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Newspaper technology Publication production

ASIA BECKONSHaving opened in Sydney, Méthode developer EidosMedia is talking about an Asian office

BEANBAG HACKERS

PRINT SMART

Five ways you can add value

to your printed newspaper

The ‘awesome apps’ and bigger profits that happened when NSTP put a Gen-Yer in charge of e-media

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After landing Fairfax Media’s Financial Review Group in 2009, EidosMedia is stepping up its

presence in Australasia with a Sydney subsidiary and local team headed by Lodovico de Briganti, formerly of Unisys and manroland.

The new office – in Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills – is just around the corner from News Limited, widely expected to be the Milan-headquartered systems developer’s next client in the region.

Group chief executive Gabriella Franzini won’t be drawn on the subject, except to say that most of the publishers in Australia are looking and evaluating: “Doing nothing means taking a bigger risk,” she says.

An group-wide order from News would however be complex and significant, arguably among the biggest installations in the world.

“Our platform is different and unique,” Franzini says. “We started ten years ago with a clear idea of how it should be arranged. It’s ready, and was ready for mobile and iPad.”

At IfraExpo in Vienna in October, the company added an iPad-based workstation for journalists and editors

change. “We are contracted by the largest publishers and growing steadily,” she says.

“I’m quite confident. We have an advantage, and some customers have achieved a return on investment in less than two years. The difference is that you can look at the future.”

As general manager of the Australian operations de Briganti brings experience in IT solutions for the publishing sector. He worked for manroland in Germany as vice-president for business development, and has publishing sector experience with companies including Unisys – where he worked with Franzini – and Accenture. His international experience includes projects in France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Brazil, the USA and Asia. A keen rugby player, he played in the Italian 1st division for ten years, as well as representing Italy at University and B level.

EidosMedia has also appointed Steve Ball as general manager of its US subsidiary, where he replaces Jo Ann Froelich, who had headed it since it was created in 2008. Ball was previously US marketing director, and had worked for both Unisys and Atex.Peter Coleman nngx

‘on the move’, dubbed Méthode MoJo. The app enables users to create and file multimedia content – including photos and videos created with the iPad cameras or external devices – from anywhere with a network connection. They can also see page plans and get an up-to-the minute oversight of print edition workflows.

The core editorial product of course, is already used by News Corporation-owned sites including the ‘Wall Street Journal’. In Australia, Fairfax’s Financial Review Group uses Méthode for print and digital editions of the ‘AFR’ and a portfolio of magazines, supplements and associated portals for the Australian and Asian markets.

Indian financial daily ‘Mint’, published by HT Media, is also an Eidos users, but Gabriella Franzini says there is no intention of taking over its support from Australia.

“Asia could be a project for next year,” she says. “It’s a growing market with some big prospects and high expectations, and will require local knowledge.”

Globally, she says EidosMedia is “taking full advantage of the crisis” by providing a platform which allows for

An MPC Media publicationVolume 11 Number 4 November 2011

Managing editor Peter Coleman Tel: +61 7-5485 0079 Mob: 0407 580 094 Email [email protected] sales Contact Peter ColemanTel: +61 7-5485 0079 Mob: 0407 580 094South East Asia regional manager: Stephan Peters Tel: +66 2 9460 698 Email [email protected] office: (editorial, administration, production): PO Box 40, Cooran, Qld 4569, Australia Tel: +61 7-5485 0079 Fax: +61 2-4381 0246 E-mail: [email protected] Maggie ColemanPrinted by Galloping Press, NSW, AustraliaLatest industry news at www.gxpress.net

Published by MPC Media (Pileport Pty Ltd) ABN 30 056 610 363

Subscriptions A$30 pa. (inc GST) within Australia. Other rates on application© Pileport Pty Ltd 2011. No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without prior written permission. The views expressed by contributors to GXPress are not necessarily those of the publisher

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SYSTEMS, ONLINE & MOBILEgxpress.net


www.gxpress.net2 gxpress.net November 2011

INSIDEFUNNEL EFFECT: Columnist John Juliano on WoodWing’s Adobe decision PAGE 4

IMPRINTING IN COLOUR: Kodak brings Stream CMYK to web-offset printers PAGE 8

DIGITAL IDEAS: Bright online and mobile concepts you’ll wish you own PAGE 13

...AND PRINT, TOO: IfraExpo delivers ways to add value to print editions PAGE 15

NEXT STEPS: the manroland insolvency: Users get behind support campaign PAGE 23

AUSSIE SUPERGROUP: Big four drive merger of PANPA into new owned body PAGE 38OUR THANKS TO THESE ADVERTISERS:Conti-Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Ferag Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Goss International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Kodak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Mitsubishi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Müller Martini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Publish Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25QIPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10QuadTech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21WAN-Ifra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

‘World-first’ Air Link goes straight to app userbaseA sophisticated quick response

code built into Fairfax Media tablet and smartphone apps

is a world-first, the Australia-based newspaper publisher claims.

The AirLink technology is the result of a ‘smart services’ partnership teaming seven Australian universities with government support – among them Wollongong and RMIT universities.

A beta version of the “world first” technology was shown by Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood to delegates at the Digital Media Asia conference in Hong Kong this month, but digital publisher Jane Huxley says

it will not be brought to market until next year.

“We will not bring it to market until we have a sponsor, but we’ve been amazed by the level of interest, so that’s a quality problem to have,” she told GXpress.

Using the camera in a smartphone, AirLink recognises an image – which might be a photograph, headline or graphic – in a printed publication or elsewhere and immediately directs the phone to enriching digital content.

What’s unusual about the Fairfax technology is that the code will be resident (as an update) in apps the

publisher already has in the market. Unlike other QR codes – including public domain ones – there will be no need to download a separate app to read it.

“We can drop the code straight into the installed base for our apps – not just the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, but others such as Domain, Drive and MyCareer,” Huxley says.

The smart services partnership has already generated other products for Fairfax including Scoop, a tool for journalists which cross-references other news sites to help establish whether a story has already been written. nngx

Roxen gets Metro’s web app orderDeveloper Roxen says

free newspaper ‘Metro’ – credited with being

the world’s largest – will use its technology for a new tablet edition.

‘Metro’ targets a young, urban audience and has more than 17 million daily readers of its 100 free editions over four continents.

The Roxen software will allow seamless integration of its online content for iPad users. Metro executive vice president and online director Peter Holmlund says the requirements were “challenging from a technical as well as a commercial perspective”,

“We wanted an innovative tablet app for the iPad, offering our readers an even better look-and-feel and user experience than our regular online editions,” he says. “Something future-proof

while at the same time using native device functionality such as rubber band, swiping, off-line reading and other functionality nowadays expected by iPad users. Social media interaction and user comments were essential and, for ease of use and visibility, it was to be made available in App store.”

There was a catch however: The solution could not require any additional editorial headcount or cost for third party software, or additional variable cost for downloads.

The Roxen software for tablets and smartphones combines template-driven, automated publishing with a hybrid-app using HTML5, supporting iPad and iPhone, with additional platforms including Android to follow. nngx

UK-based PageSuite says it is developing a dynamic content delivery system, in which interactive content such as videos and rich media can be simultaneously published across mobile apps and digital editions, and layout and branding can be customised without resubmission.

A beta preview is available of the system, which allows control of branding, content and edition design from a live control panel. The company says this can also launch advertising, subscriptions and data tools.

The new ‘dynamic apps’ will maximise use of ‘on the fly’ interactive features by layering rich media and video editorial and advertisements throughout an edition. PageSuite says with no longer a need for substantial downloads, readers can enjoy engaging content ‘on the go’, which can be created using existing Precisionmedia tools.

App layouts and branding can be customised without having to re-submit to iTunes, and changes of advertising and sponsorship is also remotely controlled.

“You can even choose which publications and editions you would like to display in your app and wrap subscription or data capture tools around content,” says a spokesman. nngx

After Sydney, Eidos eyes Asia office in 2012Handy: The Centennial Tower building in Sydney’s Elizabeth Street is just around the corner from News Limited

The specialist systems subsidiary of pressmaker manroland, ppiMedia

has scored its first Singaporean customer, commissioning integrated production planning at multimedia publisher MediaCorp.

The company’s PlanPag newspaper production planning software is used for daily newspaper ‘Today’ and has been integrated with the Atex Prestige editorial system and SAP’s IS-M/AM ad management system.

The new workflow started with the implementation of the ad management system and an update of Prestige. With the ppi product as its central planning system, MediaCorp now creates the page plans for Singapore’s second largest daily newspaper and then forwards them to the editorial system using standardised interfaces.

IS-M/AM is integrated in finance and controlling modules from the SAP ERP family, and ppi was able to provide extensive know-how on the system from more than 50 reference installations at news publishers worldwide. Atex Prestige is integrated based on XML standards, again something the German software company has experience of with more than 100 installations with various editorial systems at newspapers worldwide.

MediaCorp’s platforms span television, radio, newspapers, magazines, movies, digital and out-of-home media. A pioneer of Singapore’s broadcasting industry – starting with radio in 1936 and television in 1963 – MediaCorp has over 50 products and brands in four languages (English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) in a week.

Real estate self-service software provider Wave 2 has announced sales

to APN News & Media and privately-owned New Zealand publisher Beacon Media.

The move will boost customer experience for the APN businesses on both sides of the Tasman, and put independent tri-weekly the ‘Whakatane Beacon’ at the edge of current technology.

At APN Australian Regional Media, programme director Terry Kirkland said the decision followed consideration of a range of systems and visits to Wave2 users in the UK and USA. “We see Wave2 as a strategic supplier that can deliver a trans-Tasman solution upon which to build for the future,” he says.

Due to the geographic spread of the regional businesses, the solution needed to be low

maintenance in terms of ongoing training, as well as a simple and useful tool for customers.

Family-owned Beacon owns seven companies in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato regions involved in commercial and digital printing as well as newspaper publishing and printing. Its foundations go back to 1939, with acquisitions in the last two decades adding six other business units. Other newspaper mastheads are the ‘Waitomo News’, ‘Opotiki News’ and ‘Bay Weekend’.

Chief executive Simon Ellis says Wave2’s mix of products will allow the company to develop new revenue streams and enter the online classified advertising space: “Clients will have greater control, more flexibility and later deadlines,” he says.

He says initial developments

early next year will focus on newspaper customers, with integration of the group’s commercial companies on to the Wave2 Marketplace platform following mid-year. “The variety of media customers in the UK and USA using Wave2 gave us the confidence to choose them as a strategic partner,” he says.

Heart of the UK-developed system is a platform which builds ads for both print and online delivery. The company says it a platform independent, highly scalable and automated system incorporating its own powerful rules engine.

Both companies have also licensed AdPortal and Inventory modules, giving real estate customers an interface through which they can create full and multi-page ads and manage large volumes of property. nngx

APN, Beacon go self service with Wave2

MediaCorp delivers Singapore ‘first’ for ppi with planning

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features of the daily and Sunday newspapers.A range of Globe-branded digital

products will also allow access to content “wherever, whenever and however readers wish”.

BostonGlobe.com started moving behind its paywall last month after a five-week trial, and Moriarty says next steps will include the relaunching of Boston.com – with real-time Twitter commentary – a Google TV app, building a media lab and “other new things”.

“Both sites work side-by-side and people move across and share, using the flexibility of Méthode,” he says. “This enables us to pull news and big stories across to build numbers for advertisers.”

While he admits it can be “a little schizophrenic” at times, he says, “We saw people’s behaviour, and thought there might be future in it.”Peter Coleman nngx

critical version, “not a hobbled version”.“As viewers use it on different devices,

the site continues to adapt, right down to iPhone. Mind you, the designers were not happy about having to design six sites.”

Javascript is used in responding to screen sizes – so the site can cope with different devices as they come on the market – and there’s HTML5 behind the ‘save’ concept, which addresses offline reading and accesses a playlist to which content can be added.

Concatenation features and Méthode’s ability to chop images into multiple slices automatically also contribute to the major innovation, he says. “I don’t think we would have been able to do it without.”

The two-brand digital strategy sees Boston.com remaining free to users – as a one-stop source for ‘all things Boston’ – while BostonGlobe.com has been introduced as a new subscription site with the news and

How BostonGlobe.com pitches to all mobiles, great and small

How the site adjusts itself for display on Apple’s MacBook, iPad2 and iPhone screens Right: Jeff Moriarty

‘We saw the proliferation and were anxious not to have to rebuild our product for each device,’ says Jeff Moriarty,

Atex upgrade allows News to decommission mainframes and build further integrationAtex has announced that it has signed News Limited – the Australian publishing business of News Corporation – for a 2700-seat upgrade as part of plans for a single national advertising system.

The “next phase” of what Atex says is a major project will see News’ previous generation Atex advertising system upgraded and integrated with an existing 800 seat Atex system. This will enable two mainframe-based systems which are approaching the end

of their life to be decommissioned over a nine-month timeframe.

Licensed for up to 2700 users, the system will support News’ entire Australia-wide advertising business across more than 120 publications. Five major metro newspapers include Australia’s largest circulation daily, the Melbourne ‘Herald-Sun’.

