News&Tech's Digital Printing Forum

Océ sets digital press for newspapers

2009-04-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

By Mary L. Van Meter
Publisher

MUNICH, Germany - Océ Printing Systems last month unveiled a new digital press aimed squarely at newspaper publishers interested in migrating from offset to digital printing.
The JetStream 2800, available later this year, is the firm's latest evolution in short-run web-fed full-color presses, said Guy Broadhurst, vice president of technology and client development, production printing systems for Oce North America.
It follows in the footsteps of the JetStream 2200 digital press, a narrow-web machine Océ introduced in 2007. The JetStream machines use Oce's proprietary DigiDot piezoelectric inkjet, which varies the size of each ink drop automatically.
The 2800, priced at between $5 million and $6 million depending on configuration, can be outfitted with Océ's latest workflow, PrismaProduction 4.02, which supports fully integrated preflight and make-ready tools.

Photos: Newspapers & Technology
Océ’s Guy Broadhurst.

The new press is configured with a 30-inch web and a live-image area of 29.5 inches. It can image at a resolution of 600-by-600 dots per inch and has a run speed of 130 meters per minute, or 4,000 copies per hour for a 32-page tabloid newspaper, Broadhurst said.
It can be equipped with finishing systems from Hunkeler and Bowe Bell + Howell and uses software and inkjet engine technology from Creo and Miyakoshi Printing Machinery Co., respectively.
Up to 85 percent of all newspaper formats can be produced on the press, Broadhurst said. "We believe the 2800 is designed to support the market's accelerating transition from offset to digital printing," he said.
"As newspaper publishers are struggling with rising costs, changing market expectations and a challenging economy, we feel that we can help address their business issues and improve supply chain and business models."
Broadhurst said changing reader habits will drive publishers to adopt short-run printing.

The JetStream 2800 can output as many as 4,000

32-page tabloid newspapers per hour, in full color.

"Readers used to have to wait to get copies of their homeland newspapers. By printing digitally, however, editions can roll off the presses in as little as 20 minutes after deadline," he said. Digital production will also help publishers attract new revenue streams by allowing advertisers to target readership more effectively with personalized content, he said.
"We have the speed, quality and productivity for newspapers to migrate to digital production. Now the industry can think about new personalized newspaper projects," Broadhurst said.

Flexible content
Additionally, said Crit Driessen, Oce's vice president of marketing and strategy, digital presses provide publishers with great flexibility in how they want to create new products.
Rather than conventional, centralized production and mass-market distribution, the advent of presses such as the JetStream 2800 will enable newspapers to create hyper-local products, with flexible content and formats. That includes things like tailored FSIs and slimmed-down versions of newspapers for distribution to travelers and other targeted readers. Los Angleles-based O'Neil Data Systems, for example, already prints a number of Australian titles for Qantas Airlines passsengers. "We believe newspapers will become one of our biggest growth markets," Driessen said.
Meantime, Océ said it sold a JetStream 2200 digital press to Madrid-based publisher Imcodavila. The firm said it will use the machine to print in full color 6,000, 80-page broadsheet papers each day — a mixture of dailies, weeklies and monthlies.
The machine, with a speed of 150 meters per minute and a web width of 21.5 inches, will go on-edition next month. It will allow Imcodavila to eliminate having to produce short-run titles on the publisher's existing manroland Uniset machines.
"The installation of an Océ JetStream printing system will help us to provide our customers with a wide range of quality publications in full color," said Imcodavila Manager Luciano Monedero, adding that the firm will begin producing foreign financial newspapers on the digital press later this year.

Digital pricing 1,2,3
Océ Printing Systems breaks its pricing structure into three separate components: the hardware, which is the actual digital press; a service contract that covers maintenance and, if requested, software and finishing equipment; and ink plus clicks.
It’s the latter that sometimes confuses newspaper production managers who are more familiar with the costs associated with running a web offset press.
Simply, said Guy Broadhurst, vice president of technology and client development, production printing systems for Océ North America, ink plus clicks means a publisher would only be charged on the amount of throughput per linear foot on the press. It is not based on web width of the press. This type of billing is similar to how many commercial operations charge for digital press time.
Ink plus clicks is monitored via software installed on the press. The software tracks how much paper moves through the press and at the end of the month the clicks (12 inches, or one linear foot) are charged as a variable cost. The clicks measured black or full color printing. Spare parts are also put under the click area.
Broadhurst said Océ works hard to ensure users that digital ink costs are priced fairly. The company, he said, fully discloses ink yields, coverage ratios and the cost per imaging.
"It's a different industry, and newspaper executives can’t think of digital press operational costs in the same terms as offset. Digital printing should be examined under the total cost of ownership, dependent upon volume and ink coverage," he said.

Newsworld kicks off digital printing of Mail in U.S.

2009-03-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

Newsworld Corp. Ltd. last month kicked off digital production of London's Daily Mail at a New Jersey print site for distribution to readers in New York.
Newsworld produces 500 Daily Mail copies six days a week on a Screen Truepress Jet520 digital press outfitted with a Hunkeler finishing system. The papers are printed at AlphaGraphics in New Jersey before they are distributed in New York, said David Renouf, Newsworld's chief executive.
"We started production on Sunday night of the Daily Mail — successful production and produced the papers for Monday's edition," Renouf told Newspapers & Technology.
The papers were delivered by newspaper distributor Speedimpex to newsstands throughout Manhattan for single-copy sales.

Photo: Newsworld

Newsworld's David Renouf shows off the inaugural edition of the Daily Mail produced at AlphaGraphics in New Jersey for New York distribution.
Last year, Associated Newspapers Ltd., which publishes the Daily Mail, signed a four-year deal with Newsworld to produce the British paper in the United States for distribution in New York.
For now, Newsworld is printing the Daily Mail six days a week but will begin producing the Mail on Sunday later this year, Renouf said.

Dubai printer ramps up
Meantime, Newsworld partnered with Atlas Media in Dubai for the digital production of U.K., European and U.S. newspaper titles in the Gulf region.
The deal includes a $2.6 million investment in a new Screen Truepress Jet520 digital press, which could be commissioned as early as May, according to Amit Radia, chief executive officer of Atlas Media.
"There has always been a demand for international titles in the UAE, but the drawback was the lead time from import to newsstand delivery, which was always 10-12 hours too late," he said. "We will overcome that with this model."
The partnership will launch with approximately six undisclosed titles, with the printer producing anywhere from 500 to 2,000 copies of each.
Atlas has traditionally been a web offset printer of magazines, but recently developed a digital media division, which Radia said will focus on new media and technology.
"Newsworld has an excellent business model and the titles they work with are some of the most popular ones," he said.
Radia believes this model can be a successful one for newspapers as long as they make it valuable.
"It is a very niche industry and one has to develop the market with value-add in terms of distribution and service (which) deviates completely from the traditional print model," he said.
Radia said he's confident in the capability of the Screen and Hunkeler equipment to deliver the quality readers and advertisers demand.
"The quality is on par if not better than that of a normal newsprint paper on an offset web."

MediaNews unit sets plans for tailored news

2009-03-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

MediaNews Group's Targeted Products Division said it hopes to begin testing its "individuated newspaper" concept this summer in an undisclosed market.
The project, dubbed I-News, will deliver targeted and customized newspaper content to subscribers via their home desktop computers, said Peter Vandevanter, MNG's vice president of targeted products.
I-News is the latest step in MNG's initiative to deliver new-form, niche products to newspaper readers (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008).
"We're trying to create a new experience for our subscribers," Vandevanter told Newspapers & Technology. "It will be news people choose, delivered on a home printer in conjunction with their subscription to the paper."
Once MNG settles on a test market, I-News will be offered to interested readers who will receive their targeted content three or four days a week.
"Some newspapers make money on the big insert days and lose money on other days and that's why publishers like Detroit have said they will no longer print on those days," Vandevanter said. "Our idea is that we don't want to lose these subscribers, but instead we want to better serve them."
Detroit Media Partnership in December announced it would cut home delivery of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News to only a few days a week and devote the bulk of its editorial resources to online distribution.
DMP, which is making the shift March 30, is the first major metro to make such a move. Vandevanter said Detroit is a model he'll be "watching like a hawk."
"We are trying to take the best of both worlds — give people the paper when it's valuable with inserts, etc., and then give them a product they want on other days," he said.
MNG is also looking at ways to allocate I-News so that it will count as paid circulation in its participating papers' Audit Bureau of Circulations numbers.
"We want to be able to grow circulation — something newspapers haven't done in decades," Vandevanter said.

Growing circulation
The home printer technology, currently being developed by a printing vendor that does not wish to be named, will not be tethered to a computer, Vandevanter said. Instead, users will plug in their devices into a conventional phone line in order to enable the printers to output the requested information.
The printing manufacturer participating in the test and the publisher may subsidize the price of ink and paper — up to five sheets per day — to offset users' costs.
Vandevanter said MNG is still hashing out other I-News details, including the pricing model and how many days out readers will be able to select the news they wish to receive. MNG is also evaluating how to pair targeted advertising with users' content.
Meantime, MNG is continuing its research on the role high-speed digital printers might play in the future of personalized newspapers. To that end, it's working with Océ to develop suitable workflow options to drive I-News and other potential products.
MediaNews' Targeted Products Group is one of a number of companies mulling the future of customized newspapers. The Washington Times and German software developer Syntops are also developing their own initiatives (see Newspapers & Technology, February 2009).

Vendor touting out-of-market printing as benefit

2009-02-01T09:57:00.000-08:00

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

Printing newspapers out of market isn't a new concept, but a Miami-based vendor contends it's time for publishers to take a fresh look at the model.
The supplier, PressTerra, said it can help newspapers find economical outlets through which they can print their product out of market through its publication management service.
PressTerra has found partner print sites for some 40-plus titles, the bulk of those in Lisbon, Portugal, according to President and Chief Executive Officer Jerri Palmer.
"We take publishers and find print sites for them," she said. "We do the conversion (of files) and make sure we find a distributor close by or that has a printer on-site. If that distributor has a digital printer then they have hands-on capability to say how many of each paper they can print."
PressTerra most recently found digital printing outlets for titles including Al Jazeera of Saudi Arabia and Belgium's Vers l'Avenir.
Palmer views her company's service as a pathway for newspapers to break the mold.
"It's a win-win because the publisher is really taking no risk — there are no distribution demands," Palmer explained. "The distributor prints what he needs and sells it and the publisher gets a royalty based on what sells."
The magic number for digital printers is somewhere around 700 copies, according to Palmer, in terms of speed, time and profitability.

