s wrapped around their home-delivered daily paper. It features topics that they have pre-selected, as well as targeted ads.
Readers visit a Web site to answer a series of questions to determine their areas of interest. For each answer, an RSS feed is assigned, or users can create their own. Once that step is completed, software sends the feeds to a pagination app, where the are paginated and formatted before a PDF is generated.
The subsequent My Observer is then printed on a Xerox 6060 digital printer, and added to the subscriber’s paper.
It is considered a “premium service,” Vandevanter said, but will be free for subscribers. And it should be profitable, he said.
“It costs us about 25 cents to print that glossy page and 25 cents to deliver it, so if we get a dollar for an ad on the front and a dollar for an ad on the back, we’re profitable.”
Still, until The Observer gets at least 1,000 people receiving the specialized paper, advertising will remain on the back burner. “You need enough to make it worth people’s while.”
The goal is to sign up 5 percent of the paper’s circulation, or about 10,000 readers. More than that would create logistical delivery problems.
Ifra correspondents Caryl Holland and Martin and Cecilia Campbell contributed to this article, as did Dean Roper and Valérie Arnould from the newspaper techniques editorial team.
This article was first published in newspaper techniques, the monthly magazine of Ifra. If you have any comments or questions about these articles, please send them to ntreader@ifra.com.
If you’re interested to learn more about the training and consulting services available to newspapers through Ifra’s joint venture with the Newspaper Association of America, please contact Technical Solutions LLC at info@technical-solutions.org.
Special to Newspapers & Technology
The printed newspaper — most media experts agree — will be with us for many years to come.
However, it is not clear how it will look in 10 or 20 years’ time. The Internet and mobile-based offerings take serious consideration of the trend towards individualization among the population — surely the newspaper will adapt. In the future, will the general newspaper be replaced by a series of newspapers aimed at target audiences, oriented towards specific areas of interest, age groups or even smaller geographical units? Will free newspapers, e-paper editions and download possibilities further hurt print circulations? Developments such as these could benefit digital printing.
Jean-Luc Renaud, technical director of Republicain Lorrain in Metz, France, checks a copy of a newspaper printed on a Kodak digital press during last year’s IfraExpo.
Where do we stand today?
“At drupa 1995, KBA, together with Scitex, showed an inkjet imprinting unit as a component of a conventional newspaper rotary press. It was thought at that time that digital non-impact printing could someday take over parts of the newspaper as an integral component of newspaper production,” said Ifra Research Director Manfred Werfel.
Clearly, that hasn’t happened. Were the expectations of digital printing too great?
Productivity versus flexibility
Although the digital process has been implemented into the newspaper production environment, it was not specifically developed for newspaper applications and is (still) not optimized for it. In newspaper printing, the top priority was to produce a consistent print product on a mass scale and within the shortest possible time; therefore the focus was put on maximum speed. In contrast, with digital, which has its origins in the office sector, the aim was to produce many different single documents as efficiently as possible. Consequently, there are very different tasks and concepts concerned here. Simply exchanging the processes for these applications inevitably leads to disappointing results on both sides.
Among the most critical issues: speed.
The speed of the digital process has increased dramatically, but it is still much slower than offset printing.
If it is only the web speeds that are compared, offset printing, with about 50 feet per second, is six times faster than the fastest inkjet digital printer (which is why digital/offset combinations are not worthy of consideration at the present time).
On top of this, it should not be forgotten that an offset press prints not just on one web (as a digital press does) and one page on each side of the web (as a digital press does), but in a 4-by-2 configuration, it can print two times four pages, multiplied by the number of webs used.
Another issue: cost.
Cost considerations
Digital printing’s so-called click-charge model drives the cost digital production.
This use-dependent charge (per 1,000 copies) covers the maintenance costs and is, in a manner of speaking, calculated into the selling price of the system.
The click charge is a thorn in the side of the publishers, as it raises the per-item production costs. Fortunately, manufacturers, including Kodak and Oce, have now indicated their openness toward different price models that are appropriate to a commercial utilization of the systems.
Absent the click-charge, production costs now depend on the price of the printers themselves — which can range from $1.7 million for an Oce VarioStream 9230 to more than $5 million for a Kodak Versamark VX5000 — the costs for consumables, especially ink or toner (the latter considerably more expensive); the length of print run/system utilization, and the maintenance contract model.
Under the most favorable conditions, the costs will be about $1.30 per copy. With offset, production costs are estimated at 20 to 25 cents (depending on wage costs).
Today, three main business models are used:
•Decentralized production of small print runs to be able to offer the newspaper the same day — The advantages of so-called distribute and print (first distribute, then print digitally on location) lie in the time saved and economized transport costs, which are felt mostly only with small print runs and long distances.
Digital Newspaper Network, for example, produces 15 titles with thousands of copies each day at seven locations on four continents, according to Oce, which launched DNN in 2001.
SatelliteNewspapers, meantime, plans to use Kodak Versamark systems, among others, to launch its own network.
•Financial and business news as a service for business travelers in airplanes and trains.