Director sales and publishing systems Gary McKenzie says having one system to support all of its advertising sales, “regardless of location across

Australia, for all ad types and styles” was important for News.

“We will take advantage of the advertising workflow tool and add more user tools via integration,” he says.

News advertising sales systems business manager John Williamson explained to GXpress that using Atex Cyber$ell as a ‘pass-through’ from existing CyberAd systems to the group’s new financial system will allow the mainframes to be decommissioned.

“This means that our sales agents

who currently use CyberAd will still continue to use this application but the back-end processing will change,” he says. “Previously, our CyberAd bookings went to our financial system via our mainframe application.

“What this potentially enables us to do now that we have the bookings in our national Cyber$ell application is to integrate our other national tools, such as the new layout process we are developing with Advanced Publishing Systems.” nngx



The Funnel Effect – WoodWing, Adobe and the iPad explosion

In any new market, a wide variety of players and technologies enter the market; as the market matures the number of players and the number of technologies shrinks to a stasis influenced by competitive market pressures, strategic and

tactical decisions, and legislation (writes John Juliano).In technology, whenever a new company enters

the marketplace it always touts as its major selling point the ability to interface with everyone else in the marketplace. As the company becomes successful, interfaces to other players are viewed as lost revenue opportunities and the goal shifts to closing the doors to other vendors.

Microsoft was always seen as the black monk of this behaviour and Apple the good, shining white knight. But, to quote 1930s movie star Mae West, “goodness had nothing to do with it.”

Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, followed this very tried-and-true formula eventually bringing out products that contain no uncontrolled interfaces to anyone.

And now in newspaper and magazine publishing, are we watching something similar with WoodWing's agreement to abandon their own mobile content products in favor of Adobe's products?

Technology funnel leading to HTML5? It seems all technologies eventually spiral down to an agreed-upon default. Competitive vendors spiral down to a stable handful, and if there are no anti-trust laws, one vendor may be all that remains standing.

The common wisdom is that within that forest of large trees will grow new upstarts to challenge the status quo.

However, we live in a time of unique interpretation of the standard rules. In our global economy, players with four per cent of the market are considered too small to survive (Sony-Ericsson) and the upstart (Apple) is the most valuable corporation in the world.

On October 27, Sony announced that they had bought whatever part of Sony-Ericsson they didn’t already own for a little over US$1 billion. Ericsson returns to their core business, supplying infrastructure to mobile networks because the handset venture never really took off. (Pity, the phones I owned by them were the best I ever owned.)

Earlier, garnering less general press, but of more importance to us, it was announced that WoodWing would drop their mobile products in favour of Adobe’s, thereby returning them to the traditional role of integrating to Adobe products. (The two have a special relationship: much of the early InDesign API was heavily influenced by WoodWing.)

The idea of their giving up products intrigued me, so I started calling people inside Adobe, WoodWing partners, customers and founder Erik Schut.

One contact inside of Adobe, if I have this right, told me it made perfect sense that WoodWing would do this, “They already had all the big customers.” I’m missing something here, clearly.

A WoodWing reseller told me that the company was returning to what they have been doing: supplying ancillary products. To keep out in front of Adobe was a larger undertaking than they were up to.

One WoodWing customer told me that their biggest strength was being able to change horses

whenever it made sense. To mix metaphors, they wouldn’t go down with the ship just because it was their ship. They are a nimble company.

Another publisher just choked, literally, when I asked what they were doing about WoodWing and Adobe. He stammered, after a moment, that it would be inappropriate to say anything about what they were doing vis-à-vis Adobe and WoodWing, just that they have looked at both products and were aware of what each offered. Yikes.

And now in newspaper and magazine publishing, we watch something similar with WoodWing's agreement to abandon their own products for mobile content in favor of Adobe's products.

I called Erik Schut (pronounced sk-hute) who, together with Hans Janssen formed WoodWing. Erik, Hans and I know each other from a Dutch company, Mediasystemen, that I worked with in the middle 1990s.

I asked Erik why WoodWing decided to cede their products to Adobe’s: According to Erik, Adobe does things very well, but it is a big company and takes awhile to get going. WoodWing developed their mobile products to fill a product gap so WoodWing could sell their own products.

“Well, when the iPad came along, well we jumped on it,” he says. “Adobe wasn’t ready to do anything, and so, yeah, well, we had this success coming along. Ever since the beginning, we had been trying to see how we could make this work between us and Adobe. Because, from both sides, we didn’t feel it made that much sense end up competing.”

About how long WoodWing could continue to be the dominant vendor, “The question was, how long would that be sustainable? Adobe had a very slow start… We had a lot of success. But eventually Adobe will get it right. And, I believe at this point they got it right.”

Once Adobe started moving, there was no way WoodWing could keep out in front.

Erik, who thinks very highly of Adobe, points to three things: Adobe understands how fast things are moving and has transformed their release schedule from annual to every six weeks to keep up with the technology movement.

Secondly, while everyone still perceives WoodWing as the market leader in producing mobile products for newspapers and magazines, Erik says it is not true and hasn’t been for quite a while.

“A year ago, we reached 100 apps, at that point Adobe probably just had a handful. At this point we’ve probably exceeded 500 apps, while Adobe, last month (October 2011) crossed the 1000 mark. I guess, they’re probably are closer to 1500. There are quite a few small ones in there, where our early ones were large media company, so the good question is ‘how long can you keep it up?’

“As you can imagine, a lot of our customers were getting quite nervous that we were competing with Adobe They rely on Adobe for the creative suite products and for us for the editorial system… and those two suppliers are doing a fierce fight on the street. From both sides, we thought this was not in the best interest of our customers.”

WoodWing will be discontinuing its reader app and delivery platform and integrating those components from Adobe.

“I think people were surprised at the speed and

momentum. If you look at the development of the iPad market, it was just one big explosion. I’ve never seen something happen so quickly. So, normally, the success we’ve had in 18 months would have taken five years.

“And so for us, if not our customers, we decided we better settle now while we are strong, not when Adobe starts beating us up. From that point of view, we did it at the right moment.

“Our mission is to provide multi-channel publishing systems to publishers, that’s what we want to be the world leader in.”

As a vendor, “… you need to keep your eyes open for when components are becoming a commodity… We see the iPad reader app as a commodity. So why would we try to compete there? We should be competing on our multi-channel publishing.”

I asked Erik if HTML5 will get rid of apps on the reader side? “I don’t think so. Because in general, the concept of an app is something that people like.

“That’s part of the iOS platform, that apps have a specific task. I think HTML5 confuses things because on the one hand it is a technology…You can use it in your app. In our app, if you go to a store to purchase a magazine, that is all written in HTML5.

“The good thing about HTML5, from a development point of view is that it is cross platform.”

Another major reason to use an app: the iTunes store. The 99 cent purchase must be completed before the customer has time to waiver and this is the iTunes store’s strength. According to Erik, the act of going through multiple screens and a credit card transaction will lower the buying rate by 80%.

Is Erik saying that there is no technical reason why a publisher needs a mobile app? Yes, exactly that. The decision to present content in an app is strictly a business decision, with one small technical caveat. There can be no guarantee that the various browsers will display content the same way. WoodWing uses an embedded webkit browser.

I asked Erik what about the funnel effect, standards and HTML5. The answers were interesting. The funnel effect? Absolutely.

Why an app then? Packaging, branding and most of all two special features, the walled garden and e-commerce. It is important to keep the user in a closed environment so that everything is under the control of the publisher.

Our conversation continued to the viability of paywalls. Erik’s comments are within the mainstream range of opinions with his own special comments.

As digital presentation of content slides through the funnel, will the world be an easier place to publish in? Yes, absolutely. Will it be smooth and easy? Think of Android OS across different manufacturers. Every vendor is looking to get an edge over its competition. Many of those edges will be sharp enough to cut both ways.

Snap the code to listen to the interview with Erik Schut on www.gxpress.net

Newspaper systems industry veteran John Juliano writes regularly for GXpress Magazine, Contact him at [email protected] nngxjo

hnju

liano

Launching a second site for the ‘Boston Globe’ has given the US publisher an opportunity to do more than just address demographic and monetisation issues.

A focus on making sure it was seriously mobile-friendly has led to the development of a screensize-based, rather than device-based product and what is in effect six sites.

The newspaper decided on a two-brand strategy last year, complementing the 15-year-old www.Boston.com site which now attracts two million page views a month and has seven million unique users. New BostonGlobe.com is more serious and authoritative – more of a reading experience – and includes premium membership.

“For that reason, we’ve developed offline reading capabilities, via a ‘save’ button,” says digital products vice president Jeff Moriarty.

But it is the ability to address the needs of users of the large number of different mobile devices – including those not yet released – which distinguishes it.

“We believe the future will be through mobile devices, but saw the proliferation and were anxious not to have to rebuild our product for each device,” says Moriarty, talking during IfraExpo in Vienna.

“As a result, the website has been built with six different break points for tablet formats,” he says. “The site allows swipe-through content, adapts automatically, changes navigation and on the iPad looks and works like an app.”

The launch process took just six weeks from start, following immediately on the publisher’s adoption of EidosMedia’s Méthode platform – used by 300 reporters – last December.

What he says is “the most ambitious website in the world” has brought a terrific reaction, including an “unbelievable” 10,000 Tweets about it on launch day. “People have been asking why every site isn’t like this.”

Moriarty says they thought of mobile as a


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W est Australian Newspapers has signed with systems

developer DTI to streamline its circulation, distribution and business operations.

Circulation and distribution general manager Rob Billington says the end-to-end system will replace a number of home-grown solutions and provide considerable functional and operational improvements.

The largest newspaper publisher in WA and now a member of the Seven West

Media group, the company will use DTI Circulation?s daily data-capture solution to increase the depth of subscriber information. On the marketing side, it will help drive purchase frequency and migrate single-copy sales to home delivery subscriptions.

“We needed to better understand our subscribers and deliver greater value to our network using a solid circulation system that we could work directly with them,” says Billington.

DTI Asia Pacific managing

director David Page says DTI Circulation will give WAN new marketing tools to increase revenues and to attract and retain subscribers: “Marketing plays a key role in supporting their strategic objectives, and this will offer WAN a highly personalised direct marketing platform to achieve their goal of knowing and understanding their audience.”

The signing completes a round of major Australian daily newspapers using the DTI circulation product. nngx

‘West’ goes with DTI circulation

WoodWing is getting out of the content delivery business following an agreement which will see users switch to Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite and the .ofip format retired.

WoodWing will resell Enterprise and Professional editions of Adobe DPS following integration – a deal president Erik Schut is convinced will benefit customers. Its Enterprise and

Content Station applications have been upgraded to include direct access to the Adobe suite and support for CS5.5, enabling customers to create branded applications directly and access to integrated analytics, powered by Adobe Online Marketing Suite (Omniture).

Schut says WoodWing developed its tablet solution in 2010 because no others were on the market at the time. He

says the time is now right for WoodWing to “fully focus on its core activities, which is to streamline and optimise the editorial workflow”.

WoodWing’s Content Station customers will be able to create .folio files and automatically upload them to Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, and its .ofip format will be retired over a transition period ending in November 2012. nngx

WoodWing pulls delivery product

M iles 33 says its new Gemstone advertising platform is the industry’s first ‘app enabled’ infrastructure.

Publishers add functionality simply by adding new apps, called ‘gadgets’.

A feature of Gemstone CRM is the ability to plot prospects and customers on a map and then “layer additional datasets on top of this view, creating ever more detailed understanding of who your audience is.” In editorial it can provide a better view of the socio-economic makeup of readers, advertisers and subscribers.

A tablet app also brings customer management tools to the iPad or Android devices, enabling ad reps to interact with their customers, explore ad availability and make reservations while on-location. Other

features include an inventory browser – to check available spaces – a ‘no coding required’ reporting app, and a new Web Wizards solution to boost interaction with agencies.

The company has also launched a GNXpedio newsreader app in Android and iOS versions with user-customisable sections and articles. The app also allows publishers to create an ‘offers and deals’ section for advertisers to promote their services and offerings to local users. Miles says content will be delivered by the new GNXstream server, which streams both editorial and advertising content and supports subscriptions.

A tablet-based GNXcapture tool for journalists enables them to create and edit stories directly into the GN4 CMS. nngx

App-enabled Miles

Indian magazine publisher Vasan Publications – one of the icons in Tamil Nadu magazine industry – is replacing a WoodWing system with vjoon K4. The Chennai-based publisher is working with integration partner Cadgraf Digitals to install the cross-media publishing platform.

The company publishes leading Tamil language weekly ‘Ananda Vikatan’. The business was launched by film producer Subramaniam Srinivasan in 1928 when he bought and revamped a financially ailing humour magazine.

US classified advertising solution provider AdPerfect has partnered with Spreed to offer clients a mobile solution that includes classified data and news data in one application rather than several different ones. Users launch the publication’s application, hosted by Spreed, from their mobile device and are presented news and classifieds tabs, the latter linking to a hosted mobile marketplace.

New Asia corporate headquarters for Atex are the latest in a succession of changes since director Jim Rose was announced as chief executive in January. The UK-headquartered systems developer has also appointed new global communications manager and global vice president of partners and marketing, reorganised its EMEA region, and upgraded its offices in the US.