Growing circ numbers
Printing out of market gives publishers a way to grow their circ numbers and ad dollars when their own market is saturated.
The Los Angeles Times and Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of Germany are among the publishers that have grown circ numbers by printing in Lisbon, Palmer said. PressTerra is printing about 50 extra copies of WAZ each day currently, and Palmer said that number is growing, particularly at certain times of the year.
"A lot of newspaper publishers haven't thought about changing their ways and the models are very old and then what happens, too, is the ABC hasn't revamped the standards to demand ad dollars — for example, maybe their business section is a lot more popular than another section," Palmer said. "If you have great international sales then why can't you have international ad dollars? Publishers need to think beyond that standard business model."
Palmer has seen most of the digital vendors' presses in action, including those from Agfa, Océ, Screen and Kodak, and although they all get the job done, she said vendors need to adapt the machines to be more compact and faster.
"It's got to be able to fit in a distribution warehouse in a corner somewhere," she said. "They are going to have to get down to a reasonably-priced system and get a Hunkeler (finisher) that finishes as fast as it prints."
Profitability increases with machines that can run all the time and partner print sites want to have a press that can do other jobs as well as the newspapers. Successful sites, Palmer said print newspapers up to a certain time of day and then also print other products.
There are still time obstacles that need to be resolved in out-of-market printing, Palmer said, including in Asian countries that awake first and need to get a paper from L.A. or New York.
"There is no way you can have Day A papers by 9 a.m. in some areas. For instance, Australia time — there is no way — so to me, it's an entire mindset in publishing and advertising that has to change," Palmer said. "I think people are going to start to demand it — it's going to be pushed by consumers."

Brand loyalty
Palmer said brand loyalty is another factor driving the out-of-market model. Despite the availability of national publications like USA Today and The New York Times in the United States, she said there are still people that are extremely loyal to their own paper.
"People are extremely loyal to The Miami Herald, for example, and if they travel outside of Miami, they still want The Herald," she said. "So in the U.S. you have to break down people in certain areas. When British people travel, they go for The Times of London — it's the overall state of newspapers."
PressTerra's model works in two ways, aiming its service at distributors who know which papers they want to print and to publishers that have specific geographic areas in which they want to print and distribute.

Where e-editions fit in
Palmer said PressTerra's service doesn't necessarily compete with digital editions and that e-editions will still be popular with readers on the go and for publishers looking for ways to digitally archive their information.
Both models, she said, can attract advertising dollars.
"Publishers need to approach it as something we have to do — we need to be on the forefront of this — maybe a (printed) newspaper is in synergy with digital."
She warns, however, that some digital models currently available can devalue a newspaper's content.
"A publisher's intellectual property is their actual value, so how are newspapers benefiting from these models. Is their royalty being bastardized?" she asked. "We look at the whole solution and how to implement it and make it work to maximize profit."
By printing an actual paper remotely, Palmer said newspapers can receive royalty payments for anything they sell and also post numbers that can be tracked by circulation audit agencies.
"If you're going to do something, make money at it," she said. That's your goal as a newspaper — to care and guard your intellectual property and make money off of it."

PressTerra at a glance
Newspaper titles available for on-demand printing through PressTerra include 24 Heures, Al Jazeera, De Morgren, De Standaard, Die Presse, Ekstra Bladet, El Nuevo Herald, Evening Standard, the Globe and Mail, La Presse, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald. Politiken, the Wall Street Journal Asia, the Washington Post, Vers l’Avenir, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.
In addition to the print site in Lisbon, PressTerra works with more than 30 partner print sites including those in Sydney; Singapore; Dubai; Istanbul, Turkey; Moscow; Munich, Germany; Geneva; London, Toronto; Madrid, Spain; Cancun, Mexico; and Kingston, Jamaica. U.S. partner sites include those in New York; Washington D.C.; Miami; Detroit; Los Angeles and Troy, Mich.

Newsworld taps Screen in project to produce newspapers in Gulf

2009-02-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

Newsworld Corp. said it’s partnered with Atlas Media Communications for the digital production of U.K., European and U.S. newspaper titles in the Gulf region.
The deal includes a $2.6 million investment in a Screen Truepress Jet 520 digital press, which could be commissioned as early as April, Newsworld said. Through its “distribute then print” service launched in 2007, Newsworld leverages and pairs publishers with printing outlets equipped with a Screen digital press and Hunkeler inline finishing system.
“This area is of great interest to publishers who are looking to reach the increasing number of business executives, expatriates and visitors to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Kuwait with timely, relevant news and information,” said John Ashfield, chairman of Newsworld.
Meantime, Newsworld this month began distributing Associated Newspapers’ Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday to New York residents.
The papers are produced on a Truepress Jet 520 press under a deal with New Jersey-based AlphaGraphics (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008).
“As we continue to invest in this technology and form partnerships worldwide, we are opening up a very exciting opportunity for newspaper publishers to grow their brand, not only locally but in a more effective and efficient way,” said Newsworld’s David Renouf.

4 questions with Donald Allred

2008-12-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

Newspapers & Technology continues its 4 Questions series aimed at digital press vendors. This month, Donald Allred, director of business development for inkjet printing solutions with Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group, talks about his company’s offerings and where they fit into the newspaper market.

How is Kodak approaching newspapers and how do you see Kodak fitting into this industry?

Kodak has been a part of the success of the newspaper industry for more than 100 years. Our product portfolio includes CTP devices, workflow products, digital plates and chemistry. In addition, Kodak has been helping customers reach success using our wide range of variable digital printing systems for direct mail and including promotional content with transactional statements. With these combined attributes, Kodak is a natural and logical partner to help newspapers take advantage of digital printing.

Kodak is the only partner to provide a broad selection of digital printing equipment. We provide addressing systems to enable proper delivery through the mail, part page systems that enable on-press digital printing without slowing down the presses, and stand-alone complete digital newspaper press systems.

According to Kodak, what are some of the benefits of drop-on-demand vs. continuous inkjet technology for newspapers?

Kodak believes that both technologies have a role to play in digital newspaper printing. In fact, Kodak employs both technologies in products designed for the newspaper printing industry. We use the inherent capability of high print speed associated with continuous inkjet to provide products that can provide variable digital printing right on the newspaper press — at newspaper press speeds. CIJ is the basis of the Kodak Versamark VX printing system, offering very high-speed digital newspaper printing, while drop-on-demand technology powers the Kodak Versamark VL printing system, which achieves a slightly slower speed, but enhanced image quality. Both products offer low cost of operation, and highly efficient operation.

What trends do you see in digital printing for newspapers as far as news products, niche products, etc? What new technologies/features do you see emerging in digital presses that could potentially benefit newspapers?

A general drive to become more relevant is necessary for newspapers to maintain their readership during this age of information on demand. One area of success has been shorter run, targeted community newspapers. General news and advertisements can be combined with content provided through Web portals by members of communities.

Most U.S.-based newspapers have a tremendously powerful asset — their customer list and their home-delivery system. These two capabilities can be combined to provide a cost-effective alternative to direct mail. Short run inserts containing advertisements or stories, targeted to general demographical information of specific neighborhoods or streets, can be combined with the morning delivery.

A key trend of digital printing is the combination of increasing quality and lowering the cost of printing. The image quality of the Kodak Versamark VL2000 printing system meets or exceeds requirements for any newspaper printing job. The focus on productivity and value combine to reduce operating costs, making digital production of short-run newspapers feasible for many applications. These trends will continue in the future as the company brings its Kodak Stream Inkjet technology into the newspaper production market, enabling an even broader range of digital applications.

The newspaper industry has been talking for many years about the potential benefits of digital printing. Is the technology really ready to deliver these benefits?

Kodak’s current offerings provide reliability and cost effectiveness, performance metrics that support the technical fit to the application. Software workflow systems are the critical enabler for the transition to digital printing. Remote digital printing can be done easily today with PDF workflows and high-speed Kodak front ends. Other applications may require software workflow elements such as Web portal-based community news with automated print set up, automated gaming and demographic advertising.

MNG launches site dedicated to INC meetings

2008-11-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

MediaNews Group last month launched its Web site dedicated to the publisher’s two upcoming Individuated News Conferences.

The site, www.individuatednews.com, powered by Accrisoft Inc., includes registration information and other details about the publisher’s forthcoming meetings.

The site also includes information about the topic of targeted newspaper products, with links to relevant blogs and personalization sites.

The next conference will be June 24-26, at The Washington Times in Washington, D.C.

—Tara McMeekin

Digital press advancements pace International Newspaper Group

2008-11-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

N&T Staff Report

TAMPA, Fla. — The evolution of digital presses and their potential role in the newspaper industry took center stage during the digital panel at September’s International Newspaper Group conference.

“The fewer people you reach, the more valuable they are,” said Peter Vandevanter, vice president of targeted products at MediaNews Group, explaining the difference between finely targeted publishing — what MediaNews Group terms the individuated newspaper — and traditional mass-market distribution.

MediaNews is one of a number of newspaper publishers examining how digital presses might make niche distribution more profitable (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008).

“A personalized newspaper will always be more interesting than the postcard you might get in the mail,” he said.

Five vendors — Agfa, Hewlett Packard Co., Kodak, Océ North America and Screen USA — took turns rolling out their digital press road maps.

Océ’s manager of business intelligence, Andrew Gordon, pointed to digital printing as a remedy for an industry under fire in terms of circulation, readership and advertising revenues. The solution, he said, will come in the form of revenue from online advertising, direct mail and the growth of free weeklies and niche products.

“Do you focus all your energy on getting the water out of the boat or do you focus some energy on building a new boat?” Gordon said. “Surviving this period of transition requires developing strategies that move away from the broad-reach circulations dictated by underutilized fixed assets.”

Gordon said newspapers need to deliver significantly higher performance to advertisers and niche products offer them the opportunity to make that move.

“Obviously this won’t happen overnight and most publishers won’t concede their broad-reach positions,” he said. “However, at some time in the future, there will be an inflection point where broad-reach, highly rich and relevant content meets high-performance advertising. This is already occurring with electronic communications and will evolve in print as well.”

Quality, not quantity

Gordon said publishers need to focus less on print quantity and more on print quality — fewer pages, smaller circs — and that digital printing offers newspapers an avenue to do just that. Gordon pointed to Gannett Co. Inc., Cox Newspapers and Morris Publishing Group as examples of newspaper publishers driving new print products.

Gordon also touted the value of international distribution through local channels, citing Océ’s Digital Newspaper Network.

One DNN participant, Carlstadt, N.J.-based Global Document Solutions, has for the past five years printed 300 black-and-white copies of The Guardian for distribution on an Océ 9210 wide-format machine (see Newspapers & Technology, July 2008).

Six other DNN sites produce 15 additional newspapers, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and (Toronto) Globe and Mail, printing more than 5,000 copies a day, Gordon said.

Digital printing offers simplified workflows — no plates, no waste — plus the ability to accept late ads and news right up to press time, Gordon said.

Océ’s entry-level products include the Océ 2110, 3165 and 8465 models, the CS series and the VarioPrint 6000 series. Océ’s products for mid-volume printing include the VarioStream series 7000/8000 and 9000 series and the ColorStream 10000. Océ last year rolled out a high-volume digital press, the JetStream, with output speeds of between 328 and 656 feet per minute.

Portugal printer producing digital

Agfa, which introduced its Dotrix DGNews digital press at this year’s drupa, focused on the technology behind the machine.

Kristof Dekeukelaere, sales manager of Dotrix North America, said the DGNews uses 48 print heads, which deliver up to 1 billion drops per second. The machine prints on 48-gram newsprint, he said, giving the look and feel of a newspaper, and has a maximum printing width of 24.8 inches, allowing for broadsheet printing.

In July, Agfa placed its first DGNews machine at VASP, a Lisbon, Portugal, newspaper printer. VASP is using the press to produce almost 2,000 newspapers each day for distribution. VASP takes care of all the costs associated with producing the papers and sends a royalty fee to participating publishers.

Dekeukelaere said DGNews, which can output as much as 85 feet per minute, will have its capacity almost doubled, to 165 feet per minute, by 2010.