•Print-on-demand, where single copies produced on automatic printing systems are distributed at hotels, public areas, or on cruise ships — Hundreds of newspaper titles are offered today worldwide as print-on-demand copies via partner companies, such as NewspaperDirect and SatelliteNewspapers. (Alternatively, there is the possibility to download PDFs from the Internet, an option that is becoming increasingly popular.) Even though many hundreds of thousands of copies are sold monthly worldwide in this way, the bottom line impact at the individual newspaper is almost negligible.
Instead, the main consideration here is customer service and image promotion.
The personal newspaper
Because digital printing is a plateless process, each page can be altered, giving rise to the notion of variable printing.
But how much sense would the individual newspaper make? On the one hand, it would allow a publisher to truly fulfill the personal interests of individual readers, but it would also filter information the reader may not want.
Is that what the newspaper reader really wants: no surprises?
A second aspect concerns costs: Would the reader be willing to pay for this service? Or what would it be worth to the advertiser to be able to address his target audience directly? One-to-one marketing in the newspaper — that would indeed be highly attractive for the advertising industry and lucrative for the publishing house.
Yet the idea is sufficiently appealing to give rise to various concepts, including one called PersonalNews, backed by German software firm Syntops.
According to Gregor Dorsch, Syntops’ director, “PersonalNews enables the customer to compile his own individual newspaper from the pages and sections of international newspaper titles. The product is then digitally printed and delivered to the customer by 7 a.m. on the same day via the regular newspaper delivery channels.”
A pilot test involving about 20 newspapers is scheduled to take place this summer, he said. Among the papers expressing a desire to participate: The Washington Post and Washington Times.
Blending of feeds
Another idea, dubbed Improo, is a “synthesis between the online and offline world,” according to backer Detlef Schoder, a professor at Cologne University.
Improo text will come from a wide range of sources, including newspapers, supplemented by blogs and RSS feeds. The concept will be tested later this year.
Finally, MyObserver, a digitally printed companion to The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, is currently under development (see sidebar, page 46).
Also of interest is a new service provided by the Swiss Post Office (PostMail division), which now offers newspaper printing and distribution from a single source.
Since September, a part of the circulation of the business title L’Agefi for Tessin has been produced and distributed under the direction of PostMail. Before this development, the paper was not delivered on the day of publication in the respective region, which is thought to have motivated many readers to cancel their subscriptions.
Economic efficiency decides
In June 2005, The New York Times launched a digitally printed edition in London. According to Raymond Pearce, vice president of circulation fulfillment, this step did not represent a major venture from the strategy point of view. “It was simply cheaper and faster to print the small European circulation in London instead of flying the copies over from the United States.”
Financial Times — in addition to Borsen in Denmark, Borsenzeitung and Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and Neue Zurcher Zeitung in Switzerland — is one of the pioneers of newspaper digital printing.
In 2002, FT began printing several hundred digital copies for distribution in Johannesburg, South Africa.
However, in 2005, when the circulation rose to 2,500 copies, it went back to offset. “In a manner of speaking, digital printing was a victim of its own success,” said Operations Director Richard Boulton.
The experience in South Africa showed that digital printing is a viable way to enter and develop a market, and then to change to the lower-cost production process after a corresponding level of circulation has been reached.
My Observer: Charlotte’s Web
“Direct marketing on steroids,” is how Peter Vandevanter, former vice president of new ventures for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, describes the company’s My Observer personalized newspaper project (Vandevanter recently moved to MediaNews Group in Denver, where he will serve as vice president of targeted products).
The Charlotte Observer’s My Observer digital printing test involves two dozen subscribers who receive personalized editions wrapped around their home-delivered dailies.
Essentially, The Observer is testing the waters for personalized printing, sending the personalized publication to 24 of its subscribers as part of a test. Each day, the subscribers receive a one-page (two-sided) personalized edition that’s wrapped around their home-delivered daily paper. It features topics that they have pre-selected, as well as targeted ads.
Readers visit a Web site to answer a series of questions to determine their areas of interest. For each answer, an RSS feed is assigned, or users can create their own. Once that step is completed, software sends the feeds to a pagination app, where the are paginated and formatted before a PDF is generated.
The subsequent My Observer is then printed on a Xerox 6060 digital printer, and added to the subscriber’s paper.
It is considered a “premium service,” Vandevanter said, but will be free for subscribers. And it should be profitable, he said.
“It costs us about 25 cents to print that glossy page and 25 cents to deliver it, so if we get a dollar for an ad on the front and a dollar for an ad on the back, we’re profitable.”
Still, until The Observer gets at least 1,000 people receiving the specialized paper, advertising will remain on the back burner. “You need enough to make it worth people’s while.”
The goal is to sign up 5 percent of the paper’s circulation, or about 10,000 readers. More than that would create logistical delivery problems.
Ifra correspondents Caryl Holland and Martin and Cecilia Campbell contributed to this article, as did Dean Roper and Valérie Arnould from the newspaper techniques editorial team.
This article was first published in newspaper techniques, the monthly magazine of Ifra. If you have any comments or questions about these articles, please send them to ntreader@ifra.com.
If you’re interested to learn more about the training and consulting services available to newspapers through Ifra’s joint venture with the Newspaper Association of America, please contact Technical Solutions LLC at info@technical-solutions.org.
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