In Singapore, the company has moved to a modern office space on Thompson Road in United Square, Novena.

Last month, Adrian Pike was named global vice president of partners and marketing, while Nicola Brookes joined the company as global communications manager from UK-based PR consultancy Loud Group.

Belgian publisher Corelio has updated three disparate systems with the installation of alfa Media’s digital advertising management system. AdSuite will handle all group advertising management through a single system, supporting commercial and production needs in Brussels/Groot-Bijgaarden, Wijgmaal and Bouge.

Corelio is Belgium’s largest newspaper publisher in Belgium with titles in Flemish and French.

The key requirement was to have an integrated solution, not only for selling via different channels, but also to provide combined packages of our print and digital product lines for the different newsbrands and freesheet editions.

UK-based developer PageSuite has launched what they claim is the first non-app HTML5 solution for tablet publishing. A mobile web-kit browser is needed for tablet or smartphone. The company says the technology enables publishers to gain control over distribution of their content without restrictive guidelines or approvals processes. For paid-for titles, the system can be integrated into an existing subscription and data collection model. Smart navigation features include zoom, page-view tab and jump-to-page options. There are also options to download content to read offline, share edition via email, access full archive and search current and past editions.

Classified software provider Adicio has appointed industry veteran Steve Dahl its marketing vice president ahead of the rollout of interactive classified products. The company says he will be “closely involved” in the roll out of enhancements to careers, motors and real estate platforms, including faceted search, mobile, social-media integration, sales outsourcing and a range of new revenue-generating products and features.

Van Gennep says it has appointed a new sales manager to keep pace with the growing global demand for its editorial workflow and planning software. Christian Jansen has 13 years of sales experience in international companies including ATOS Origin and Centric.

Late last year, Van Gennep announced a strategic partnership with Adam Software to deliver a DAM-based workflow publishing platform, and increasing market awareness of this will be among Jansen’s key responsibilities.

German’s Zeitungsverlag Aachen publishing group will produce its two daily newspapers and weekly series with DTI ContentPublisher. Both dailies are published in 17 local editions with a circulation of around 140,000, and about 150 users will work with the DTI system to create the print and (partially) the online products. nngx

ConferenCe

1 and 2 March 2012, Prague, Czech Republic

22nd World Newspaper Advertising ConferenceThe formula for your advertising success

W The roots of newspaper advertising: Innovative print campaigns & classifieds W New variables: Tablet & mobile advertising W Powerful multipliers: Social media & community building W 360° advertising: The newspaper as a full service agency W Greater than the sum of its parts: The future sales team W No fear of big numbers: Measure and control your sales performance

WAN-IFRA GmbH & Co. KGClaudia Wilke Programme Manager Events Phone: [email protected]

www.wan-ifra.org


GENERICgxpress.net


DIGITAL NEWSPAPER PRINTINGgxpress.net


K odak has brought full-colour to its Prosper S20 imprinting system, which adds variable

data capability to newspaper and commercial web presses.

The company showed its hybrid print technology – which images 600 x 300 dpi at up to 610 metres per minute – at GraphExpo in Chicago in September.

The new Prosper S20 Imprinting System with CMYK delivers offset-class variable data applications, inline with web-offset presses and finishing equipment. Applications include commercial inserts, versioned ads in magazines and newspapers, and commercial direct marketing, all while leveraging existing offset printing and finishing equipment.

For commercial web users, it offers the opportunity to combine high-value base print – including metallic inks, heavy colour saturation, scratch-off coatings, and other speciality inks and coatings – with process colour variable-data

digital printing inline at production speeds.

Kodak says current Prosper S10 users will be able to upgrade to the new, faster system by leveraging their current transport without any changes in integration. Flexible mounting options mean the heads can be used with a variety of web offset presses and finishing lines. Pigment-based process colour inks that offer fade, scratch, and water resistance are used to print in an area of up to 105 mm wide across the web.

The system is being seen as an opportunity to offer the benefits of personalised text and images without the expense of installing a full white

paper digital print system.Several users – including Guy

Forester, general manager of UK-based CN Newsprint, interviewed for GXpress in May – have said that the quality is such that customers think the work has been printed offset.

In the UK, heatset printer Lettershop is using the S10 technology to print personalised direct mail pieces including full colour pictures and personalised data. Chief executive John Hornby says the system overcomes customers’ first objections that it would be too expensive and quality would not be good enough.

A video explains the system’s application in the production of a personalised holiday brochure.

Snap the QR code to view the video on www.gxpress.net nngx

Prosper-based colour head makes GraphExpo debut

Another CPI Group print site has adopted HP’s inkjet digital technology. Koninklijke Wîhrmann of Zutphen, the Netherlands, has the first HP T350 inkjet web in Europe teamed with Magnum’s FlexBook for short-run book production.

CPI marketing director Anthony Morin says the line – capable of up to 100,000 books a week – complements others in a strategy which will see some offset capacity replaced. The company plans to “completely bed-in the technology”, before focussing on reducing production costs and looking at turnaround times. The press runs at up to 183 metres/minute, equivalent of 3600 A4 pages a minute, and has a web width of 762mm.

CPI has a T300 inkjet web at Firmin-Didot and an HP T350 at Bussiäre, both in France.

Heidelberg and Hunkeler have teamed to produce an inline book production line for digital presses (above) using the German press maker’s Eurobind Pro binder. Web-printed digital jobs are folded inline, gathered into book blocks, and fed into the adhesive binder, eliminating conventional steps such as cutting, folding, and gathering.

Components include Hunkeler’s UW7 unwinder for rolls up to 762 mm wide, PF7 double plough folder, CS6 cross-cutting module and newly-developed SD7 nonstop stacker. A starwheel delivery is used to gather the cross-cut folded sheets at a speed of up to 200 metres per minute and to create book blocks via the integrated signature glueing unit.

Melbourne-based On Demand has moved into inkjet with the country’s first Océ ColorStream 3500. On Demand owner Bruce Peddlesden (pictured with local Océ managing director Simon Wheeler) said the decision came after six months of research into inkjet: “Our publishing services have been outgrowing our current capabilities and inkjet will boost them considerably,” he says. “At the same time, we have a large variable-data clientele and the press will enable us to expand these services.”

It is the latest in a string of major inkjet announcements in Australia and the third colour device in Melbourne, following the Océ Jetstream 2200 at Salmat’s Victorian operations and the InfoPrint 5000 at Computershare. nngx

I n the USA, Consolidated Graphics, which is claimed to have the world’s largest

integrated digital printing footprint, has bought Kodak’s Prosper 5000XL inkjet web for its AGS facility in White Plains, Maryland. The press has been on evaluation since November 2010 as part of a ‘press pioneer programme’. Consolidated has 30 Kodak Nexpress sheetfed digital presses in a variety of sites.

The Prosper 5000XL delivers near-175lpi colour quality at

up to 200 metres a minute, and handles coated and uncoated stocks from 45-300 gsm.

Kodak has also introduced a new family of Versamark inkjets with a smaller footprint and new generation drop-on-demand printheads.

Eight new models range from entry-level mono to high-speed full colour production. The printheads improve flat field density, reduce variation in dot size – and therefore banding – and are more reliable. nngx

Consolidated adds 5000XL inkjet to ‘pioneer’ programme

Xerox showed its CiPress 500 inkjet web – which uses proprietary ‘waterless’ technology – at GraphExpo. The twin engine 152 metres per minute system has been tested by direct mail company DMH Marketing, which says it achieved ‘consistent quality’ with less time spent on recalibrating. Xerox says patented solid ink technology enables printing on low-cost, plain paper without ink soaking through

Paris-based print provider Interval has moved into the colour inkjet newspaper business with the installation of an Océ JetStream 1400 system to print national and international newspapers alongside other work.

Australian book printer McPhersons is joining the inkjet fray with a new HP T400 web press said to be a quarter faster than the T350 installed by rival Griffin Press. The new press – to be installed at the Maryborough plant next year – prints at 5236 A4 ppm. nngx

Kodak Versamark Printing Systems A smaller Versamark platform that still packs the same punch

How do you make yourself more relevant to the consumer and consequently to

advertisers? That takes a Kodak solution. The new family of Kodak Versamark

Printing Systems provide compact, single engine duplex, high speed, process colour

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It’s time for you Kodak

Contact Kodak: 1800 895 747 [email protected]

ExPAnd rEvEnuE oPPorTunITIES

IT'S TIME To CAPITAlISE on EMErgIng MArKET TrEndS

© K

odak

20

11. K

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gxpress.net


BEANBAG HACK

COVER STORY

It took an enlightened publisher to put a lively Gen-Yer in charge of dragging its 166-year-old business into the digital age.

And a beanbag or two.But the results for Malaysia’s New

Straits Times Press – part of the Media Prima group – have been outstanding, helping generate record profits and a 22 per cent increase in advertising sales.

Integrated new media business is part of a five-year plan – called Project Optimus – which aims to push revenue to RM1 billion (US$320 million) revenue by 2015 by leveraging core strengths and “unleashing potential”.

It plans to create a high performance and passionate workforce while building a reputation as a good corporate citizen, using technology to support these aims.

For 26-year-old Cheryl Goh – who has worked in internet start-ups for seven years – it was “the stuff start-ups have wet dreams about”. Her role as NSTP’s head of e-emedia is to strategise and execute the company’s positioning and direction for new media

“Here’s a 166-year-old company which is putting its trust in new media professionals,” she says. “I was amazed how much flexibility we got to do what we wanted to do.”

There’s more than just the business of getting the house in order, although this is part of the plan: The company – which publishes the ‘New Straits Times’, relaunched following the separation from Singapore in 1965, and two other dailies, ‘Berita Harian’ and ‘Harian Metro’ – is working to generate new revenue by diversifying into non-print media and enhance its current offerings.

Goh says digital is “a huge part” of the company’s strategy, “and it has legs because of management commitment”.

“To start with, we refurbished an old printing plant to house the new media team, kitting it out with bean bags, a canteen and a games room,” she says. “It’s a tangible and physical sign of the company’s commitment, and provides a separate culture from print, where employees have fun while working.”

The radical

Wakalabs initiative which engages youth in the company and fostered ideas and innovations for products and services targeted at the youth audience.

One outstanding success was a ‘Hackweekend’ – think the programmer subculture definition here –which brought 60 young people into the new media centre for 30 hours and yielded 13 “awesome” apps.

In a year, NSTP has boosted online revenue by 250 per cent and turned the company into an employer of choice for young technology professionals.

The company has won national and local awards including a Petronas journalism award and a ‘best in cross media’ gold in WAN-Ifra’s digital media competition?– raising its public profile, and attracting the curiosity and interest of older-established departments and staff.

And neither have the financial results gone amiss: The 22 per cent increase in ad sales in 2010 – compared to an average 2.5 per cent during 2004-2009 – and savings of RM11 million (US$3.51 million), helped towards an RM80 million (US$25.5 million) profit, the highest in the company’s history and more than twice that of 2009.

The company is also paying out the highest bonuses in its history.

Says Goh, “You need top management on board, to encourage a creative culture and hire the right talent, and to focus on delivering results.

“Move fast, and be prepared to break things.”

• The NSTP e-media case history was presented at WAN-Ifra’s Digital Media Asia event in Hong Kong this month (see page 12) nngx

approach has attracted attention

and recognition from both inside and outside

the company. Goh says the sense of fun has helped with morale and recruiting, with the

company committed to hiring the “best and

brightest”.Strategic themes this year

have been to grow in-house competencies, expand and

manage the current online reach, monetise the audience, and build a creative culture.

“Hiring and building culture has given us an internal creative and technology team which allows us to be more nimble and cost efficient in fulfilling the needs of digital advertisers,” she says. “We’ve also revamped online assets, relaunched our online presence, re-engineered our newsroom and expanded our reach into mobile with tablet versions for our three print editions.

“To monetise better, we don’t just sell display advertising… we also provide end-to-end solutions.”

Ventures such as the initial group buying site mymetromall.com.my – with its strong focus on retail discounts – has brought revenue from transactional income, and Goh says, “we have discovered some sweetspots”.

Creating a creative culture required an innovative approach: Goh says

she recognised that while 57 per cent of Malaysians are under 30, three-quarters of the company’s staff were over that age.

Staff volunteered for a

CTP & WORKFLOWgxpress.net


A deal with German maker Dotline will see its NewsMax line of newspaper CTP systems distributed through most of the world by ECRM. Rick Black, president and chief executive of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, based ECRM says the platesetter will extend their semiautomatic and automatic newspaper CTP range to speeds of up to 400 plates per hour.

“The ECRM-Dotline partnership will enable ECRM to provide a broader range of CTP solutions capable of handling the needs of every newspaper,” he says.

The partnership was on show at IfraExpo in Vienna in October, with Black joining the team on the Dotline stand.

Bielefeld-based Dotline claims an installation base of about 120 units worldwide, with newspaper customers in Germany, Russia and Venezuela.

New print sites for Druckzentrum Rhein Main (DRM) and ‘Der neue Tag’ in Weiden, use Dotline, DRM with three lines to serve four 48-page all-colour presses to print 30 editions totalling 350,000 copies a day.