Screen, which has offered a digital press for more than two years, is banking on its Truepress Jet 520 digital system to lure newspapers, said Bill Brunone, vice president of targeted inkjet systems.

It’s snared one publisher, U.K.-based Associated Newspapers, which in cooperation with Newsworld, this year will produce New York editions of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008). Half of the 96-page editions will be in full color.

Screen’s machine has output speeds up to 420 FPM, or approximately 200 broadsheet pages per minute.

Targeting communities

Kodak’s Don Allred, director of business development for inkjet printing solutions, said newspapers can benefit from combining digital printing with software, such as Kodak’s Microzone Publishing app, to generate finely targeted publications.

“As microzoning gives rise to more community newspapers and outer ring focus, digital printing can provide a cost-effective solution to multiple short run titles,” Allred said.

Kodak is marketing two products, a high-speed-on-press inkjet developed in concert with manroland, and a digital short-run newspaper press.

The inkjet, installed on a colorman press, enables in-line variable digital printing at press speeds of up to 90,000 copies per hour.

Kodak’s VL2000 digital newspaper system can produce between 500 and 1,000 600-by-600 dpi newspapers per hour. A continuous-stream digital press, slated for delivery in 2011, will boost that output, Allred said.

Hewlett Packard, which expects to make its HP Inkjet Press available next year, was the only vendor to mention cost when discussing its digital newspaper offerings, with Vice President and General Manager Aurelio Maruggi confirming that the machine will carry a price tag of $2.5 million.

HP already markets its Indigo line of high-quality-4-color presses for general commercial and direct mail products.

Its inkjet newspaper press will run at speeds of 400 FPM at 600-by-600 dpi.

Newspapers & Technology Editor Tara McMeekin contributed to this article.

4 Questions with Bill Brunone

2008-11-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

Newspapers & Technology continues its 4 Questions series with digital press vendors. This month, Bill Brunone, vice president of targeted inkjet systems for Screen, talks about Screen’s newspaper offerings.

How is Screen approaching newspapers and how do you see Screen fitting into this industry?

The Truepress Jet520 is a drop-on-demand, water-based, color inkjet press that can print a variety of publications and direct mail, but is especially suited for newsprint because of its small drop size, grayscale heads and high resolution. With no special modifications, the TPJ520 press is the center of a three-part package for newspapers. This includes workflow and composition software — Screen’s Newsworker — that takes into consideration the fact that in newspaper production, each section is printed, stacked and folded in-line, not statically printed and collated later.

The second part is the Truepress Jet520, and the third component is specialized cut/stack/folding (finishing) equipment from Hunkeler.

This combination is proven and ready for placement in the appropriate segments of the newspaper industry.

According to Screen, what are the benefits of drop-on-demand versus continuous inkjet technology for newspapers?

Using DOD technology translates to greater uptime and higher print quality.

Screen’s Truepress Jet520 system is based on Epson’s piezoelectric head technology and inks are supplied in airtight bladders. Because of this, ink never contacts air or contaminants before being projected from the printhead. This significantly reduces the need for maintenance and speeds startup and shutdown procedures.

Because of the small printhead size, Screen has brought the distance between application of colors to very close proximity, minimizing paper slip and stretch issues that would destroy color-to-color registration.

DOD allows for grayscale printing, and the use of very small droplet sizes gives the reader yet another tier of image quality and clarity. In the unlikely event that there is a problem with a printhead, it can be replaced quickly by the user.

What trends do you see in digital printing for newspapers as far as news products, niche products, etc? What new technologies/features do you see emerging in digital presses that could potentially benefit newspapers?

Once newspaper publishers embrace the idea of distributed print as well as the advantages short-run and variable personalized printing can offer, they will find almost unlimited potential.

From the hardware manufacturers’ point of view, what you see is just the beginning of the industry’s offerings. You are already seeing variations of printing devices: faster, wider and higher-quality systems, but you will probably also see less-capable systems offering better economics in specialized situations.

The newspaper industry has been talking for many years about the potential benefits of digital printing. Is the technology really ready to deliver these benefits?

We think that the productivity and uptime of the Truepress Jet520 is certainly ready for the newspaper industry, based in part by the fact that the press has been commercially available and in operation by customers for more than two years.

We think that there are situations in which digital printing can be leveraged to reduce costs, increase advertising response or increase the readers’ experience. However, we do not think that digital print technology will replace large-run offset printing in the near future. This is primarily due to the greater cost of consumables required — compared to offset printing.

Some of the situations in which digital print for newspapers can be profitable include those (in which) a publisher has geographic areas that are difficult or expensive to service by traditional central print and delivery methods. Placing a digital press close to the delivery point can reduce the cost of distribution and increase customer satisfaction by giving the reader more current content, since printing is done in close proximity to the delivery point, and at the last possible moment.

Publishers can leverage what the direct mail and commercial print industries have known for years: Personalization increases reader response rates, thus allowing publishers to command higher prices for personalized print advertising.

Publishers can also create unlimited microzones, without regard to plate change costs, thereby increasing the appeal of the publication.

Océ kicks off customer center as firm targets newspapers

2008-11-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

By Mary L. Van Meter
Publisher

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Océ last month opened its Customer Experience Center as the digital press vendor demonstrated its continued commitment to the newspaper and graphic arts industries.

Mal Baboyian, president of Océ’s North American production printing systems unit, encouraged printers to avoid standing still, particularly in the face of the global economic downturn.

Océ’s 18,000 square-foot Océ Customer Experience Center in Boca Raton, Fla.

“We are committed to strengthen our core business and advance our technology,” he said as he formally opened the 18,000-square-foot center. “We have increased our printing speeds and technology innovations as printers demand scalable and modular solutions in order to achieve profitable growth.”

Newspapers, which are beginning to evaluate the role high-speed digital presses might play in the future, are a prime target for Océ, Baboyian said.

The vendor beefed up its JetStream family of inkjet machines, adding models capable of producing up to 3,000 40-page newspapers per hour.

In addition, Océ bolstered its 1100 and 2200 product lines with magnetic ink character recognition. The MICR systems are the first of their kind to integrate magnetic ink directly with the print engine, Baboyian said. MICR support allows printers to produce a wider variety of marketing materials and promotions. The MICR-equipped presses will be commercially available in February 2009, Baboyian said.

Océ’s integrated MICR ink unit, far right, is located directly on the print engine.

All of Océ’s presses are equipped with DigiDot, a piezoelectric, drop-on-demand technology. The ICC profile compliant technology varies the size and amount of each ink drop, Baboyian said.

Océ has also launched an education program to help printers implement digital production. The Graphic Arts Alliance Program “will help simplify (printers’) transition from offset to digital workflow,” Baboyian said.

Industry eyes turn to digital press workflow options

2008-11-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

Now that digital press vendors have trotted out their wares to newspapers, the next logical question the newspaper might ask is this: What kind of software will be needed to drive these machines?

The answer? Vendors are still working on it.

Kodak, which has brought to market its Versamark VT 3000 digital press, will approach workflow in two components — device controllers and workflow systems, according to Stephen Miller, product manager for packaging and newspaper workflow.

“All presses include a workflow component that renders input into some file format that is used by the press to put ink on substrate, “ he said. “This component also controls press actions, monitors performance, etc. Upstream from the device controller is a broader workflow solution that assembles and prepares content for production.

“With today’s use of industry standards — PDF and JDF — most press suppliers can interface with almost any manufacturer of the upstream workflow components.”

Hewlett Packard, which plans to bring its digital press to market next year, offers the HP SmartStream Ultra Print Server, which is not currently a newspaper-specific workflow system.

The vendor said it plans to adapt SmartStream to work on its forthcoming HP Inkjet Web Press.

“The SmartStream umbrella portfolio consists of both HP and third-party software — HP digital processing controllers and third-party post print production solutions — to meet a broad range of market segment and application needs ranging from newspapers to books to direct mail to transaction documents,” said Scott Schiller, director of marketing for inkjet high-speed production solutions. “The system supports many standard formats, such as PDF, and for the newspaper segment specifically, additional capabilities and third-party solutions will be added over time, as needed.”

Océ is currently marketing Prisma software to newspapers purchasing its digital press products. The app is well-suited to Océ’s various products because of its scalability, according to Andrew Gordon, manager of business intelligence.

Screen, meantime, last month announced Trueflow SE, version 6.0, the latest iteration of its PDF/JDF workflow. Trueflow has evolved from an intelligent RIP application for CTP workflows to a universal app for hybrid offset/digital workflows.

Specific to newspapers, Screen also offers Newsworker software, according to Bill Brunone, vice president of targeted inkjet systems, and its TruePress Jet 520 digital press .

4 questions with Duncan Newton

2008-10-01T16:21:00.000-07:00

Newspapers & Technology continues its 4 Questions series aimed at digital press vendors. Duncan Newton, manager of business development for Océ North America, talks about Océ’s digital print offerings for newspapers.

How is Océ approaching newspapers and how do you see Océ fitting into this industry?

Océ has been in the newspaper business for a number of years, primarily in monochrome. With the launch of the JetStream family of six new high-speed, full-color, inkjet printers, the whole span of newspaper opportunities opened up. High speed, of course, means that these machines can meet tight deadlines. Full color will appeal to advertisers. Inkjet will deliver a much higher image quality than is normally associated with newspaper output — which should also appeal to advertisers. The fact that this is all digital means that the newspapers can be more narrowly focused. Ultimately they can be personalized and individualized. Local editions, weeklies, shopping guides all are prime opportunities.

According to Océ, what are the benefits of drop-on-demand vs. continuous inkjet technology for newspapers?

DOD vs. CIJ will make for many interesting discussions, but most of them will be pointless. The only vendor using CIJ is Kodak on their Versamark family. CIJ is a 30-year-old technology, which was developed for label printing. Because it is a continuously flowing stream of ink the heads and nozzles tend to wear out more quickly than DOD heads. Halftones and scanned images suffer greatly in CIJ because of its lack of precision. But we have seen new announcements from Kodak and others; machines will start to appear in a year or so. None of them use CIJ. Everything new is DOD. The DOD heads are faster, more accurate, have longer lifespans and are easier to maintain.

What trends do you see in digital printing for newspapers as far as news products, niche products, etc? What new technologies/features do you see emerging in digital presses that could potentially benefit newspapers?

There are four factors that make digital particularly well suited for newspapers. The size of the form, the speed of the machines, the ability to create individualized print runs and the ability to do full color. But caution should be exercised. The ability to individualize, distribute and deliver is limited by many factors and probably will not be applicable to the big papers for quite a long time.

This, however, leaves the door wide open for local editions of highly focused papers. These highly focused editions will make the perfect vehicle to revive sagging ad revenue. A paper like that can appeal to localized merchants. A local ice cream parlor would never advertise in a citywide paper, but probably would if the paper could target a 2-to-5-mile wide marketing circle. It is not unforeseeable that you could create your own version of the newspaper, too. By selecting your areas of interest a personalized paper could be sent to you on a weekly basis — along with ads from merchants who cater to those areas of interest.

The newspaper industry has been talking for many years about the potential benefits of digital printing. Is the technology really ready to deliver these benefits?