In India, Bhaskar Group, DLA Media, Malayala Manorama, Phrabat Khabar and Samachar PVT use the technology.

ECRM’s speciality is flatbed violet laser-imaging, for which it

is a technology leader. It claims more than 5000 CTP devices and over 27,000 imagesetters in 110 countries.

A new HighWater Cascade RIP v9 – based on the Harlequin Server RIP upgrade – delivers improved colour accuracy. It also officially supports Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7.

Reduction of colour errors and optimised colour gamut have led to Fogra ceritification for proofing on the Epson 7890.

Finnish media group Esan Kirjapaino Oyhas is using ProImage’s OnColor software to check about 2000 PDF page files per month are correct and optimised for ink use and print quality. The system converts pages containing pixel and vector data to the appropriate colour space while preserving the original colour appearance, reducing rub-off, set-off and the company’s carbon footprint.

At a time when many printers are deferring capital expenditures because of the economy, Krause says Tribune Publishing in Columbia, Missouri, is getting a return from the two new LS-Jet 250 platesetters it has teamed with Glunz & Jensen Interplater 85HDX

processors. Increased throughput has resulted in lower time and maintenance costs, with additional cost savings from switching from YAG technology to modern violet lasers and plates.

A fully automatic Nela plate sorting system will enable Druckhaus Ulm-Oberschwaben to store printing plates for a number of print jobs in so-called ‘plate stations’ located directly at the levels of the new manroland press. The DUO system, to be commissioned next January, realises a “very ambitious timeframe,” according to general manager Ernst Jackwert.

The new manroland presses are equipped with APL robot systems and Jackwert says it is essential that all plates are delivered directly to the correct press unit and presorted according to location on the cylinders. “This is the only way to make certain that plates are always provided in time for loading into the APL cassettes,” he says. Nela will first install two VCPevolution HS 800 punch-benders, and then connect them to plate sorters at the press – with 26 stacker bins mounted at each of the two levels.

A four-metre high PlateReorganiser storage unit will load and discharge plates – in exactly the right sequence – at up to 720 pph. nngx

Rail system will integrate with new plate centreP late processing specialist Beil says it has

commissioned a new processing centre to support Mayer & Sîhne’s KBA Commander CT press

installation.Despite its daily circulation of only 9000, ‘Aichacher

Zeitung’ has a long history and a sound regional base. Its own publications – including a 400,000 city weekly, and prints contract work including Axel Springer’s ‘Bild City München’. The new Berlina- format press has fully automatic plate changing, and Beil’s contribution is a fully automated cutting, punching, bending and sorting machine with optics-assisted gauge pins.

With the aid of a printed bar code the printing plates are sorted automatically by customer-specified criteria and placed in a double-tiered sorter featuring a total of 32 storage compartments. A lifting and rotating station

ensures that plates are always set down by their leading edges. Plates are then removed manually from their storage compartments and placed in Beil transport boxes designed to accommodate single or panorama plates.

Additonally, an express station served by the Beil PTS platetracking software can give preferential treatment to plates needed urgently or as replacements. It also keeps track of the positions of all plates and communicates status level with the workflow system.

In the first stage of the expansion, the transport boxes will still be forwarded manually into the printing facility, although the containers have been designed for automated transport via a rail-bound handling system based on the PlateTrans system jointly developed by Beil and KBA. nngx

The double-decker sorting station at the Aichach plant is directly linked to the integrated Beil processing centre

GB_adv 80 x 297.indd 1 08-09-2008 15:30:38

Success is visible, with inhouse billboards declaring, ‘Winning in progress’

Freedom to experiment was a key element in NSTP’s e-media revolution, writes Peter Coleman

The project was ‘the stuff start-ups have wet dreams about,’ says hed of e-media Cheryl Goh (below)


gxpress.net


COVER: DMA HONG KONGgxpress.net


“gets serious” and Twitter and Google+ develop;• data as the “new creative”… playing a bigger role in digital display than ever, real-time bidding at an all time high and more publishers creating digital management platforms.

You could add to those perhaps, the “game changer” of India’s $35 Aakash tablet? “It means someone who could not afford a laptop or desktop will be able to have a tablet,” Manorama Online chief operating officer Mariam Mathew says.

India is already a market of boggling proportions and opportunities: The 605 m active mobile users (of 865 m total, and compared to 46 m internet users); mobile’s “negligible” share of a fast-growing $5.5 billion advertising market; the $4 m generated from 55 m text messages from ‘Indian Idol’ voters; 90 m computer-literates among a total population of 1.2 billion speaking 22 languages.

Mathew says that while print circulations are strong in rural areas, the young – two thirds of all Indians are under 35 – have “moved on” with apps used more by loyal and power users.

The publisher’s 123-year-old flagship ‘Malayala Manorama’ has a circulation of two million across 137 hyper-local editions, while its cross-platform website scores a billion pageviews on the web and 50,000 active mobile users.“Mobiles are not an extension of print – it’s all about mobility and instant publishing – and products need to be conceived, designed and created with mobiles in mind,” she says.

Her experience contrasts the industry’s 15 per cent growth in Asia, which as WAN-Ifra regional manager Thomas Jacob pointed out, compares to a 20 per cent drop in the USA over the last five years, and, “means we have some time to prepare”.

But not – if the experience of others such Schibsted is anything to go on – very much. nngx

The ‘new ideas’ speakers in The programme were balanced by those from ‘old’ businesses which had coped with the cultural and technological change in gaining digital focus... and flourished as a result.

Dow Jones Asia Pacific managing director Christine Brendle says the News Corporation company – which publishes the ‘Wall Street Journal’ – had been more aware of the digital revolution because of the involvement of its newswire services. “We’re as much a technology-driven company as content-driven,” she says.

Involvement in Facebook and Twitter – and China’s Weibo – had become a really important part of how the company operated: “It’s not a one-way channel,” she says. “We need to be where our clients are, and we are close to the day when more people access the WSJ through mobile than through print or online.”

An iPad app launched in late June had already scored 250,000 downloads… half of them from people who had never accessed the online site: “It’s such a way to enlarge reach,” she says.

What’s next? Later, Asia Pacific general manager of the WSJ’s digital network Olivier Legrand contributed a ‘top five’ trends list for next year. He cites:• a continuation of the tablet explosion which has seen the iPad take 68 per cent of the 63 m devices expected to have been sold by the end of 2011, while Amazon’s lower-cost Kindle Fire – “another closed system” – anticipates 1-2.5 m pre-launch sales. • the move to mobile from desktop – sales outpaced PCs in 2010 and user numbers are expected to be overtaken by 2014 – and introduction and emergence of technologies such as wifi glasses (and even contact lenses) and the Google Goggles effect. There are “massive” creative issues, Legrand says;• privacy and ROI concerns as social networking

another four or five before it got thoroughly into search and e-commerce.

Then last year, chief executive Torboon Puangmaha says he “woke up and told myself the market has changed”… an epiphany which has led to the development of a social network and games. ‘Plan, execute and – if it doesn’t work – iterate’ is his advice.

• By the standards of Fairfax Media, Malaysia’s 166-year-old NSTP is a late adopter, but one working hard to catch up, head of e-media 26-year-old Cheryl Goh told delegates. Its Wakalabs concept recruits volunteers from staff to brainstorm and implement ideas for digital growth including a ‘Hackweekend’ during which 60 youths brought into its beanbag-furnished centre, created 13 “awesome apps”.

• Location-based promotions are only as new as the technology, but Christian Geissendorfer of Singapore-based Yoose had a couple of encouraging examples. Working with McDonald’s and Facebook Places, it set a goal of 46,000 ‘check-ins’… and scored 53,000, along with 24,000 hits and 80,000 ‘fans’.

In Korea, Tesco used a billboard wall to provide MTR passengers with a virtual supermarket wall from which they could order groceries while waiting for the train. The goods were delivered soon after they arrived home… and sales increased 130 per cent.

• It’s not a publishing venture, but Scoopshot is certainly an idea you’d wished you had had: Its website attracts and markets crowdsourced news photographs – and takes a cut from sales.

Digital media events for publishers, notably in Hong Kong and Vienna this year have been marked by an attitude shift from ‘why’ to ‘how’.

Beyond pragmatism, publishing teams as a whole seem finally to have made the quantum leap from learning about, to embracing new technologies and the opportunities which flow from them.

WAN-Ifra’s sellout three-day Digital Media Asia conference shows the wisdom of splitting regional digital and print events. For delegates, there’s still a divide: ‘how do we catch up’ and ‘how do we stay ahead’ and speakers at the Hong Kong reflected that.

Greg Hywood, recently appointed chief executive of Australia’s Fairfax Media was only one publisher with a tale to tell about its early adoption – during the term of much-criticised predecessor Fred Hilmer – of digital publishing. Its smh.com.au and theage.com.au sites went live in 1995, not many years after the World Wide Web itself, and two years before Google.

“Contrast the Australian experience with the US, where many publishers didn’t move, and as a result, the networks and Yahoo gained dominance,” he says.

The company now claims the largest digital development team in the country and A$3 billion in digital revenue to help it face the future “with enormous confidence”, but like many others, continues to struggle to directly monetise its news flow, making money instead from transactional and related internet businesses.

Print-backed Scandinavian publisher Schibsted was also early into digital and with “more than 20 internet companies” now derives almost half its revenues from online business. An “eco-system’ sees the giant company make money at all levels of its vertically-integrated multiplatform business:

the idea for stardoll.com five years ago.Virtual dress-up fashions, a MeDoll avatar

and a social network were early elements of a concept which has now grown into a massive brand in most countries of the world (except China). That geographic spread generates 28 best-looking ‘cover girls’ and has moved on to a virtual store with real and own brands, and opportunities for members to become designers and retailers (from whom it takes a commission).

Recent developments include a toy line developed with Mattel and a range of clothing sold through US retailer JC Penney and online. “It’s been a pretty amazing two years,” says chief executive Mattias Miksche.

• What would video footage of news events look like if the cameramen had been there? ‘Apple Daily’ spin-off Next Media Animation has answered the question by making a business of creating that footage by animation with such success that some clips have gone viral.

An early video of what production manager Emily Wu coyly calls ‘the Tiger Woods incident’ delivered six million views on YouTube… and set the Taiwan team thinking. Now it produces about 22 minutes of news animation a day, for its own Taipei and Hong Kong dailies, US associates and contract customers. Animations on the Apple Daily Hong Kong site alone score four million views a day, and Wu says, “we really think this is part of the future of news”.

• Thai service portal Sanook – now the country’s most-visited website – was another success story with growth that exceeded the expectations and plans of its founders. It was three years before thoughts turned to setting up the 1999 web portal to collect money, and

“You might visit the Aftonbladet website, go from there to our Destination holiday site, and from there to Lendo (also Schibsted) to borrow money to finance the trip,” says sales director Anders Berglund.

Not that these businesses are short of ideas and innovations themselves: Long-form video has proved such a runaway success for Fairfax that it now has 75 provider partners including Bloomberg, and a deal to put its sites into LG’s smart televisions.

The company’s new AirLink printed code – developed with RMIT and Wollongong universities – delivers “world first” links between print images, editorial and advertising, and video and other content online.

And from Schibsted, the latest idea is a virtual concert with virtual tickets –standard and premium seats, of course – and the opportunity to chat and interact with your favourite artists. It’s rocking, Berglund says.

By contrast, the message from consultant Gregor Waller was more about how he had helped German giant Axel Springer catch up through research and heavy investment. His calculated approach to capitalising on the sometimes salacious appetites of its ‘Bild’ audience seemed almost clinical. Vairy interesting, as the German guy on Rowan and Martin’s 1960s TV show would say, but we were left to wonder whether it was the large-corporate decisionmaking process itself which had let the publisher slip behind in the first place.

Some ideas, of course, have a life of their own: The best and often simplest, which have you kicking yourself, asking ‘why didn’t I think of that… and Digital Media Asia had a raft of them.

• Nobody, it seemed, had thought what ’tween and teenage girls were thinking until Finnish woman Liisa Wrang came up with

IDEAS FACTORY 5 digital bright ideas you’ll wish you’d had

1 if only we’ had vision

With her doll-like looks, you wouldn’t think Emily Wu cuts a mean line in news animations. That’s her with a couple of familiar royals

2 Think like a ’tweenager

Liisa Wrang came up with the idea for Stardoll, an evolving dress-up site for ’tween and teenage girls

3 One from Google

This is ‘Google Goggles’ the concept which combines data with social networking, discussed by WSJ’s Olivier Legrand

4 Don’t just wait, shop!

A digital agency came up with the virtual shopping wall – groceries get home almost as soon as you

5 If only we could

afford...Stéphane Carpentier solved the problem of high Swiss studio costs: Move to Vietnam!

As the industry reaches what is being called an ‘exciting stage’ there’s no shortage of ideas at events such as Digital Media Asia, writes Peter Coleman

1 2 3 4 5


gxpress.net


COVER: DMA HONG KONGgxpress.net


5 print ideas you can add value with now

1 Thumbing a fat tabloidTabloid newspapers

typically lose the usability of their broadsheet cousins when a reader can’t find the sections within it. Swedish specialist Tolerans has added to the user-friendliness of section stitching – its core business – with a device to add thumb-indexing.

It consists of two punching cylinders integrated into a ribbon stitcher, with a suction casing and paper waste system.

Placed under the former or anywhere there is a ribbon passage, the stitcher/punch operates inline and at full press speed.

Design/R&D vice president Tomas Annerstedt (pictured) told GXpress the company had waited until it was patented before launching the concept, for which it has already received a number of enquiries.

The company also introduced lateral stitching – for broadsheets, Berliners and quarterfolds – at the Vienna show,

2 Fold it like a broadsheetSupposing you could

sectionise and fold your tabloid like a broadsheet… on your existing presses?

US-based Manugraph DGM has developed a folder which slits and folds the webs which make up a tabloid newspaper before presenting them via a transfer table for a second fold.

The patented ST40 folder, which combines a slitter and new folding module delivers sectioned tabloids of 380-457 mm page depth at up to 40,000 cph.

International sales vice president Ron Erhardt says the system can be added to any press – handling up to 16 ribbons – or installed offline, and can be extended with extra cartridges.

The company is also meeting demand created by press extensions, with a new drive series addressing capacity and compatibility issues.

3 UV market hots upIt’s taken a while for UV –

which I first saw at a printing trade show in Paris in the 1970s – to develop to the stage of real market acceptance.

Prime UV has done huge work with single-width in the USA and elsewhere, while the Eltex partnership with manroland has delivered double-width installations in Austria, France and the USA. Nor should the contribution of ink makers such as Flint be understated.

At IfraExpo, Baldwin – having staked a claim to the TowerCure name on its website a while back – arrived with the product, an aircooled system for single-width presses which will add an additional frisson of competition to the market. Key features include a rotating lamp housing and reflector – formed by two ellipses – which creates an air cyclone effect which promotes cooling and gives dust little chance of settling.

Sales director Pat Keogh (pictured) says systems cost more than those of their best-known competitor, but are a third cheaper than water-cooled ones. Baldwin’s first newspaper UV systems are going into two Fairfax Media sites in Australia.

4 Sharing your print edition digitally

A partnership between Swiss image recognition start-up Kooaba and digital newspaper distributor NewspaperDirect lets you access and share an article you’ve seen in a newspaper print edition.

The free Paperboy app for smart phones connects the reader with a digital version from NewspaperDirect’s collection of the more than 2000 newspapers. Snap the page or article of interest and you can share it via Twitter, Facebook, email or SMS, or access additional information such as videos or related online content.

Kooaba chief executive and co-founder Herbert Bay says the partnership will deliver a tool for publshers to fight competition from online and social media.

The rollout started with Europe and the UK, and has already reached the US and Canada. Asian and Australasian readers get the facility next year.

5 A smart overcoat for coldsetAnd one for the waterless

brigade… at least for the moment. KBA – which has a big Cortina press coming into service into Dubai at the moment – added the simple expedient of overprint coating to its offering.

The water-based technology – developed with Sun Chemical and pioneered by Freiburger Druck – adds an impressive ‘lift’ to coldset print, improving colour depth and texture without a dryer. From a production perspective, coating makes images more resistant to postpress damage and allows faster processing.

For reasons of chemistry, it’s ‘waterless only’… not something that would work on a conventional offset press.

KBA’s Christophe Müller (pictured) says only waterless technology could have met the requirement of its Dubai customer to combine four heatset webs with coldset. The company sold two more Cortina presses this year, and the good news for users is that plate manufacturer Toray has committed to a European plant, scheduled for production in 2014. nngx

Driven slitter roller for each web providesexcellent web tension control.

Deliverydirection

Can be configured for up to 8 webs in, 16 ribbons out.and tension. (Shown w/ 4 webs in, 8 ribbons out)compensators for proper web alignmentAngle bar section with motorized

angle bars and top iron

Capable of handling up to 400 HP (Two 200 HP motors)DGM Advantage II, Cityline, and Highline presses.

Webs in

delivery

Ribbons out

Full page compensators for each ribbon.

2nd fold assembly with

DGM 850, DGM 430, DGM 440, DGM Advantage,

for easy access webbing.

Time proven drive options as used on DGM 1240 folder.Drive options to match shafted Community, Urbanite,

Decking level around

Motorized angle barsfor ribbon alignment

4

MDGM TECHNOLOGY DAILY

Elizabethville, PAFour sections

2011 Edition


Elizabethville, PA Four sections2011 Edition


Elizabethville, PA Four sections 2011 Edition

© KBA Page 40

Benefits of inline coldset coating with the KBA Cortina

• Smaller initial investment compared to

heatset, easy to retrofit

• Lower energy costs

• Less maintenance

• No ink change needed

• Fast job changes

• Environmentally friendly, substantially lower

carbon emissions, no problem waste

Benefits compared to other quality-enhancing processes such as heatset, UV

Nineteen companies shared the honours in this year’s second Asian Digital Media Awards.

Regular winner Singapore Press Holdings went home with a haul of eight awards including two golds, while it was also a very good night for PT Kompas Media (four awards including two gold) and Star Publications (three awards including two gold).

Held in Hong Kong as part of WAN-Ifra’s ‘sold-out’ Digital Media Asia conference, the awards honour some of the best online, mobile and crossmedia work by newspapers and magazines in the region. They were being presented for the second time after being split from the Asian Media Awards.

Winners were:Online media, newspaper

website: gold – Singapore Press Holdings for straitstimes.com/ttl; silver – Malayala Manorama Company for manoramaonline.com/children, and PT Kompas Media Nusantara for Kompas.com; bronze – Dow Jones

Publishing Company (Asia) for asia.WSJ.com.

Magazine website: gold – Edipresse Hong Kong for asiatatler.com/hong-kong; silver – SPH Magazines for HardwareZone.com; bronze – Gramedia Majalah for KawankuMagz.com.

Online video: gold – The Associated Press for India Polio Eradication Interactive; silver – The Bangkok Post for A Dummy’s Guide To Thai Politics, and Fairfax Media for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald; bronze – Star Publications (Malaysia) for Disappearing Underwater Rainforest, and The Bangkok Post for Through the

Looking Glass.Online infographics, gold –

AFP – Agence France-Presse Asia Pacific for 3D Animated Video Graphics; silver – Al Bayan for Training a Horse; bronze – Al Bayan, F1 Teams.

Cross media, editorial coverage: gold – The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) for Berita

Harian, and PT Kompas Media Nusantara for Kompas Citarum Expedition; silver – Dow Jones Publishing Company (Asia) for The Wall Street Journal Asia; bronze – Fairfax Media for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Cross media advertising: gold – Singapore Press Holdings for ‘SPH Turns You On’ Trade Event; silver – Bennett, Coleman & Co (The Times Group) for Billion Hearts Beating; bronze – Singapore Press Holdings for The Straits Times on iPad.

Mobile publishing: gold – Nation News Network for The Nation, and Singapore Press Holdings for StraitsTimes.com; silver – PT Tempo Inti Media

Harian for Tempointeraktif.com, and Singapore Press Holdings for AsiaOne; bronze – udn.com for udn Mobile.

Tablet publishing: gold – Star Publications (Malaysia) for The Star iPad; silver – NDTV Convergence for NDTV HD, and Fairfax Media for The Age; bronze – PT Kompas Media Nusantara for Kompas Editors’ Choice for PlayBook, and Dow Jones Publishing Company (Asia) for The Wall Street Journal Asia for iPad.

Social media: gold – Star Publications (Malaysia) for R.AGE on Social Media; silver – Guangdong Southern Weekly New Media for Southern Weekly@SNS; bronze – Singapore Press Holdings for STOMP. nngx

Pictured, top: The Star Publications team of Nor Shalina Abd Samad, Ivy Soon, Lee Mee Yook and Melody Goh celebrate their success Far left: SPH’s Geoff Tan collects the Atex award Left: Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood with WAN-Ifra’s Stig Nordqvist

Not everyone wants to give Apple a big chunk of app revenue:

Financial publisher Financial Times was already working on an HTML5-based WebApp – basically a web page for mobiles – when it reached an impasse with Apple on terms for the app store. “We’d realised by summer 2010 that producing apps for the proliferation of tablets and smartphones would exhaust us,” says FT regional online director Hiroko Hoshino.

“When Apple told us they wanted 30 per cent and wouldn’t share subscriber info, we accelerated the project. Frankly, that wasn’t going to work for us.”

Hoshino says they told iPad app subscribers of the substitute and they should change, “and they did”.

A quarter of traffic now comes from mobiles, and

this is expected to rise to 50 per cent within three or four years. The relationship with Apple remains cordial, however, and Android store app – which “works for us” – has just been upgraded.

Hamstrung by the cost of inhouse production in Switzerland, Stéphane Carpentier helped publish Ringier set up a studio subsidiary in Vietnam. IT engineers and artists there have created a series of apps designed to make the most of new platforms… and at a fraction of previous costs.

“I would feel very punished if I had to go back to print production,” he says.

As editor of technology title ‘Australian PC’, Tony Samo had made sure there was an iPad app for the magazine two days before the Apple tablet went on

sale.Not without a good deal

of heartache, however: The “very expensive” option of WoodWing’s app service enabled the magazine to rely on its own inhouse skills, but required three times as much layout as for print only, and a lot of debugging.

“I killed it after eight editions,” he says, “but readers revolted when we then used a PDF version from the corporate magshop.”

A solution has emerged in the form of Adobe’s Digital Publishing system, but is not without compromise, with the problem of multiple layouts arbitrated in favour of just portrait: “We surveyed readers on the choice of a portrait or landscape format,” he says.

“Of course, they were split 50/50.” nngx

Shrink-wrapped apps and custom HTML5 alternatives

SPH, Kompas, Star shine bright in the second Asian Digital Media Awards

Taking the tablets: Panel members (from left) Remco Koster (WoodWing), Nikolay Malyarov (Newspaper Direct), Hussain Khalil (OneVision), Suwandi (Atex) and WAN-Ifra’s Stig Nordqvist Left: Mariam Mammen Mathew, chief operating officer of India’s Manorama Online Right: Financial Times Japan online director Hiroko Hoshino


GENERICgxpress.net


COVER: IFRAEXPOgxpress.net


IfraExpo tends to divide its activities into two or more halls – for digital exhibitors and ‘heavy metal’.

This year’s cultural divide was emphasised by the different market conditions faced by the two industry

segments, although curiously, the printing-orientated hall was the busier. Either way, there was a necessary pragmatism among exhibitors there, placed into context by this month’s news that German press giant manroland was filing for insolvency after a last-minute deal with potential investor Capvis Equity Partners collapsed.

The gaunt expression of manroland chairman Gerd Finkbeiner told its own story at the company’s press conference, despite the need to tough things out until the company’s November insolvency announcement. Not that manroland’s main rivals – including the apparently-profitable KBA and Chinese-owned Goss International – are finding things easy either.

Press makers have had to face up to the reality that publishers are looking for a much shorter ROI than previously – aligned with what they can confidently foresee as the future of their print media – and that even if the business case is there, finance can be hard to find.

In many mature markets, the proposition has been made viable primarily for highly-editionised titles where automation can deliver immediate savings. For the rest, ‘compact’ was a euphemism bandied about to describe presses which were more stripped down and slower, than smaller or lower in height.

manroland was among those with launches in this category, its Colorman e:line based on an H-type unit; potentially the first blanket-to-blanket press in the autoprint line of ‘one touch’ presses it launched at Ifra three years ago.

It also sports a (literally) flashy enclosure – with flowing curves and light used as a display medium – which appealed to the first purchaser, Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag from Kempten, Germany. Managing director Markus Brehm says the company sells its products through emotion and enthusiasm, “which motivates our staff in a totally different way,” and the catchy design was an attraction.

The new press is scheduled to start up next October, and replaces two it bought in 1998. Automatic plate changing was a prerequisite, and the customer “jointly developed” a new plate loading system. Ergonomics and noise protection were also factors.

Levels of automation are in fact an option – with retrofitting requirements defined at order – while cylinders allow four or six plates to be mounted across the web, and a one-around variant is also being offered.

KBA’s Commander CL is a simplified – but not, web sales vice president Christophe

– to build the first iteration of its Colorliner CPS. The press may be nearer to the general understanding of ‘compact’ and fits existing bridge structures of the customer’s Dundee pressroom like a glove.

Design of the new eight-tower press owes elements to both the Colorliner and Goss FPS presses. These include versatility, high print quality, simplified operation and “a high level of performance relative to investment cost”.

Thomson already has Colorliner presses at the site and in Glasgow, which it plans to close. The eight-tower press will include heatset capacity and run at up to 90,000 cph, driven by a full automation package including Autoplate plate changing technology and closed-loop controls. It will have Contiweb FD pasters, two Ecocool dryers and two J2:5:5 jaw folders, with installation due to begin in mid 2012.

Müller says, a stripped down – version of its very-successful conventional CT press, given a lower maximum speed of 30 metres/second and reduced automation.