Had this question been asked even a year ago the answer would have to have been very heavily qualified, but that is no longer the case. The speed of the new inkjet printers makes it possible to actually meet the delivery schedules required by the industry. But the question isn’t whether or not the equipment is ready; it’s more is the industry ready? Too many of the established publishers are working with antiquated marketing techniques. They are not ready to take advantage of the possibilities that would be created by going digital. Ink on paper is easy. Delivering it on the doorstep is an entirely different matter. The publishers have not invested in the kinds of information-rich database management technology that will be required to create individualized, localized editions of specialized papers. And those are the main reasons for adopting digital technology.

MediaNews Group blazing trail toward targeted newspaper

2008-09-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

DENVER — MediaNews Group is basing its next generation of targeted publications on the concept of “individuated” newspapers, fueled by the evolution of high-speed digital presses.

“I’ve followed digital presses long enough,” said Peter Vandevanter, MNG’s vice president of targeted products. “I knew it was going to happen. It’s just a matter of when.”

Drupa in June provided the backdrop for a number of digital press providers to show that their machines may finally be equipped to deliver results to an industry that’s been ready for them for some time now (see Newspapers & Technology, July 2008).

“We know these presses drive down the cost of printing,” Vandevanter said.

MNG is no stranger to niche publishing. In addition to its stable of daily newspapers, it currently offers 239 separate publications that include free magazines, newspaper weeklies and TMCs, from which the publisher posts annual revenues in excess of $90 million.

Now, Vandevanter said MNG is ready to draw on its expertise to become the “iPod of newspapers,” offering targeted daily products to readers with all of the content they want and nothing they don’t.

New concept of targeting readers

MNG is so keen on the idea of targeted newspapers that the publisher coined the term “individuated newspapers” to describe the concept and distinguish it as going beyond targeted products currently available.

The individuated newspaper was the topic of a meeting MNG sponsored at its Denver headquarters in June.

“If we print what our readers, not we, want, if we disregard our arrogance and old ideas, if we let our readers participate, we will succeed,” MNG Chairman William Dean Singleton told attendees. “Imagine the value of the targeted newspaper if the newspaper we published knew what a particular reader wanted and could combine relevant stories and relevant advertising in each individuated newspaper.”

Attendees to the event, the second of its kind hosted by MNG, came from a variety of areas within the newspaper industry, from software and community publishing suppliers to digital press vendors.

MNG has two more events planned dedicated to the topic, one Jan. 15-16, 2009, in Boca Raton, Fla., and one June 24-26, 2009, in Washington, D.C.

Finding the right fit

MNG is keeping a close eye on the new generation of digital presses, searching the market to find the right fit for its own products even as it attempts to create the right blend of products to make the individuated newspaper a reality.

“Workflow software is a big part of this — the whole prepress aspect is big,” Vandevanter said. “How are you collecting your data, is it RSS feeds or what? There are still so many pieces that have to come together that it’s a mammoth.”

Regardless of the technological foundation involved, the end product must mirror the publisher’s key focus, Vandevanter said, citing DailyMe as a good interface for gauging reader interests.

The trail MNG is blazing is one other newspaper publishers will likely closely evaluate. During his 15 years producing niche pubs, Vandevanter has developed a good sense of the value of targeted advertising.

“That whole dynamic of ‘print less, charge more’ is what niche publications are all about,” he said. “If you get down to a one-page product, what’s the value of an ad on that page?”

Considering CPM

In terms of cost per thousand, he said the target for profitability lies somewhere between $100 and $400 CPM for products with circulations under 20,000.

“At $400 CPM you can get $4 for an ad on a page that cost you 5 cents to print,” he said. “If you could get to a 1-to-1 newspaper, that’s a very nice business model — we wouldn’t even have to get there in the next two years to show value in these presses.”

Vandevanter said he heard a lot of comments at the June conference that individuated magazines would likely become a reality before individuated newspapers.

“It doesn’t matter what comes first,” he said. “The key is that it’s individualized.”

There are two things that will derail the success of the individuated newspaper, according to Vandevanter. The first is failing to adequately test how these products will interface with the public. They have to be properly developed and tested, he said, in order to ensure their success.

“The public has to be as addicted to individualization of news as they are to individualization music,” he said. “We want to be the iPod of newspapers.”

The second threat is not placing enough value on advertising.

“If we don’t establish the value of this advertising from the beginning, we run the risk of devaluing it.”

Better than shoes?

Publishers must also recognize the value of the sociological aspect of an individuated newspaper, he said.

“Once this becomes personalized, you can sell it — this will be better than shoes.”

Vandevanter said MNG has no imminent plans to buy a digital press, but that the publisher wants to offer some type of individuated product in 2009, whether or not it’s initially produced on an MNG-owned press.

User-generated publications on horizon with Printcasting

2008-09-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

A project now under way at The Bakersfield Californian could give newspapers nationwide the ability to let readers easily create their own niche publications.

The Californian earlier this year won an $837,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to develop an interface, dubbed Printcasting, that allows readers to customize publications containing content from participating blogs and newspaper Web sites.

The upshot: user-generated publications that can be e-mailed as a PDF or printed at home or in the office, said Dan Pacheco, senior manager of digital products at The Californian.

“Maybe it’s about music and you can get a bunch of content from (The Californian’s Web site) Bakotopia, or maybe it’s about a certain craft or neighborhood news,” he said, explaining that Printcasting dovetails nicely with the paper’s strategy to identify important audiences that could be served through niche products.

“What we know is that there are so many audiences that may not be as big as that for a newspaper, but there still will be a certain community that’s interested in that topic or organization,” he said.

Printcasting will also help newspapers capitalize on the continued appeal of print and allow them to reach local retailers wary of current print advertising models, Pacheco said.

“If you look at a small niche interests that may have 5,000 people dedicated to that community, there could be a half dozen or more businesses that would love to reach them,” said Pacheco. “Those types of businesses are not advertising in our larger print products and certainly not in our main newspaper because it’s too expensive and it would use their entire marketing budget in the span of a week.”

Making it happen

Printcasting sprang from what The Californian learned by creating its own network of social networking sites (see related story on page 37.)

“Initially, what we talked about was how we can have people create their own social networks about very specific interests,” said Pacheco. “And the term used for that was instabrand, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. I think that Printcasting is going to make that happen.”

The newspaper is three months into its first leg of a two-year project that will make Printcasting available to anyone who wants to use it. It will be offered as an open source product, thus allowing newspapers to download the software and integrate it into their existing systems, Pacheco said.

The first phase of the project includes design and beta testing the Printcasting interface. The second phase, slated to start next March, includes testing the system at The Californian and the third phase encompasses testing Printcasting with five volunteer publications.

Printcasting also includes a self-service ad interface to enable advertisers to place ads on their own, Pacheco said.

“Printcasting is also a bridge strategy for serving local advertisers that may not be advertising anywhere right now, let alone in print,” he said.

Once The Californian begins testing Printcasting next spring, Pacheco said he hopes to create an “American Idol” effect around the subsequent user-generated niche publications.

“We figure if we get enough people to create these things and we track which ones are the most popular, certain stars are going to emerge,” he said. “We hope we’ll see 100 come out over a three-month period where 10 of them are consistently good.”

If that part of the plan pans out, The Californian will evaluate printing and distributing those magazines that spark the most popularity or best meet a specific demographic, Pacheco said.

Hyper customization

Pacheco said Printcasting meshes with the current demand among consumers for products and services that meet their specific interests.

“The print world hasn’t been forgotten and when you see circulations go down it’s not that people don’t want to consume print,” he said. “It’s more of a statement about the one-size-fits-all audience strategy that newspapers have pursued for so many years.”

The development of Printcasting comes as newspapers begin to explore more deeply ways to serve niche audiences.

“I’ve learned that there is this whole movement that I didn’t know existed, but we are starting to learn about each other,” said Pacheco. “Printcasting is part of that movement. Fortunately we’re not the only innovators in that area, which makes it exciting.”

Newsworld to produce British dailies in N.Y. with digital press

2008-09-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

British newspapers the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday will be digitally printed in New York starting this month through a four-year contract between Newsworld Corp. Ltd. and Associated Newspapers Ltd.

The papers will be produced seven days a week using a Screen Truepress Jet520 line (two engines) and an inline Hunkeler finishing system through Newsworld’s “distribute then print” service, which it launched last year.

“In the last two years we’ve pulled together a series of interconnected things — software, a printing machine from Screen and the Hunkeler machine is the finishing arm of what we do,” said David Renouf, chief executive at Newsworld. “When we pull that all together it becomes a compelling package for publishers around the world.”

The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday will initially launch with UK versions, but the publisher said plans are to eventually tailor editions to New Yorkers, complete with local content and advertising. Fifty percent of the 96-page editions will be in full color.

Local copy, local ads on tap

“They want to turn it into a specific New York edition,” Renouf said. “The software that we have at the front end of this allows us to drop in local ads and local copy very easily.”

That software, he said, also allows for normal imposition and provides reporting numbers publishers can use for their audit circulation.

“Previous attempts to establish the principle of printing newspapers locally have been compromised by speed, color or quality,” said Newsworld Chairman John Ashfield. “We can provide the quality, look and feel of the original brand product, coupled with significant time savings, which allow the papers to be on sale on the same day.”

Bakersfield Californian leading social networking

2008-09-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

For newspapers, social networking is slowly becoming the little user-generated content feature that could.

This was evident in the Newspaper Association of America’s June report, “Engaging Users: User-Generated Content and Tools for Newspapers,” which found that interest in newspaper-based social networking features was high among respondents who have used social networking in the past. About 45 percent of those respondents indicated interest in reading or posting reviews on local businesses and services.

Yet while many newspapers are still trying to determine how to package social networking, one paper, The Bakersfield Californian, earlier this year marked its third anniversary as a social networking pioneer.

The newspaper’s Bakotopia, introduced in early 2005, came about as a preemptive strike against sites like Craigslist before they hit the Bakersfield area, said Dan Pacheco, The Californian’s senior manager of digital products.

Outside of newspaper

“At the time, the company identified several different audiences and I think we were one of the first newspapers in the U.S. to come out and say we need to grow audience one way or another and it doesn’t have to be through the core newspaper,” he said. “The idea was that Bakotopia would be a center for anything about the alternative Bakersfield.”

Six months after Bakotopia’s launch, the paper began adding more features to the site, including the ability for users to create profiles, upload photos and list events, all of which struck a chord with the local music scene.

“We had lots of bands show up to post their events and once we started having bands in our community we started thinking the bands should have profiles and add their music,” Pacheco said.

Bands post songs on the site through a feature dubbed Bakotunes and content is made available under a creative commons license. Users can listen, download and use the music in any way as long as it’s not for commercial purposes.

Pacheco said Bakotopia’s impact in the local music community was further cemented after a radio station provided The Californian with 46 radio spots as part of a co-promotion between the station and the paper.

The Californian invited bands to fill the spots. It received a lot of response and Pacheco said that a number of groups even created original songs about the Web site. The songs produced for the radio spots can be found at www.bakotopia.com/home/user/bakotopianews.

“What that experience showed us is that we were getting something from the musicians being on our site and the bands were getting exposure from us by getting on local radio,” he said.

Thousands of users

Californian Vice President of Audience Development Mary Lou Fulton said that Bakotopia now has more than 500 band profiles and 5,000 registered users on the site.

“You can tell from these numbers that we have become the local place for bands to connect with their fans and post their music. That has helped with our marketing because bands are out there in the community performing all the time and letting people know that they are on Bakotopia and that (fans) should check it out,” she said.