Both 4x2 and one-around 4x1 versions are being offered. The modular press has H-type units – each 2.75 metres high – with three-forme inking technology from the CT, providing options to support customisation and upgrades in newspaper and semicommercial applications.

Two orders have been announced, with Müller confident that the CL will succeed: “It gives us the right product range,” he says. And while it may appeal to emerging and new markets such as China and India, he points to successes there with CT, understood to be about 15 per cent more expensive.

Goss also had a specific order – from Scottish newspaper publisher DC Thomson

Despite the need for some brave and pragmatic performances, the ideas in IfraExpo’s ‘heavy metal’ hall were a major attraction, writes Peter Coleman

Time for the brave and the optimistic

Place for business: (clockwise from below): Dark days – beneath the bold strokes of the new Colorman e:line, manroland staff and customers talked hard; No, I’ll carry it... Marketing manager Tom Weber takes a plate cassette from the mannequin on the Beil stand; Ferag chief executive Jürg Möckli with the ‘must-have’ iPad app which complements his company’s Navigator mailroom planning system; New deal – Ralph Johannpeter of Dotline and Henry de Vaal of ECRM, whose companies have teamed up to extend their range and territory

gxpress.net


Cloud nine... and other iterationsThe debate over the merits of rival

cloud-based systems continued to rage at the show.

Kim Svendsen, marketing manager of CCI Europe told me how the ‘Miami Herald’ had just switched to the latest CCI technology by the simple expedient of adding licences to access the group’s servers in Charlotte, North Carolina, with “almost no intervention from us”.

The system is providing the flexibility to make organisational changes on a regular basis.

In the US, Tribune, McClatchy, the Toronto Star and Gannett have all consolidated production on their own CCI data centres, the latter with 83 sites and more than 6000 users.

CCI has recently teamed with newspaper training specialist Poynter to help publishers with issues such as leadership and ‘technology hate’, while giving them hands-on access to the company’s NewsGate platform.

Rival DTI has a different slant on ‘cloud’, delivering solutions in the USA and Europe via specific server farms, and had Sun-Times Media senior vice president and general manager Fred Lebolt in the Ifra Media Port to talk about its value to them.

Given the various definitions, the company has also taken time out to explain its “true software-as-a-service” concept and relevant terms such as single tenant architecture, multi-homing,

tier levels (theirs are Tier 4), and full virtualisation. Complicated stuff, on which DTI has produced a white paper to present its differentiations.

At the show, a 3D theme highlights a drive for audience, revenue and cost performance… and resulted in several lucky visitors taking home a digital video camera.

Atex also focussed on cloud-based advertising, audience and content products at the show, although more relevant to customers in this region would have been its new ATP tablet publishing module.

The company is to integrate InDesign with ATP early next year, allowing journalists to lay out template-based pages from within the HTML5-based

platform.Roxen has also evolved

mobile publishing software, which Metro will use for editions for iPad and shortly Androis tablets.

Danish/US developer Saxotech – which finds itself in changed circumstances in Australia following the sale of its Hannan-owned customer to News Limited – was a centre of attention with well-attended ‘double-act’ demonstrations. Tampa-based sales and operations vice president Jesper

Frank says the company is still keen to extend its presence in the Asia-Pacific.

On show was a new release of the company’s Mediaware Center which includes new browser-based tools for journalists and a ‘one touch’ approach to multichannel workflow.

The company has since announced an order for a cloud-based system for the reinvigorated Philadelphia Media

Network, which is integrating print and digital into a single newsroom. Publisher of the ‘Inquirer’, ‘Daily News’ and Philly.com, it will deploy the multichannel system for 400 staff members.

Talking point at EidosMedia – which already has installations in the region at HT Media’s Mint in India and Fairfax Media’s Financial Review Group is the opening of a new subsidiary in Australia. Chief executive Gabriela Franzini says an Asian office may be on the cards for 2012 (see page three).

At the show, the company announced an order from Italian publisher RCS MediaGroup, which will consolidate published and unpublished assets into a single asset management system based on its existing Méthode platform and serving both editorial and production. Eidos also has a new product for reporters, Méthode MoJo allows them to use their iPads as mobile workstations.

Others in this segment included Protecmedia, which launched Iter Web, a new-generation CMS which can function autonomously or integrated with the company’s Milenium crossmedia platform. German developer AlfaMedia, which now has an agency in South East Asia and a first client, was at the show to discuss its OpenMedia system, which includes a range of integrated modules for advertising and customer self-service, as well as web publishing, editing, product planning and production. Its Enterprise advertising suite can now generate standard letters and emails to promote special features, and including an advertisement preview, while page previews are now included in the ad reservation module.

Enterprise is also of course, the name of WoodWing’s crossmedia publishing system and this company also had a new version to show, together with the recent alliance with Adobe which will see WoodWing integrate Adobe Publishing Suite through its platform. nngx

Double act: The Mediaware demonstration was an ongoing attraction at Saxotech Inset: The Roxen app for Metro

Units have three-forme inkers and bearer-to-bearer cylinders designed for conventional blankets, and a distance of only 2700 mm between the first and last impression. Unlike the FPS, the towers are non-splitting, which Goss says minimises operating width as well as height.

The company also points to access to all sub-systems via the unit aisle, and says natural air circulation adapted from the FPS will avoid the need for forced-air cooling. Versions for 4x2, 5x2 and 6x2 will be offered with a range of cut-offs.

In Dundee, Harland Simon will supply similar control systems – employing its

Prima 6000 desk – for both the new and reconfigured Colorliner lines.

in a poTenTially depressing environmenT, iT was good to see Swiss press manufacturer Wifag clawing its way back from oblivion. Staff at the Fribourg factory are currently assembling an eight-tower Solna D390 press for ‘Hong Kong Economic Times’, their first such project since the two makers merged in April. The installation will bring HKET’s total to 196 Solna units.

For followers of the ‘traditional’ Wifag, the exciting news was an order signing: Publisher and printer JCC Bruns Betriebs

ordering a four-tower double-width Evolution 371 for commissioning at its plant in Minden, Germany, mid-2014.

The press is being configured so it can be extended whether with offset towers, or with the inkjet based system Wifag launched at the show. The Digiprint N prints in colour at up to 200 metres/minute – either as a complete line or as modules to extend existing offset equipment – and is expected to be at a beta site next year.

Sales, projects and marketing director Noel McEvoy says the new newspaper solution with its totally-variable folder suits decentralised printing of short-to-medium

Swiss press maker Wifag is clawing its way back, with a single width project to fulfill and a digital inkjet to spruik


COVER: IFRAEXPOgxpress.net


Established prepress partners Fujifilm and Krause could crow about an order from the UK’s Westferry Printers, which will use Fujifilm’s Brilla LP-NNW plates and Nela plate management and sortation equipment for a new plant equipped with four KBA Commander CT presses. Krause is supplying four LS Jet Multiformat 350 violet machines with Bluefin processors.

WAN-Ifra says 8000 visitors from more than 90 countries visited the expo, down on last year’s Hamburg show and “significantly higher” number than two years ago” according to chief executive Christoph Riess. He says 2010 was “a very special year due to the hype about tablets”.

Among visitors were more than 200 congress delegates.

The World Newspaper Week events in Vienna – including the forty-first IfraExpo, World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum – attracted 306 exhibitors from 30 countries. Next year the events separate again, with IfraExpo moving to Madrid (October 29-31) and the Ukraine capital of Kiev hosting the 64th World Newspaper Congress and 19th World Editors Forum (September 2-5). nngx

PF-N within small/medium sized newspaper sites, virtually all of which are currently running thermal systems.

A handful of local sites have been flagged to test after the Christmas break, with the commercial version (Thermal Direct 2) already on test in Australia with “great feedback and results” from the sheetfed market.

Newspaper segment director CK Gan says Kodak is also looking at smaller sites in Asia. Plate product manager Chi Man echoes the view that total cost of ownership reduces significantly with processless plates: “The improved environmental sustainability is also a great opportunity to further improve the green image of newspaper printers,” he says.

Eight new models have been added to the Versamark inkjet web range with a smaller footprint and “new generation” dot-on-demand imaging.

IfraExpo was also the place to spruik the new association between ECRM and dotLine which extends the combined range and sees ECRM taking over some production of its German partner’s NewsMax violet platesetters.

complementary branded reader application. The services launches in Europe mid-2012, “followed later” by North America and the rest of the world.

Its contribution to eco-friendly CTP includes a new 300 pph Advantage N-TR XXT platesetter, N94-VCF chem-free plates and a high-speed clean-out unit. The company claims it is the only one for newspapers which offers continuous, unattended monitoring and reporting of all engine operating parameters. An IR webcam inside the engine provides live monitoring of handling, and a new tray system makes plate loading more efficient and safer.

Having just installed its 2000th thermal platesetter, Kodak introduced its new develop-on-press plate which does not require a processor or processing chemistry. The company says the PF-N2 (for ‘processor free – newspaper’) – which ‘cleans up’ after five or six impressions – is being used by about 100 customers in the US with European trials about to start.

ANZ prepress business development manager Robert Mollee, who was at the show, says he sees massive potential for

hours sees net output between 25,000-28,000 copies.

Schur launched a 35,000 cph A955 inserting system – which can be used inline or as a standalone unit – and an order from French publisher Amaury, which is buying two conveyor lines, six TS 800 stacker/bundlers, bottomwrappers and a sophisticated automatic bundle distribution system.

as CTp and assoCiaTed workflow produCTs reach maturity in many markets, major players are looking further afield for new opportunities. Kodak is already heavily involved in digital printing, while both Agfa and OneVision used IfraExpo to showcase systems to produce digital editions for iPads and other tablets.

German workflow specialist OneVision – better known for its Asura PDF correction and optimisation, and Amendo image enhancement software – has applied the same principles of simplicity to Mirado, which repurposes print content for iPad and other online platforms.

The novel introduction from Agfa – and apparently subsidiary ProImage – is Eversify, a cloud-based element in its Arkitex workflow to deliver digital issues using HTML5 for presentation and embedded Javascript for search, bookmarks and access to links such as social networking.

Data is analysed and automatically processed through content mapping and template technology to produce an issue that is ready to preview and edit if necessary. The final publication is delivered to any hosting environment to be accessed by the

and an eight-unit DGM 430 addition to WebNews in North York, Ontario. New DMC-4000 drives are required for the project, a growing element of Manugraph DGM’s business.

ferag has already sTarTed selling Navigator, its preplanning and production control concept centred around intuitive multitouch technology, but at IfraExpo it made an impressive debut in a darkened display area.

The mailroom systems company has invested heavily in this and an optional tablet app called the Optimiser. “Everyone takes it up,” chief executive Jürg Möckli told me.

It’s easy to see why: The sliding, touching interface technology is evocative of that seen on glossy investigative TV series and, although not now new still evinces a buzz of excitement.

Möckli says that beyond applications in its core finishing and mailroom segments, its control technology is attracting attention outside the industry and has generated a number of outside enquiries.

Muller Martini focussed on modularity, putting the ProLiner inserter at the centre of their system-orientated demonstration, along with modules for integrated stitching, trimming and card glueing. A case history featured Axel Springer’s Spandau printing house, which has two ProLiners with a CoLiner pregathering unit to produce 46 part editions of advertising newspapers with a total circulation of 2.9 million copies and 15 inserts per paper each week. Nonstop production in runs of up to 36

run newspaper and semicommercial products.

“The folding equipment allows the same book structure as the conventional offset newspaper press which makes splitting of editions between digital and conventional offset production easy,” he says.

Other talking points include a modular plate changing system developed with Nela and a new division focussed on press controls including production planning, control desks, colour and cut-off register and colour density systems.

Next year’s DRUPA is set to be the point at which new digital printing options reach newspapers.

Maybe it will be time for the wheel to turn full circle, with technologies and concepts which were ‘ahead of their time’ finding a market, although it now seems unlikely that manroland’s DICOweb will ever be one of them.

Urging caution, KBA’s Christophe Müller justifies the “different approach” of his company’s digital imaging cooperation with RR Donnelley: “There’s no point in using variable data capability to copy 100,000 copies of the same paper,” he says.

The two companies announced in March that they would work together to develop solutions based on the US print group’s Apollo piezoelectric inkjet and other technologies, with KBA introducing a new digital press at DRUPA in May.

Having moved on psychologically from a cooperation with Kodak which “showed there was a business case”, manroland had contributing folders and other expertise to its Océ partnership, new ideas to “change the equation” promised for the Düsseldorf show.

Océ itself announced sales to Swiss Post – which is using a JetStream 1000 inkjet web for a new personalised newspaper – and Interval, which has a JetStream 1400 to print national and international newspapers in Paris.

With different market opportunities and constraints, Indian single-width press makers Manugraph and The Printers House were both prospering as a result of home markets and overseas alliances.

At KBA, Christophe Müller says the German company’s cooperation with TPH – which produces about 1000 press units a year – delivers “a lot of advantages” in the market.