Fulton said newspapers should capitalize on aiming their social networking sites at already established special interest groups rather than attempt to create communities from scratch.

Over the past three years, The Californian added social networking features to all 11 of its Web sites and has seen how users are exploiting the tools on each of the sites, Fulton said.

Case in point: The paper’s Bakersfield.com flagship site, which attracts more than 2,000 bloggers. “What’s fascinating is that we put the exact tools on a Web site focused on a particular community with a different product manager and get completely different results,” she said.

Bakoproducts

Most important, The Californian found ways to leverage the popularity generated by its myriad sites and experiment with ways to earn some money.

To that end, the paper released a CD compilation of the best of Bakotunes, showcasing local bands.

“They sold it for $5. It didn’t make a lot of money but paid for the CD,” Pacheco said. “Even though (readers) listen to Bakotunes on the Web site, they loved to get the CD when it was offered at events.”

The publisher rolled out a bi-weekly magazine as well, which is also called Bakotopia, and contains user-generated stories, photos and other content generated on the site.

The popularity of the ink-and-paper publication indicates to Pacheco that younger people remain interested in print.

“They use the Web site and magazine together, a hybrid experience, because they know the magazine includes posted content and know that if they are involved in the community online it increases the chances their content will show up in the magazine,” he said. “They love that idea because their content, pictures or profiles are out there at all the local clubs and they become a celebrity.”

4 questions with Aurelio Maruggi

2008-09-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager of inkjet high-speed production solutions for Hewlett-Packard, spoke to Newspapers & Technology about HP’s digital print offerings for the newspaper industry and whether the technology is really ready to deliver.

How is HP approaching newspapers and how do you see HP fitting into this industry?

It is a key focus for HP to engage with the industry to understand pain points and trends. The conversations we have participated in with newspaper experts to date have helped us shape the product strategy in a way that can effectively address what the industry requires.

The newspaper industry is seeing some trends and pressure in common with other graphic arts industries, such as rising input costs, demand for more personalized and targeted information and growing digital sophistication. The newspaper industry is in a unique position by virtue of the fact that it embraced the Web at an early stage, but there has been to date very limited connectivity between traditional print and the digital world. We believe our solutions reflect a significant step forward to enable a connection for the newspaper industry.

According to HP, what are the benefits of drop-on-demand vs. continuous inkjet technology for newspapers?

The approach that we have taken to address the analog-to-digital transformation for the newspaper industry has been to a certain extent technology-agnostic. We have focused on meeting the newspaper publisher’s specific requirements, and have learned that there is a need for a digital printing platform that provides the best combination of format size, productivity, print quality and economics. We have identified the HP Scalable Printing Technology (SPT) as a great fit for these needs. This inkjet technology has been specifically developed to remove the limitations in width and speed of other technologies, and it is used on a broad portfolio of HP products spanning from high-end office products to photo kiosks. It delivers high quality at a level of economics that benefit of the large scale of HP manufacturing.

In addition to these benefits, HP SPT offers a unique “bonding agent” technology that allows newspaper publishers to continue to use their own paper, removing one the major limiting factors of other digital printing technologies.

What trends do you see in digital printing for newspapers as far as news products, niche products, etc? What new technologies and features do you see emerging in digital presses that could potentially benefit newspapers?

The newspaper industry has — at the same time — an opportunity and a threat coming from the Web. Readers’ demand for more up-to-date and relevant content is growing at a fast pace and it is causing a shift in behaviors, making online more relevant. Advertisers are seeing this trend and adjusting their spending shares accordingly. For example, we’ve seen research noting that, for the 2005-2009 time period, online advertising is growing at a rate close to 30 percent, while newspapers’ advertising growth is in the low single digits.

The availability of a production infrastructure based on a distributed network of digital presses will allow the newspaper industry to shorten the time to deliver news and even customize the kind of news delivered to each individual reader. This may eventually result in an inversion of the readership trends and make newspapers a preferred advertising medium.

The newspaper industry has been talking for many years about the potential benefits of digital printing. Is the technology really ready to deliver these benefits?

Digital printing technology has been used so far by the newspaper industry in very niche applications because of the limitations in format size, productivity, print quality and economics. The HP Inkjet Web Press represents a breakthrough that we believe has the potential to start a “virtuous cycle” in this industry. Assuming that the price and performance benefits of digital continue on their current trajectory, digital holds the potential to transform the newspaper industry much as digital cameras did for photography.

U.K.’s Guardian reaches U.S. with digital edition

2008-07-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Although the introduction of color is a relatively new addition to digital newspaper printing, some dailies have offered black-and-white digital editions for years.

Case in point, Carlstadt, N.J.-based Global Document Solutions, which since 2003 has been printing 300 full broadsheet black-and-white copies of The Guardian nightly on an Oce 9210 wide format machine.

Global Document Solutions also operates facilities in New York City and Hayward, Calif.

“We print it every night,” said John Slaney, chief operating officer. “We print the full broadsheet so we’re really duplicating what it looks like in the U.K.”

The copies are picked up and distributed around New York City.

“People are getting that day’s paper instead of yesterday’s paper,” Slaney said.

Slaney said there was a large demand for The Guardian out of market and he is also working with some other newspapers that are interested in following The Guardian’s model.

He said some newspapers also want to print newspapers for distribution on planes. Los Angeles-based O’Neil Data Systems already prints a number of Australian newspapers for distribution on Qantas Airlines flights using Oce machines.

Slaney said he can see definite value for newspapers adopting these models.

“This gives flexibility for targeted ads,” he said. “ Ads running in London could be redirected here so that they are more pertinent and I think there is tremendous value in that — targeted marketing and messaging and at a smaller size run.”

Global Document Solutions worked with a mill to create the blend of newsprint that allows it to print newspapers on the digital press. The shop uses Hunkeler finishing equipment.

— Tara McMeekin

Digital presses stream into Drupa 2008

2008-07-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

By Mary L. Van Meter
Publisher

DUSSELDORF, Germany — One of the hottest trends emerging at last month’s Drupa 2008 was the explosion of short-run digital presses aimed at newspapers.

No fewer than a half-dozen vendors launched web-fed digital presses specifically engineered to serve newspapers’ print-on-demand needs.

The goal: to allow papers to meet the demand placed by business travelers and other consumers that want to pick up a newspaper at remote locations like airports and hotels. That segment, in conjunction with the increase of niche publications, short-run materials and other periodicals with less than 15,000 circulation, dovetails perfectly with the advent of these digital presses, observers say.

The web-fed presses showcased at drupa have throughputs, finishing systems and printing features that transcend the machines now aimed at transactional promotional printing.

To that end, they offer full color, increased speeds — in some cases up to 3,000 40-page newspapers per hour, about triple the output currently available — the ability to produce shorter press runs economically, and capabilities that permit the production of such products as micro-zoned materials and personalized inserts.

Most of the web-fed digital presses at Drupa were configured as continuous-feed, single-pass for double-side printing. They were also available with turner bars similar to those found within newspaper offset printing operations.

While some vendors, such as Oce, Nipson, Agfa, Hewlett Packard and Screen touted their grayscale drop-on-demand systems. Kodak offered three platforms, continuous inkjet, drop-on-demand and continuous stream.

All the companies said they are working with newspapers to test the machines. One vendor, Screen, showcased its Truepress Jet 520 in conjunction with finishing systems vendor Hunkeler and software vendor Newsworld to print live editions of several newspapers, including USA Today, during the show.

Then there was Xerox, which displayed its 980 Color Continuous Feed machine, which will be introduced later this year. The press uses hot flash-fusing LED technology common throughout Xerox’ product lines. With a resolution of 600 dots per inch, the press can produce up to 980 pages per minute and will be available later this year, according to Wendy K. Apton, Xerox’ assistant technology program manager.

A rundown of what was offered at the show (in alphabetical order):

Agfa

Agfa, which entered the digital press market in 2004 when it acquired Barco’s Dotrix technology, hasn’t aggressively marketed Dotrix to newspapers. But that is all about to change, said Kurt Smits, who heads Agfa’s strategic business development of global accounts. It begins with the Dotrix DGNews, which the company unveiled at drupa.

Photos: Newspapers & Technology Agfa press, and Kurt Smits, Agfa’s strategic business development global accounts.

The machine, available now, employs a grayscale drop-on-demand technology and uses a single-pass inkjet color engine.

“The press can print not only standard newspaper sizes on standard newsprint but also offers numerous financial applications that could incorporate personalized and customized content,” Smits said. The machine has an output capacity of 78 feet per minute and can print products up to 24.8 inches wide. (For more information about the DGNews.

Hewlett Packard

HP introduced its HP Inkjet Web Press, available with a scalable web width of up to 30 inches for production of full-broadsheet newspaper formats or multiple-up documents. The drop-on-demand press, using HP’s Edgeline thermal inkjet technology, can print up to 200 2-sided broadsheets per minute (Nordic format, 29.92 inches wide by 22.75 inches tall) with a resolution of 600 dpi.

Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager of HP’s inkjet high-speed production solutions, said a U.S. newspaper plans to test the 30-inch version of the machine later this year, producing 14 zoned versions every day. The press will be commercially available during the second half of 2009, Maruggi said.

Hewlett Packard unveiled its Inkjet Web Press, which will be tested by an undisclosed U.S. newspaper.

Kodak

Kodak showcased is Versamark VT 3000, a continuous-feed, single-pass press with continuous 4-color inkjet print technology. The VT 3000 is a scalable press that can handle web widths ranging from 8 inches to 20 inches and is offered in either 300-by-300 or 300-by-600 dpi resolution. Printing speeds vary per model but the VT 3000 can reach a maximum speed of 500 feet, or 2,040 pages, per minute. The press can support monochrome, spot and process color printing on the same platform, Kodak said.

Antonio M. Perez, chairman and chief executive officer, Kodak.
Nipson

Nipson Printing Systems unveiled its new generation of print heads for the VaryPress 200 and VaryPress 500 web-fed digital presses. Both presses use Nipson’s magnetographic imaging and flash fusing processes. The technology uses a magnetic print drum combined with flash toner fusing. The cold flash fusing system fuses the toner without heating the substrate, so the web does not shrink, warp, distort, or dry out, according to Martine Berger, marketing communications manager for Nipson.

The VaryPress 200 runs up to 295 feet per minute on a printable width of 18.45 inches (web width of 20.5 inches) with 600 dpi print quality. The VaryPress 500 has production speeds of up to 492 feet-per-minute.

Oce

Oce, whose black-and-white digital presses are used by several newspapers, introduced three new models of its full process-color JetStream machines.

The JetStream 750, 1500 and 3000 systems join the 2200 and 1100 machines Oce formally introduced last December. All employ Oce’s DigiDot piezo-based drop-on-demand printing platform.

The 750, with a 328-foot-per-minute capacity, is an entry-level machine, said Michael R. Polin, product manager.

The JetStream 1500 produces 1,300 full-color A4-size images per minute in two-up duplex format while the 3000 has an output capacity of 656 feet-per-minute with a resolution of 480-by-600 dpi.

Michael R. Polin, product manager, Oce.

Wendy K. Apton, assistant technology program manager at Xerox.

Screen

The Screen TruePress Jet 520 variable printing system blends grayscale drop-on-demand technology with Epson’s latest multitone piezo drop-on-demand inkjet print head. The press uses water-based dye inks, water-based pigment inks and four process colors (CMYK). The machine can print up to 210 feet per minute with a resolution of 720-by-360 dpi. Page widths run from 6.5 inches to 20.47 inches, with a cutoff of 40 inches.

“Print-on-demand will bring new business opportunities to newspapers,” said Seiichi Nakao, Screen’s manager of sales and marketing. “It will eliminate the financial cost and environmental impact of air-freighting newspapers while ensuring same-day availability no matter where their readers might be,” he said.

Seiichi Nakao, manager of sales and marketing, Screen.

Agfa readies to tackle papers with DGNews digital press

2008-07-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

At drupa 2008 Agfa Graphics introduced the Dotrix DGNews, a digital inkjet press for short-run printing. The new press is based on Agfa’s Dotrix Transcolor designed for transactional and transpromotional printing. The technology inside is similar to the Dotrix Modular, which was designed to print on a variety of substrates for industrial applications — folding cartons, packaging, displays, and plastic bags. To construct the DGNews press, Agfa took the duplexing capability from the Dotrix Transcolor and primed it for newsprint, added a sheet cutter, a drum collator and a double folding unit for single and double folds to produce fully finished tabloid or broadsheet newspapers.

Newspapers & Technology talked with Richard Barham, Agfa Graphics’ vice president for inkjet, worldwide about the company’s plans regarding digital printing in the newspaper market.
Photo: Agfa
Agfa’s Richard Barham stands next to an Agfa Modular press at last
month’s drupa.

N&T: What is the market potential for short-run digital printing?

Barham: We see the short-run digital printing taking hold in three phases.

First, we see newspaper distributors as the early adopters of this technology. A system such as the Dotrix DGNews will allow them to distribute precise circulation for large newspapers in remote locations. Already, there are two audiences — professionals who are living abroad and want to see the news from their native country. We call this the roaming market. A French broker, for example, working in New York on Wall Street would be able to get an 8:30 edition of Les Echos instead of having to wait until late afternoon, which is currently the case.

The other audience is tourists. Europeans who may be vacationing in Miami Beach will be able to get the early edition of their home newspaper each morning.

Distributors will be able to print for their newspaper clients locally, so the newspaper can reach those markets on a more timely basis with minimal waste. With the Dotrix DGNews they can print the exact quantity when needed with comparable quality to the original. They can even print the same size; there is no need to shrink the titles since the Dotrix DGNews can handle a full broadsheet.

A major advantage for the newspaper will be the ability to capture local advertisers. So Coppertone will be able to reach a very finely tuned tourist trade as well as its larger mass market. The first installation of the DGNews is taking place this summer at a distributor who caters to this very market — the firm delivers native newspapers to tourists traveling abroad.

We see the second wave of digital printing occurring as the capabilities of the technology increase. With faster speeds newspapers will be able to reach out to secondary markets with shorter, highly efficient editions. They will be able to deliver more targeted audiences to their advertisers. Community papers are a typical example of this case.

In the third wave, those newspapers will be able to personalize newspapers — that is, deliver very specific types of content by demographic. For example, newspapers going to a college campus will include advertising inserts geared specifically to 18 to 21 year olds. They’ll be able to deliver custom titles to markets they are currently unable to reach.

N&T: Are you describing a new business model for newspapers?

Barham: I would describe it more as a new opportunity for distributors where remote delivery is a requirement. Then as the technology moves forward, newspapers will adopt the technology to serve their local markets on a much more targeted basis. It isn’t necessarily changing the model, it is broadening it.

N&T: Can you provide a cost model comparison?

Barham: Newspapers typically use 2,000 or 3,000 tabloid copies, depending on the operation, as the breakeven point for offset printing. With the Dotrix DGNews you can print as few as one to 50 copies and still be competitive. The cost per copy is the same whether you print one or 3000 copies.

We are working on increasing the speed of the DGNews substantially over the course of the next year, with a goal toward bringing the cost per copy down even further.

N&T: If you are selling to distributors, who sells and services the system?

Barham: Agfa handles sales, installation, training and service.

N&T: How is color management handled?

Barham: Agfa integrates our ColorTune color management suite with the Dotrix DGNews. This is the technology we use in our proofing systems that allows us to match any output profile. Color is accurate. UV inks also allow a much wider color gamut for better color matching, especially important for matching special color.

N&T: How does the DGNews integrate into the workflow?

Barham: Very easily with our Apogee X workflow software. The DGNews was designed to integrate easily into any workflow — Agfa or non-Agfa.

Denver Newspaper Agency reins in active syndication of YourHub

2008-06-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

Even as newspapers continue to explore the value of rolling out grassroots-oriented Web sites and special sections, one of the first publishers to pioneer citizen journalism has quietly halted syndicating the concept to other publications.

Elaine Zinngrabe, Denver Newspaper Agency’s senior vice president, interactive, said that while DNA is no longer actively marketing YourHub, newspapers can still license the service.

DNA two years ago began syndicating YourHub.com after receiving inquiries from other newspapers interested in the concept (see Newspapers & Technology, April 2006).

The syndication kit included content publishing and hosting software as well as strategies for marketing, editorial and sales.

DNA charged newspapers a one-time setup fee of between $2,000 and $10,000 and a recurring monthly license fee of between $250 and $5,000, depending upon market size.

Still available

YourHub, a combination of Web sites and weekly printed publications, made its debut in Denver in 2005. The concept, produced by the Rocky Mountain News, is promoted and printed by the DNA, which also publishes The Denver Post.

Currently, the Denver YourHub encompasses 47 Web sites and 18 print editions.

Outside of The Buffalo (N.Y.) News and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo., however, the newspapers that syndicated YourHub were either MediaNews Group Inc. or E.W. Scripps-owned properties, reflecting the publishers that share ownership of DNA. They included the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, Treasure Coast Newspapers in Florida and the Wichita Falls (Texas) Times Record News.

But The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, a Scripps paper that was an early adopter, recently discontinued YourHub, said Jack Lail, managing editor of multimedia.

Changing strategy

“Our strategy has changed. Instead of doing three geo-targeted print publications, we now do one in our home county,” he said. “A separate publication we own is doing community zoning.”

Lail said The News-Sentinel is continuing to offer opportunities for users to contribute content through four different sites, aimed at prep sports, college sports, education issues and for the nearby Smoky Mountains. The sites were created on Ning.com, a free social networking site.

Lail said that some user-generated features can also be supported in the Ellington CMS platform the newspaper uses for its Knoxnews.com Web site (see related story above).

The paper is also exploring other options to allow users to post additional photos and text.

Prep sports scoring points

2008-05-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

If you build it, they will come.

That is the hope several companies are expressing as they attempt to extend community journalism into the wide world of sports.

Last month, CommunitySportsDesk, an offshoot of the Kenosha (Wis.) News, launched a hosted service that allows local youth and recreation sports leagues to post schedules, write game summaries, input stats and box scores and upload game and team pictures to a newspaper-branded Web site.

The hosted version is the most recent iteration of CommunitySportsDesk, which the News (Monday-Friday, 24,552; Saturday, 24,215; Sunday, 27,149) rolled out last summer as an experiment to see how it could handle user-generated content flowing from the area’s youth and recreation sports teams, according to Ken Dowdell, News publisher and vice president of United Communications Corp.

“Our in-house techs built that innovative model, based on discussions with league organizers and team officials,” he said.

Reaction was positive, so the News hired additional software developers to pepper CommunitySportsDesk with additional features, including the ability for UCC to host the app, Dowdell said.

“It can be the ‘something-different’ tool that equips a traditional media company to get where they need to go with youth and recreational sports,” he said about the software, adding that he felt confident the concept would work well in other “Kenoshas” around the country.

Automatic lede writing

In addition to rewriting code that enabled UCC to host the app, developers added features that allow the software to produce basic headlines and lead paragraphs automatically, based on the data input by team representatives.

“Rather than simply offering a channel for blogging, CommunitySportsDesk helps structure the collection, processing and flow of what can be massive amounts of data,” said Dowdell.

“We’ve engineered options that can serve Pee Wee players who just need their achievements recognized to high school and adult leagues that like to collect complete stats,” he said.

Dowdell said the company is prepared to support its users as they roll out the software.

“As a result of our real-life experiences, we’re prepared to help other publishers with a community-focused, full advertising-supported business model, not merely software,” said Dowdell.

Matthew Serpe, a CommunitySportsDesk business development specialist, said the service dovetails with the industry’s adoption of hyper-local coverage.

“In a newspaper, (youth and rec sports) is an area getting the least amount of coverage. We are offering this application for youth and rec to cover themselves.”

National effort

Dell Sports Inc., meantime, plans to roll out a national high-school sports service this fall, according to Terry Dell, president of the Charlotte, N.C., firm.

The service, Prep Sports Nation, allows participants to post and share pictures, upload video and blogs and share content among students, parents, athletes and local community members.

“How cool would it be to have pictures of you, uploaded on the Web site, by everyone in the audience?” Dell said. “It’s a game of a thousand angles and it’s easy for anyone who goes and watches the game to take pictures.”

Dell said participating newspapers can download all the materials they need from the PSN site. Fans are reminded that a newspaper could use their photos or stories before they can post to PSN, Dell said.

Prep Sports Nation began beta testing the app last August and Dell said he’s modified PSN to accommodate user requests.

Reverse publishing

“One suggestion was full reverse publishing on all user photos and profile material, which we had, but (the paper) wanted to take the entire profile and feature a particular a student,” he said.

Papers can feature multiple student profiles and can also run fan profiles from multiple schools, he said.

PSN is engineered to manage rosters, schedules, and individual and team stats. Users will also be able to search for particular teams or individuals on other PSN sites and Dell said he’s working on a delivery method to allow photos and other materials to be shared among newspapers.

The system includes a stamp or watermark that identifies where the photo originated and a transmission system that can route the photo to a newspaper that requests to publish it.

CommunitySportsDesk and PSN come as newspapers try to find ways to increase coverage of local sports even as their resources are trimmed. The Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News, for example, won a Digital Edge award for its prep sports site, Pigskin Review, which launched last year (see Newspapers & Technology, March 2008).

Unleashing papers’ inner beast

2008-04-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s not easy reinventing a newspaper when the newspaper itself is the one spreading the bad news.

But that’s just one of the obstacles Brian Tierney faces as he attempts to revitalize The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

“If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about newspapers, it’s that there isn’t an industry out there that doesn’t kick itself in the rear end more frequently and more dramatically than this business,” said Tierney, chief executive officer and publisher of Philadelphia Media Holdings.

Tierney, along with Michael Reed, president and chief executive officer of GateHouse Media Inc. and William Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive officer of Media News Group, were the keynote speakers at this year’s NAA Marketing Conference.

Their message: Newspapers need to be aggressive innovators to fend off stiff competition in their quest to achieve local news dominance and ad dollars.

Tierney, the former advertising executive who implemented a number of new initiatives at the Philadelphia papers, said that newspapers are doing a disservice to themselves by focusing too much on the negative business and not enough on the positive.

Burying the lede

Case in point: When The Inquirer reported its first circulation gains in a number of years, the story was buried on page 3 of the business section.

“You will never see Brian Williams begin his broadcast by rending his garments and saying that a third of the people who used to watch me aren’t even watching me anymore,” Tierney said.

What newspapers are dealing with is more competition and it’s important to maintain their local audience.