Manugraph DGM – the US subsidiary which tackles the company’s more customised projects – had sold two Cityline Express presses to customers in Brazil,

In its DNA: The eight-tower Colorliner CPS for DC Thomson in Dundee, Scotland, embraces technology from its namesake and from Goss’s Flexible Printing System (FPS) presses Left: the company’s IfraExpo stand

Reinvigorated: Wifag had an inhouse-developed inkjet system (below) to show as well as an erder for an Evolution 371 press extension Below: The five-tower KBA Commander CL for German newspaper publisher Zeitungsverlag Oberbayern

Ferag Australia Pty Ltd

Unit 6b / 190–196 Bourke Road

Alexandria, NSW 2015, Australia

Phone +61 2 8337 9777

Fax +61 2 8337 9788

[email protected]

www.ferag-australia.com

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Fingertip control: HTML5 in Agfa’s Eversify software (above) allows clear separation of style from content to delivers sophisticated image handling, audio and video animation, the company says Top: Ferag’s Navigator production planning uses intuitive multitouch technology

20 gxpress.net November 2011

Albert anniversary shines a light on common family treeKBA’s Frankenthal plant – still

known by locals, as well as gravure users, as the Albert factory – celebrated its 150th

anniversary in August.The name was dropped in 1995,

but there are roots in common with both branches of the business, and also with both manroland and Heidelberg: Founder Andreas Albert qualified as a master craftsman under Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer – who had invented the steam-powered cylinder printing press – in a secularised monastery in Oberzell, near Würzburg. Moving to Augsburg, Albert became head of assembly at Reichenbachsche Maschinenfabrik (now manroland), founded by one of Koenig’s nephews. In 1861 Albert and a partner, Andreas Hamm, established Schnellpressenfabrik Albert & Hamm in Frankenthal.

The first cylinder press was delivered that same year, to a printer in Nuremberg. The 100th machine left the factory in 1868, handcrafted by a workforce of 15 plus four apprentices. Like Friedrich Koenig, Andreas Albert personally supervised the training of his apprentices. In 1867, on his initiative, the Frankenthal Trade Association set up a proper training school, from which the Frankenthal School for Master Craftsmen evolved at the turn of the century.

In 1871 Albert’s contract with Hamm expired and in 1873 he founded Schnellpressenfabrik Albert & Cie. OHG in partnership with Wilhelm Molitor, a merchant. Hamm’s company was sold in 1895, relocated to Heidelberg in 1896 and later renamed Heidelberger Druckmaschinen.

The roots of all Germany’s press manufacturers can thus be traced back to the monastery in Oberzell.

Andreas Albert died in 1882 and the business was carried on by his sons Aloys and Hubert, who increased exports of a product range expanded to encompass platen, litho, letterpress, collotype, metal-decorating and publication cylinder presses like the Albertina.

In 1889 Albert & Cie. built its first web press and ten years later shipped the 5,000th machine. Soon the company had become one of Europe’s leading press manufacturers and the workforce had swelled to 1200. In 1906 it launched the Bavaria metal-printing rotary press, forerunner of Albert’s web offset range. In 1910 Albert developed a variable rotogravure press, the first model of

which was shipped three years later.In 1914 Albert shipped its first two-

colour sheetfed offset press and in 1922 its first web-offset model. In the mid-1920s the company developed the fastest and most advanced newspaper press of its day: the Roter Teufel (Red Devil). In the 1930s the sheetfed programme of offset, gravure and letterpress machines was expanded to include a highly successful range of automatic printing machines, but the global economic slump of the early thirties took its toll and Albert was forced to close down in 1934.

Production restarted in 1935, and in 1940 the company went public, changing its name to Schnellpressenfabrik Frankenthal Albert & Cie, but the factory was later bombed out. After the war, employees gradually rebuilt the manufacturing facilities and re-established sales outlets. In the fifties and sixties production was dominated by large series of cylinder letterpress, sheetfed gravure and newspaper presses. It was during this period that the Albertina and Super-Albertina helped make Albert a world market leader in rotogravure.

Financial links with Koenig & Bauer began with a cooperative agreement and a 49.9 per cent interest purchased from the Rhineland-Palatinate regional government, an alliance which helped the evolution into the world’s second-biggest press manufacturer. The stake was increased to 74.99 per cent in 1988, when first group accounts showed sales of DM810.4m generated by a workforce of 4000. In 1990 Koenig & Bauer bought the remaining shares and Albert-Frankenthal became a full subsidiary.

Abridged from a history by KBA’s Klaus Schmidt nngx

PRESSHALLgxpress.net


What is believed to be the world’s first press conversion to produce

three compact newspaper products on a press designed for two broadsheets is underway in Columbus, Ohio.

The concept – which turns a ‘two-around’ press cylinder into a ‘three-around’ one using a single printing plate – was introduced in different forms in 2008 as Goss International’s Triliner, and by US-based Pressline Services as 3Volution.

Pressline, which says it has three patents pending for the technology, is to convert existing TKS presses at the ‘Columbus Dispatch’ to print a much shorter and slightly narrower product. At about 371 mm deep and 267 mm wide, it will be smaller than Berliner but significantly better-proportioned than the narrow broadsheet (556 x 292 mm) the ‘Dispatch’ and many other US newspapers had been running.

A major advantage is that the reduction of more than a third in the page size translates to significant paper savings, but unlike a switch to tabloid, the sectional format and fold are retained.

In fact, the converted press will deliver three sections instead of the previous two.

Some conversions also offer the option of retaining the old format, and St. Louis-based Pressline says the system will work with both single and double-wide presses.

Pressline’s Jim Gore says users can choose between 50 per cent

more productviity in straight production, or extra sections on collect: “In a straight mode you get one section per former board and 50 per cent more speed – if you are running at 50,000 cph you will get 75,000 with 3V with no colour gain,” he says. “In collect mode you get three sections per former board and 50 per cent more colour – 24 pages per web instead of 16 pages – but with no speed gain.”

Foldex Corporation says it is supplying its NJ2C short cut off jaw folders for the Columbus project. The company says its Viking folder was the first successful machine capable of producing both two-around and three-around cut off products for commercial applications. Since then it has developed special applications of both pin type and pinless folders used in commercial and publication printing. The NJ2C is the third in a series of products dedicated to coldset printing applications, and the second generation of short cut off machines with straight and double collect capability.

US trade magazine ‘News&Tech’ reported that the modified ‘Columbus Dispatch’ will print the ‘Cincinnati Enquirer’ and ‘Kentucky Enquirer’ in the new format under a letter of intent signed this week, enabling the Gannett papers to close their plant by the end of next year.

The new format would be “brighter, more engaging and easier to read”, president and publisher Margaret Buchanan told the magazine. nngx

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‘Two-thirds’ format press revamp project enables US papers to share plant

With more than 175 newspapers from 41 countries already signed, WAN-Ifra is looking for new members for its International Newspaper Colour Quality Club for 2012-2014, entries for which close on December 31.

Says deputy director Manfred Werfel, who is the association’s executive director of newspaper production, “The Club is more than a contest… it’s an attitude.”

“Newspapers that make the short list of the world’s best-printed colour newspapers increase their prestige among readers, pride among staff members, and – perhaps most importantly – benefits when it comes to selling ad space to fussy customers.

“Participation in the club is not an end in itself, rather an instrument for personnel leadership, standardisation and

ongoing process optimisation,” he says. “Having efficient structures in place is a key factor for ensuring long-term economic success, especially in the competition with other media.”

The INCQC aims to improve the quality of reproduction and printing in production, while also increasing competitiveness as well as training and motivating all personnel.

The competition has been held every two years since 1994. Newspapers which participate with success are awarded membership for a two-year period in the exclusive club of top-quality titles. Organisers say participation in the contest can be easily integrated into a newspaper’s normal production operations. Participants download a small ad-like test element and incorporate it into a page, with no special print runs required.

Participation in the competition is open to all newspapers, independent of the production processes or types of paper that are used. Four categories have been defined: • Coldset-offset printing on newsprint • Heatset-offset or UV-cured offset printing on newsprint • Heatset-offset printing or UV-cured offset printing on SC or LWC paper • Extra category for newspaper printing on tinted paper or for printing processes other than offset (such as flexo or inkjet)

Newspaper titles can be registered by publishing houses or by printing companies. Each title is considered as a separate participant. One company can register several titles. Full information can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/colorqualityclub nngx

INCQC deadline looms

A new compact KBA press – the first of four for Express Newspapers – has fired up to print UK tabloid the ‘Daily Star’.

Owner Richard Desmond fired up the Commander CT at a new plant in Luton, 40 miles north of the London Docklands print site where the group’s titles have been produced for more than 24 years.

Three more presses are the be installed, with the last to be commissioned in March next year, to print the ‘Daily Star Sunday’, ‘Daily Express’ and ‘Sunday Express’.

Desmond – who is making a £100 million ($156 million) investment in print at a time when circulations of printed newspapers in industrialised countries are declining – says his newspapers haven’t declined over the last 11 years. The ‘Daily Star’ was selling 400,000 when we bought it, and now sells around 800,000,” he says. “Eleven years ago there wasn’t a ‘Daily Star Sunday’ and it now sells more than 800,000 every Sunday. The ‘Daily Express’ and ‘Sunday Express’ are in line with the market.

When the four presses are up and running they will be able to print a million full-colour

newspapers in three hours. West Ferry and Broughton Printers chief executive David Broadhurst is keen to take on contract work, and is mulling the addition of dryers, which would enable the plant to print heatset and coldset, and therefore bring magazine production in-house.

The four highly-automated presses with a total of 22 reelstands, 22 four-high towers and four KF 7 folders will be installed in two parallel lines and embedded in an automated reel-logistics system. They have a maximum rated output of 90,000cph, a 578mm cut-off on a cylinder circumference of 1156mm and a maximum web width of 1460mm. Control is via KBA ErgoTronic consoles with EAE’s Print job-scheduling and press presetting software.

The £100m investment package includes new Ferag mailroom and an upgrade at Broughton Printers in Preston, with confirmation expected early next year. nngx

Pictured: Something to smile about: KBA UK director of web press sales Roger Nicholls, Baldwin UK sales and service director John Leek, KBA sales manager Winfried Schenker, West Ferry Printers operations and project manager Mick Crawley and KBA sales director Jochen Schwab at the Commander CT start-up

New press fires up optimism

A monastic beginning is common to all of Germany’s press-making pioneers


The first stages in continuing the business of manroland – which filed for insolvency under German laws on November 25 – have

taken place with the securing of finance by the administrator.

manroland had been negotiating with a potential investor, since named as Capvis, and initiated insolvency proceedings with the Augsburg district court when these failed.

Key units would be restructured as “debtor in possession”, and provisional administrator Werner Schneider has been appointed.

Schneider announced in early December that he had obtained so-called ‘massekredit’ finance – similar to debtor-in-possession financing – securing continuation of production and business operation.:“The company can continue to do business with customers and suppliers and we are sending a very positive signal to the market.”

Euros 10 million of the Euros 55 million mass credit is in form of a cash drawing facility, with a further Euro 45 million as a so-called ‘partial’ mass credit in which the lending banks release part of the forgone loans. The release ensures the required liquidity without the banks having to provide new debt. The financing secures fulfillment of liabilities

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with customers and suppliers that have placed or received orders with manroland after the company has filed for insolvency.

The position regarding liabilities originated before the filing – which will be dealt with as part of the insolvency proceedings later – is still unclear. Two major Australian heatset printers are among those who placed orders with the company this year, as yet unfulfilled.

In Australia, Steve Dunwell managing director of subsidiary manroland Australasia, claimed it was “business as usual” in the region following the parent company filing for insolvency, while admitting future trading will depend on the decisions of the administrator appointed on Friday.

He likened the German insolvency laws to America’s Chapter 11 rules, which could allow a company to continue to trade, “for years. It is ‘self administration’ which means the management work on restructuring with the administrator. My belief is that that is what will happen.”

Signs of the impending disaster were apparent at IfraExpo in Vienna in October, when manroland chairman Gerd Finkbeiner spoke of a collapse in orders since July, and industry talk was that the company was not paying it bills. nngx

manroland ‘insolvent’ after investor talks fail

Support manroland: Users rally roundPress users in Australia have rallied round to support manroland, urging others to pay their bills, buy parts and write to board members with their support.

An Australian press user who is behind the website – at www.supportmanroland.com – but is currently unwilling to be identified, says he is even contemplating ordering another press.

The website says “virtually every printer and publisher” in Australia has a vested interest in seeing the iconic company emerge successfully from its difficulties.

“It serves no meaningful purpose here to try and delve into the intricacies of the situation. Suffice to say that the financial global downturn from 2008

onwards is clearly at the core of the issue…

“Undoubtedly these situations are inherently complex but there is every indication that manroland may well survive in the long term as a result of a prudent restructuring process and, or some form of investor involvement,” it says.

Australian users are urged to:• clear outstanding accounts as

soon as practicable;• don’t be reticent about

ordering spare parts, and pay for them in a timely manner; and

• take the time to write a letter of support and reassurance to the board of management.

“We need manroland to survive and they need our support, it could make all the difference,” says the organiser. nngx

‘Times of India’ publisher Bennett Coleman has added four towers to the 4x1 manroland Regioman press at its Bangalore plant. The H-type towers add the equivalent of 32 broadsheet pages of full colour, with flexibility to print multiple mono or two-colour webs as an alternative to back-to-back four colour.