“Let’s talk about the assets that we have,” said Tierney. “There are all kinds of challenges out there but I really see as an outsider the strengths of the industry and we need to understand them, focus on them and invest in those and get over it.”

A key part of Tierney’s strategy is to attract women aged 35 years and up.

To that end, Philadelphia Media Holdings launched several programs geared toward wooing that demographic, programs involving targeted advertising and promotions (see sidebar).

He also stressed papers should launch low-cost experiments and explore e-commerce initiatives.

But more importantly, he said, newspapers need to promote the value they provide their communities.

“We’re proud to put on the front of our Sunday paper (that the paper) contains $722, or $638, worth of coupons inside,” he said. “The journalists don’t exactly love that but I’ll take them anyway I can; If that’s what it take to get our consumers to come out with a little bit of kibble like a deer in the woods.”

Moving ahead

Singleton stated that while the United States is poised to enter a recession, now is the time for newspapers to move forward with the right strategies.

The key focus for newspapers is to protect and serve the core printed product and to expand the online business and develop new niche products, he said.

“Right now we are facing a secular and cyclical downturn and it’s important not to get the two mixed up,” said Singleton. “We’ve been going through secular change for several years. Our core has been smaller, advertisers have been shrinking while our online has been growing.”

Real estate and job listings may never come back to printed newspapers, but newspapers can still attract these revenues in their electronic editions, Singleton said.

He said he expects online revenues to contribute 20 percent of MNG’s sales by 2012 while sales from print advertising generate 65 percent. The remainder, he said, will come from niche and specialty products. According to a memo he issued in late 2007, Singleton said MNG currently gets 89 percent of its revenues from display advertising while online contributes about 7 percent.

Reed, meantime, said the industry has to continue to invest in and train its sales force.

“We have gotten increasingly complex compared to 20, 30, 40 years ago when we just put our daily newspaper on the street,” Reed said. “That’s not the case anymore. We have a plethora of niche products, weeklies, monthlies, special sections, and our daily and online products.”

Newspaper sales reps must know the product mixes, the community and the competition and be willing to change. Singleton stressed feet on the streets, while Reed said his company’s strengths lie in knowing the community and integrating the newspaper within that market.

As a result, GateHouse, which largely owns newspapers in small and mid-sized markets, has been able to avoid some of the classified revenues meltdown and cyclical downturn that’s affected its larger counterparts, Reed said.

As for feet on the street, “You can’t sell what we have to offer if you don’t have people to sell it,” Singleton said.

“We need to sell to the advertisers and more importantly, the customers we don’t have, and find out what problems we need to solve, what solutions we need to provide for them.”

Still, Tierney said, the severe cost pressures newspapers are now facing won’t end anytime soon. Trimming staff, he said, is a consequence of the current business environment.

“Quite frankly, there’s a sense of entitlement and lamentation about the past and the core of our employees (is) not stepping up to the game the way we need them to,” he said.

“We are changing that mindset. We have been able to redo our contracts with union leaders to get that and they’ve been helping getting people up and out who do not want to step up to the game.”

Yet even as newspapers are forced to resize their operations, publishers still must be open to new ideas and take chances when appropriate, Tierney said.

“The key is to experiment, to make a lot of small bets. Don’t bet the house on any one thing, but why not try something with a small investment but high potential down the road,” he said.

Digital printing, automation to drive drupa '08

2008-02-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

By Mary L. Van Meter
Publisher

DUSSELDORF, Germany — With more than 550 million newspapers printed worldwide each day, the power of the printed word remains strong, said officials at a weeklong event held last month to promote drupa 2008.

Newspapers are just one segment of the millions of tons of printed materials produced each year, said Albrecht Bolza-Schunemann, chairman of drupa 2008 and chief executive officer of Koenig & Bauer AG.

Bolza-Schunemann said contemporary newspapers have little to fear in comparison to Web sites, particularly since users still rate papers as friendlier and easier to read. “Consumers rate nothing as highly as newspapers in terms of credibility,” he said. Still, he said integrated workflow and process control will become more critical factors as publishers find ways to cut production costs. “Automation will be a key factor,” he said.
Albrecht Bolza-Schunemann, chairman of drupa 2008 and chief executive officer of Koenig & Bauer AG, touted the power of print at the January drupa preview. Photos: Newspapers & Technology

The global volume of printed materials, he said, is increasing at an annual clip of 3 percent to 5 percent. In more populous nations such as China and India, print growth is galloping along at double-digit rates, he said.

Bolza-Schunemann, along with drupa CEO Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, kicked off drupa Media Week. This year’s drupa, from May 29 through June 11, will showcase more than 1,800 exhibitors.

Among the key technologies drupa visitors can expect to see are those related to digital printing, along with an increased focus on automated and touchless workflow solutions, vendors said.

Companies such as Screen, Kodak, Ricoh, Fujifilm Corp. and Xerox Corp. said they’ll demonstrate hybrid applications based on the nexus of digital and offset technology.

These print-on-demand and Web-to-print approaches are geared to helping printers expand margins and attract new revenue streams.

Among drupa developments:

•Domino Printing Sciences said it would release two newspaper-oriented inkjet-based variable-print products, the K150 inkjet printer and version 4.5 of the vendor’s Bitjet printing system. Both enable high-speed inline inkjet printing and both can be integrated with web offset and flexo presslines.

•Screen previewed the TruePress Jet 520, a full-color variable printing system, as well as the PlateRite 2000+ thermal computer-to-plate system.

The TruePress can print different images and text on each page and features a roll-fed paper transport system, according to Tim Taylor, marketing director (see photo, page 24). Taylor said the system can be used with any uncoated newspaper stock and will be aimed at newspapers that want to produce print editions at remote sites.

“CTP represents 90 percent of Screen gross revenues and we are very committed to this market,” Taylor said. “But because Drupa only comes around every four years, we will devote a majority of our booth to print-on-demand to showcase that we are in the market.”

The 2000+, meantime, can produce 106 broadsheet or 49 panorama plates per hour and is Screen’s fastest machine. It’s available immediately.

•Ricoh showcased its Ricoh Pro C900 and C900s digital printer. Designed for high-volume print customers, it is integrated with a range of inline finishing devices that support perfect binding, ring binding and other capabilities.

•Presstek Inc. said it will display its chemistry-free platemaking systems, its line of 52DI and 34DI digital printers and its Momentum Pro workflow software.

The 52DI is a landscape digital offset press that can support FM screening without additional time or expense, Presstek said. The 34DI is a portrait format digital press.

•Fujifilm and Xerox said they would cross-promote each other’s digital printing capabilities as part of their reseller agreement. Among specific products to be displayed will be Fujifilm’s Brilla HD Pro-V chemistry-free digital plate and PressMax pressroom chemistry.

•Kodak said it will demonstrate its next-generation digital inkjet press, Kodak Stream Concept Press.

The high-speed press features print resolution that exceeds 600 dots per inch and relies on continuous inkjet technology. Kodak said Stream will be geared to commercial printers that produce monthly page volumes of 10 million or more.

“Stream Technology will bring some exciting changes to the industry and this technology demonstration will be an impressive display of its offset class capabilities,” said Ronen Cohen, vice president of marketing of Kodak’s inkjet printing solutions.

Additionally, Kodak will display Prinergy 5.0 workflow software and other CTP systems and associated software geared to commercial printers. —NT

Editor’s note: Newspapers & Technology is one of only seven U.S. publications to be selected as a drupa 2008 media partner and the only one whose primary focus is newspaper production.

Digital print vendors make strides, but will newspapers answer call?

2008-02-01T17:46:00.000-08:00

By Don Piontek
Special to Newspapers & Technology

Over the past five years, digital print technology has expanded its turf dramatically.

In commercial print, book printing, direct mail and transactional printing, digital production is now considered an everyday technology.

And there’s more to come. By 2012, it’s estimated that digital printing will be approaching parity with offset printing as a component of the graphics universe.

The exception to this rule? Newspaper printing.

Photo: Screen

The Screen TruePress Jet 520, to be introduced at drupa, is capable of running full 4-color at speeds of up to 209 feet per minute.

Still mostly a web offset world, newspaper production has been little impacted by the digital print revolution. But this may change in the next year or two, thanks to the introduction of high-speed digital systems that boast increased quality, color and inline finishing.

Many major high-speed digital print systems have been introduced over the past year and there are more to come.

Most (not all) offer, or will offer, continuous-web inkjet printers with web speeds of up to 650 feet per minute and printable widths of more than 20 inches. For the most part, these machines print at a resolution of 600-by-600 dots per inch, and cover the process color gamut well.

Newspapers take a serious look

No chance of anyone mistaking their output for offset, but digital output has gotten quite good and it’s getting better all the time.

These new printers will prompt the newspaper community to take a serious look at digital, and the advantages it brings to their business.

One area drawing interest is the insert, or FSI, business.

The FSI business at major metro dailies was once controlled by the big food and retail chains that gravure-printed millions of flyers for mass distribution over a metro’s entire geographical area. That’s long gone.

Today, microzoning in the newspaper-packaging department and better targeting now permit targeted messages to be delivered close to each store’s “ground zero” radius.

As a result, long insert runs are now broken up into many zoned segments. Still, the FSI production process is wholly an offset one, with an average of six weeks of lead time between artwork and actual inserting. And of most firms using FSI advertising, the majority are still national big box food, retail and electronics chains such as Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart.

Valuable market untapped

This has left a valuable potential market untapped by the major metro dailies: The smaller mom-and-pop stores that would like to distribute close to their establishments’ radius. This is where digital could fill the gap. Picture a 500-foot-per-minute color inkjet press (or two) located in the packaging department, cranking out quality color, microzoned quantities of inserts on demand for smaller retailers.

Remember that such a press requires only a certified .PDF or PostScript file. No plates. Insert versions can run back-to-back with no downtime whatsoever for changeover. Insert orders could potentially be accepted up to a few days (or less) before the packaging operation began. A digital in-plant process would permit newspapers to offer insert distribution to this non-chain retail market with affordable production costs and selected distribution.

But let’s take this a bit further.

How about neighborhood-specific publications? A major metro area is not a homogenized geographic block. It’s composed of many neighborhoods, each with its own character.

Digital print could enable the creation of neighborhood-tailored publications that can be distributed quickly and cost efficiently. This technology could open up new markets for metro dailies. Papers as varied as the Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post and Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel all print hyper-local weeklies tailored to particular neighborhoods or suburbs. Why not print these on digital systems instead of web offset machines?

More than inserts

Today’s high-speed digital printers can crank out complete publications and not just inserts.

Kodak, for example, in 2006 partnered with Swiss manufacturer Hunkeler to develop an integrated newspaper printing and cutting-sheeting-folding system that can pump out up to 1,000 40-page newspapers per hour.

The Kodak Versamark system has created great interest in Europe, and a few metro dailies in the United States have given it very serious consideration.

Editor’s note: Kodak will introduce a higher speed digital printer at this year’s drupa. The system will use the vendor’s Stream continuous inkjet technology and feature a thermal, drop-on-demand design.

Meantime, The New York Times is using continuous web printers from another digital press vendor, Oce, to produce its European editions.

The printed papers are distributed to newsstands at major European airports and cities each day.

By using digital technology, The Times is able to close its European edition much later than it would have had it used conventional web offset printing. The final layout is downloaded from the United States and the printers begin spinning up within minutes.

On-demand possibilities

How about a scenario where these digital printers are based at major U.S. airports such as O’Hare International in Chicago or Hartsfield in Atlanta?

RFID technology located in various airport newsstands could automatically transmit reprint alerts to the system, which would then proceed to print more copies. No more long truck trips in heavy traffic in order to deliver copies from the plant. Not only that, such a system could print the great majority of newspapers sold at the newsstands, thus increasing the digital printer’s utilization and efficiency.

High-speed continuous web digital print systems have found homes in a wide variety of applications that were formerly offset only.

Book printers use these systems to produce small orders, with runs as low as one or two books, on demand.

One such print-on-demand publisher, LaVergne, Tenn.-based Lightning Source Inc., uses its digital foundation to fill 19,000 book orders daily at an average of 1.9 unique books per order.

Transactional and financial services printers, meantime, are using the color capabilities of these printers to incorporate promotional messages into customers’ statements.

Potential customers see the output quality and speed capability and find lots of applications that can migrate to digital from offset. Although these digital presses aren’t cheap — some integrated systems can cost more than $3 million — newspapers should have no problems finding profitable niches or new business opportunities where high-speed digital print could be part of the solution.

All it takes is imagination.

Editor’s note: British manufacturer IBIS Bindery Systems Ltd. offers a high-speed folding, stitching, gluing and trimming system called the Smart-binder, which the vendor said is suited for many in-line digital newspaper applications.

Don Piontek is the Minneapolis-based U.S. representative for digital finishing systems manufacturer IBIS Bindery Systems. He can be reached at 952.937.5100 or via e-mail at finishingres@qwest.net.

Graph Expo gives attendees better taste of digital future

2007-10-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

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.

ChiTrib launches civic sites

2007-05-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

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.”

Economics still stymie potential of digital printing

2007-04-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Kodak to offer digital finishing

2006-10-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO - Kodak plans to introduce a newspaper-oriented inkjet printer equipped with an inline finishing system at this year’s IfraExpo.

The vendor’s existing VX5000 printer will be meshed with an inline finishing system from Hunkeler AG, said W. Park Rayfield, director of business development at Kodak Versamark.

Rayfield said the combination printer-postpress system, to be commercially available in 2007, will be aimed at newspapers that want the capability of producing short-run, full-color variable print products.

“It will have the look and feel of ink-on-paper,” he said at Inland Press Association’s press and postpress seminar. The printer-postpress system uses continuous inkjet technology to ensure more reliable performance, and can produce up to 1,000 40-page newspapers per hour. It’s well-suited for remote production, Rayfield said.

The Hunkeler postpress system, meantime, can cut, collect and fold both tab and broadsheet products and can switch formats automatically.

Grassroots Web concept branching out

2006-04-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

YourHub.com may be coming to a Web site near you.

More than a dozen newspapers, ranging from The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel to those operated by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, have signed up to begin offering the Web-to-print grassroots journalism platform since the Denver Newspaper Agency began syndicating the concept earlier this year.

The initiative, introduced last May, is produced by the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News and is promoted and printed by the DNA, which also publishes The Denver Post. In Denver, YourHub.com spans 42 Web sites and 15 zoned weekly print sections that cover specific communities in the Mile High City’s metropolitan area (see Newspapers & Technology, June 2005).

Jack Lail, managing editor for multimedia at The News-Sentinel, said YourHub.com has yielded positive results since the newspaper launched the service last year prior to DNA’s syndication.

“We have had 2,715 stories posted, 1,305 events posted and 112 blog entries, he said, adding that the newspaper (Monday-Friday, 115,123; Saturday, 128,441; Sunday, 150,416) has more than 1,000 registered users and averages more than 60,000 page views each month.

The News-Sentinel is printing three zoned sections for home delivery and produces 21 Web sites covering specific Knoxville neighborhoods.

The paper’s YourHub.com staff consists of one editor, four reporters and an online producer. Their job is to help supplement the Web site by covering specific YourHub.com communities.

In addition to The News-Sentinel and LANG, other papers set to launch YourHub.com include Scripps Treasure Coast Newspaper Group in Florida, Alameda Newspaper Group in northern California, the Ventura County (Calif.) Star, the Anderson (S.C.) Independent-Mail, Wichita Falls (Texas) Times Record News, Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times and the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn.

Spiraling interest

Fran Wills, DNA’s vice president of interactive and product development, said that the agency opted to syndicate YourHub.Com after receiving inquiries from other newspapers that were interested in the Rocky Mountain News’ initiative.

Key features in the YourHub.com syndication launch kit include content publishing and hosting software as well as strategies for marketing, editorial and sales, Wills said.

Optional features, such as converting the Web content to print format, and online classified ad posting, are also available. The software was developed by DNA in conjunction with Denver-based Indigo Group Inc. DNA charges newspapers that syndicate YourHub.com a one-time setup fee of between $2,000 and $10,000 and a recurring monthly license fee of between $250 and $5,000, depending upon market size.

Although DNA provides the software and print interfaces, each newspaper is responsible for managing its own content and marketing.

Since its Denver launch last year, YourHub.com reported an average of 309,000 page views and more than 45,000 unique visitors per month, according to John Temple, editor, publisher and president of the News.

Moreover, the site generated more than $5 million in annual revenues for DNA, with 40 percent to 50 percent of advertisers representing new business for the agency.

The print sections are produced every Thursday by the News and delivered by the DNA to both News and Post subscribers.

“We receive more than 800 stories a week from parents, grandparents, professionals, public information officers, churches, town officials, business owners and others,” said Temple, about YourHub.com’s success. More than 400 events are posted on the offering’s various Web sites each week.

“We have done extensive outreach to the community and it has paid off,” he said.

Temple said that one of the lessons he and the staff at YourHub.com learned from the concept’s launch is that it takes time for newspapers to encourage community participation.

“It is more important to have a good relationship with the community than to have ‘bells and whistles’ on your site,” he said. “It is important that the community knows you really are local and that there are faces behind the Web site.”

At the same time, Temple said he has learned that citizen journalism can be a bit messy at times and that the concept has to be continually tweaked as it goes along.

To that end, Temple said YourHub.com has added blogging, personal profiles, comments and a mechanism through which users can rate stories. A yellow pages directory has also been added.

“The community is defining YourHub.com and what it looks like today may not be what it looks like next year,” he said. “As more people begin to understand the concept, there will be a bigger demand for sites such as ours,” he said.

Temple said YourHub.com thus far has successfully avoided the pitfalls that afflicted such comparable efforts as the Los Angeles Times’ wikitorial project that was launched and subsequently pulled because of obscene postings.

“We have 26 eyes on the Web page, a profanity filter and communities who self-police the sites,” Temple said. “We have an objectionable content button that notifies staff. We haven’t had a problem with objectionable postings.”

Citizen journalism pubs rolling off the presses

It’s becoming more commonplace for newspapers to produce special sections from citizen-generated online content.

Case in point, the Daily Herald In suburban Chicago, which in February launched Beep, a Web site geared to 21-to-34-year-old readers, according to editor Kurt Gessler. A print counterpart to Beep will debut later this spring.

“To do this, we’re creating a Web-to-print product focusing on news, entertainment and features, with a special emphasis on interactive elements like blogs, polls and a message board system,” he said. “Plus, our users can directly take part in the reporting process, from eating/drinking with us for reviews to serving as sources and even reporters on stories.”

Unlike some other online-to-print entities, Gessler said that the Herald will not zone Beep into special sections.

“For our users, we want to bring the scattered burbs together, not split them,” he said. “People constantly say they are bored, many of whom don’t realize all the things available within five miles of where they live.”

Gessler said that there is no downside to actively engaging readers to produce content for the community.

“This generation (of readers) has grown up not only participating on message boards but also running sites, defining what news is, what it means,” he said. “The biggest challenge I see is if, in this era of media specialization, a publication like Beep is focused enough.”

Beep is one of a growing number of so-called citizen journalism Web/print efforts. Among them:

*Northwest Voice: A free community publication published by The Bakersfield Californian that is delivered to more than 24,000 homes in northwest Bakersfield every other Thursday.

*Neighbors: A weekly, user-created neighborhood-oriented publication distributed by The Dallas Morning News.

*Bluffton Today: A free daily newspaper in Bluffton, S.C., which sports a mix of articles from news staff and online contributors.

Grassroots Web site in Denver model for future?

2005-06-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

The (Denver) Rocky Mountain News last month rolled out a wide-ranging grassroots journalism initiative that could set the stage for how newspapers compete in today’s fractured media landscape.

The scheme, dubbed YourHub.com, is both a Web site and companion weekly print edition touted by Rocky Mountain News Publisher and Editor John Temple as a “virtual town square.”

“We expect people already involved in community life, whether through sports or clubs or social organizations, schools or churches, to be especially active on YourHub.com,” he said.

The site is portioned into 40 specific home pages for each community in the seven-county Denver metro area. Access is free, and users do not have to subscribe to the News to view stories or calendar events. But users must register before they can contribute to the site.

“They can write their own stories, post as many photos as they want, share their opinions on any topic and sell things,” Temple said.

In addition, the site is peppered with myriad information features such as volunteer requests and local calendars to help keep citizens informed about events and opportunities in their own backyard.

Positive reaction

The Rocky Mountain News is also providing editorial content for the YourHub.com sites through a dedicated staff separate from the newsroom.

The Denver Newspaper Agency, which publishes the News and The Denver Post through a joint operating agreement, is handling distribution and advertising for both the online and print editions of YourHub.com, according to Fran Willis, vice president of interactive and product development.

“Advertising will include retail and classified display and liner ads in print,” she said. “Online will include online versions of all the print advertising as well as online-only banners, contextual ads and transaction-enabled classified liners where users can sell their merchandise online through an auction, negotiated or fixed price.”

Temple said the newspaper registered more than 1,400 users in the first 24 hours after it launched the sites and reported 15,000 page views over the first two days.

“Whenever I explain YourHub.com in the community, I only get positive reactions,” he said.

The weekly print editions, the first of which were distributed in late May, spotlight the best stories on each YourHub.com site, Temple said.

By August, the News plans to print 15 editions, which will be inserted in both the News and The Post.

DNA has promoted YourHub.com in both papers as well as ads on cable television and Denver movie theaters.

“We have yard signs and flyers, and there will be a whole effort to do grassroots marketing including branded cameras, water bottles, sunscreen, baseball caps and soccer balls that will be distributed at community events,” Temple said.

Many sources

Temple said the primary role of the staff working on the site is to provide links to content that readers may find valuable.

“If you want to know when the library is open, you can go to YourHub.com, but we also link to every news story we can find about every community.”

This is one of the radical aspects of YourHub.com, Temple said, since the site is not giving preference on a regular basis to stories produced by YourHub.com staff.

“Our goal is to be a hub, a place where readers can come and find out everything they need to know about their local community. So we link to everybody, including Rocky competitors, in addition to generating our own stories and content.”

Currently the Web site has 10 full-time editorial employees, with plans to add more. There are three advertising staff and DNA’s interactive team has two full-time people working on YourHub.com with one from marketing.

The News’ YourHub.com is the latest in a series of attempts made by companies to encourage public participation. One of the most successful, Korea’s OhmyNews.com, reportedly attracts more than 2 million readers a day and has more than 26,000 registered citizen journalists.