Because it runs only in a non-collect mode, the press uses fewer plates for the same productivity as a 2x2 press and allows greater pagination flexibility. The publisher has several other manroland presses at sites across India.

Harland Simon has upgraded press controls on a Goss HT70 press at Turkuvaz Medya Group, publisher of the daily ‘Sabah’. As well as reconfiguring the pressline at the Samandira, Turkey, site, obsolete control electronics have been replaced with the latest PressNet control system and components.

Some of the original Intella 100 and Intella 300 processors as well as parts of the quality desks installed in the 1990s are no longer available.

Improvements to the press communication system and replacement of the original Multidrop gives better access to data from the control desks as well increased diagnostic capabilities.• Following a drive upgrade completed last year, Jamaica’s Gleaner Company has ordered new static paster controls for its Goss Urbanite press from Harland Simon. Obsolete controls based on relay sequencing technology will be replaced with an Allen Bradley CompactLogix PLC based system with built-in diagnostic software.

manroland South East Asia managing director Job van Hasselt was delighted with the response to their participation in the Pack Print International trade show in Bangkok, attended by 17,000 visitors in early September.

“PPI provides us a wonderful platform for close and direct dialogue with our customers, to discuss how manroland’s value added printing approach can help them differentiate themselves

to stay ahead of the competition,” he says.

Tensor is to upgrade a Manugraph DGM pressline at La Presse Flamande in Hazebrouck, France, adding four T-1400 towers, plus extensive drive and auxiliary equipment. The DGM 430 two-highs will be reconfigured into four-high towers, register/cutoff controls replaced, remote inking upgraded, and integrated drive controls and consoles installed for the entire press. Eight phases have been planned to ensure little or no interruption of daily production while the additional towers are added, converting the press from 64 pages (including 32 four-colour) to 72 pages of four-colour.

The T-1400 shaftless towers have Baldwin spray dampening, GMI remote inking, CIP3 file interface and Tensor/DRCS register and cutoff controls, and the retrofit auxiliary equipment will update the entire press.

The first 3/2 KBA Colora is running at Gruppo Colasanto subsidiary Editorial in Medicina, near Bologna. The customised four-high tower press is part of a $33.7 million investment package which includes a new printing centre and technology upgrade.

The Colora (below) has three plates across the cylinder instead of four (making six in total) and can accept two full-width plates. It prints 24 tabloid pages per tower of the 620 mm cut-off favoured in Italy.

The maximum web width is 1350mm, enabling it to deliver 75,000 cph straight and 37,500 cph collect.

Press controls specialist EAE is strengthening its sales presence in India with an agreement with Krause Biagosch India.

With a competent partner for the sales area, the company will offer its range of products to improve quality and increase efficiency of newspaper production. This includes the RIGA concept for the selection of ink zones in single-width presses which has already been established in other countries.

Additionally, the company will focus on print production planning and tracking.

Swedish specialist DCOS has installed an eight-ribbon DRCS closed loop register system on a hybrid press at EKTAB, part of the Eskilstuna-Kuriren media group.

The brief was to equip the four-tower line in Eskilstuna – a mixture of KBA Colora and A500 units with two folders – to provide “the best quality and the shortest lead times in coldset printing,” according top president Philip Brünnlund.

One outcome has been that the company has been named Swedish ‘champions in print’ in the up to 100,000 copies a night product segment. Brünnlund says the new register system has contributed by its speed and accuracy, and wastage is “on the way down”.

The press has an EAE drive and control system, and QI colour registration. The project involved a takeover of all preset functions for main, cut-off and turnbar register that were previously controlled by EAE.

A 4x1 Cromoman variant, certified to print on Indian newsprint and run without air conditioning, was shown by manroland at WAN-Ifra’s India Expo in Chennai.

The company says the press can tolerate severe power and voltage fluctuations and is designed with a height of 5.4 metres in order to easily fit into existing Indian pressrooms.

“The energy and enthusiasm shown by our customers reflected the vibrancy and dynamism of the Indian printing industry,” says Anil Bhatia, managing director of manroland India. nngx

Only weeks before the expected deadline for the announcement of changes

to Fairfax Media’s Sydney printing arrangements, the Australian newspaper giant has started making plans to redeploy plant from its Chullora print site.

Staff have been told that the two newest presses in the manroland Colorman S line at Chullora are being decommissioned before Christmas, so that they can be moved to another site.

In advance of that, printing of a string of NSW country titles has being moved back to the group’s Dubbo print centre, where the Goss Community press has been upgraded with the addition of extra colour capacity.

Fairfax group chief executive for printing and logistics Bob Lockley told GXpress the moves were “simply... the transfer of products around while additional colour was added to (the) Dubbo press” but did not respond to our enquiry about the Chullora plant.

The two presses – identified as C2 and D – are part of a upgrade to the 1995 Colorman S line aimed at increasing back-to-back colour capacity, and completed around the turn of the century .

As Fairfax moves closer to a decision on sharing printing facilities with News Limited – which this week reported a $300 million net loss for the year, mostly as a result of write-downs on the value of its print titles and goodwill – there is speculation about where the Chullora Colorman S presses will be moved to.

One option – and the subject of a “strong, strong” rumour, according to one New Zealand observer – is to install them at Auckland Community Print, Fairfax NZ’s printing facility in Wiri, South Auckland. A new pressroom would be needed to house the high-speed double-width pressline.

A likely outcome woiuld be the closure of Fairfax’s Hamilton site,

which is a couple of hours away and prints the 40,000 daily ‘Waikato Times’ and 57,000 weekly ‘Hamilton Times’.

Fairfax is also understood to have had talks with Allied Press, the New Zealand-owned publisher of the ‘Otago Daily Times’, raising the possibility of the closure of their Southland print site in Invercargill.

• In Australia, APN says there are “no immediate plans” for the presses at Bundaberg and Mackay, following the move of printing of the daily newspapers there to Yandina and Rockhampton respectively.A Manugraph press installed in a new factory in 2006 is in Bundaberg, while the Goss Community at Mackay was upgraded at about the same time.

APN Print chief operating officer Brian Hood says Muller Martini postpress inserting equipment from Bundaberg is being moved to Rockhampton, and that in Mackay to a New Zealand site.

GXpress understands the logistics of producing the extra daily titles dictated a change from original plans to close Mackay in July. Closing Bundaberg first has freed up postpress needed in Rockhampton for the Mackay ‘Daily Mercury’ to be printed there throughout the week.

APN had planned to close Bundaberg earlier, but relented, including it in the breakthrough 2006 order – part of a programme of re-equipment which also saw a hybrid manroland Regioman/Uniset press installed at Yandina, Manugraph presses in Rockhampton, Toowoomba and Ballina.Pressed on the future of two closed presses, Hood told GXpress, “no immediate plans means just that”.

APN has also moved out of heatset printing in New Zealand, selling some items of equipment and relocating others. Meanwhile, the former ‘Daily News’ plant in Warwick – now fully sheetfed – is being upgraded. nngx

Fairfax readies SMH presses for move


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Rotary Offset Press is celebrating its golden jubilee with a return to core values and in the company of a grand lady… a 25-year-old G14 web which

is unusual among much heatset kit installed in the local market in that it’s paid for.

The press – Baker Perkins’ answer to the Harris M-1000 – was acquired from a printer in Virginia, USA, in 1999 and installed the following year.

And the Sydney printing company will probably buy secondhand again: Sales and marketing director David Holihan says the company has approved plans for an extension to its Homebush factory and has started looking for a second heatset press. “It’ll probably 32 or 48pp quarto and five to ten years old,” he says.

Careful plant acquisitions have been a key to the growth of the business which began when determined but impecunious young migrant Stan Tarasov – an offset printer at S.T. Leigh in Kensington – put a deal together with Gollins in 1958 to rent an old ATF Chief 24 sheetfed offset press for £5-a-week. Within two days of the press being installed in an old store in Glebe, he had won his first job, printing a Greek newspaper.

The buzz about “reasonably priced” web-offset presses encouraged him to put his name down for one of the first Goss Community presses in the country, and the company moved to bigger premises at Taylor Square in preparation for its 1964 installation. A couple of years later, the two-unit single-width press was doubled in capacity when, against advice, Tarasov bought and rebuilt a similar press which had been ‘written-off ’ in a fire at a Blacktown printworks.

“Every new job proved a challenge for him, working day and night, seven days a week, but he strongly believed in a core value of ‘success through service’,” says Holihan.

The result was a thriving business: And as new publications came in doors, new equipment was added including sheetfed, bindery, photographic and make-up departments to meet the growing demands.

However, in 1971 and on the verge of success, a disastrous fire put the plant out of operation. Determined not to let his clients

global financial crisis, fierce competition across all segments of commercial print, eroding margins and declining page numbers across the industry.

“A complete review and restructure has returned the business to profitability and secured its future,” he says. Part of this is a decision to return to its beginnings as a trade printer has proven a valuable decision in a difficult marketplace.

“We have returned to the very strategy that enabled us to have great success through the 1970s and 80s, of being a trade printer, while of course still work directly with publishers,” says Robert Tarasov. “My father always said that he printed for many other printers, but never pinched their clients. That business ethic is still strong in our company’s values today”.

He expects market and industry consolidation – in both newspaper and commercial segments – will bring more change and further business failures… and more printers looking to cut costs by using third-party suppliers.

By the end of last year, Rotary Offset had managed to pay off all its press, bindery and prepress equipment, an enviable position the company believes vindicates its decision to buy secondhand.

“The strategy looks wiser than ever, especially given the low debt structure of the business and the state of the industry,” Robert Tarasov says.

Further upgrades in the past year help meet clients’ quality expectations and make it easier for the company to compete for work. “This investment and our equipment strategy has been a success, with sales up 40 per cent in 2011 and a strong return to profitability,” he says.

Holihan says changes in culture and cost base, plus the investment in equipment is bringing excellent results, including a ten per cent reduction in operating expenses.

The company has also added several key staff, including operations manager David Atkinson and web press engineer David Hoogkamp.

“We have thrown out the door the typical relaxed family-owned printing culture and replaced it with a tightly run, well managed, corporation,” he says. “Importantly though, we have retained the qualities of being a family-owned and independent printing company that have seen us survive for 50 years.

“I strongly believe that good oldfashioned customer service, honesty, integrity and accessibility to key managers in a price-driven industry is still as important as ever for customer satisfaction and retention.” nngx

down, Tarasov bought time on presses around the city to get his clients’ work out on time… and although there was no money in the jobs, he didn’t lose a customer.

Amalgamation with Theo Skalkos and the ‘Hellenic Herald’ saw a new company with a six-units Community, to which was soon added a ten-unit Goss Urbanite and another Community, this time of four units. The company could now produce 128 pages of tabloid and was producing 35 weekly titles for clients, printers and for themselves.

When that partnership broke up in 1980, Tarasov went independent, enjoying success through the decade as the printer of the growing ‘EAC Multilist’ real estate series, and from 1989, real estate papers for Fairfax in what was to become a 14-year relationship.

The infamous Offset Alpine fire of 1993 created new opportunities for Rotary Offset with work for Australia’s largest publisher ACP, and as a second generation – Tarasov’s son, current managing director Robert – takes over, there are soon thoughts of the improved quality of heatset printing.

The 32-page G14 is installed in the current Homebush site to which they had moved in the early 1990s, meeting market needs and securing the long-term future of the business.

Holihan says the company has undergone a “process of reinvention” in the last couple of years, initiated by the fallout from the

It’s all ours!People and plant: (clockwise from below) The G14 press; operations manager Mark Atkinson; reels are prepared for loading; sales and marketing director David Holohan; looking along the web of the Baker Perkins press

Sydney heatset printers Rotary Offset are celebrating, and it’s not just their golden anniversary... they’ve paid off the plant!

<<Publish Asia FP4CPublish Asia 2012 is WAN-IFRA’s top event in Asia and will be held for the first time in Indonesia. It will provide insights, ideas, strategies and concrete examples that helps to shape the future of newspapers and news publishing industry in Asia Pacific.

Learning Workshops10 April (Tue)

Implementing ISO standards in print - Cross-Media Advertising - Tablet Publishing - Creating dynamic news media experience on mobile, tablets and online. Learn from pionners and recognized media experts.

Expo11-12 April (Wed - Thu)

Industry suppliers will showcase their latest services and products offering in publishing, pre-press, printing and mailroom equipment.

Asia Media Golf10 April (Tue)

Network with your fellow industry professionals at one of the best golf courses in Bangkok.

Newsroom Summit Asia11-12 April (Wed - Thu)

This event tackles the problems and challenges facing editors, managing editors and all those who are involved in leading and managing newsrooms in a multiple media environment.

Printing Summit Asia11-12 April (Wed - Thu)

Aimed at technical and production directors as well as IT heads who are tasked with managing the publishing and printing operations, this event concentrates on new trends in newspaper production.

Advertising Summit Asia11-12 April (Wed - Thu)

This new feature at Publish Asia aims to cover the latest trends that are currently transforming the relationship between media companies, advertisers and agencies.

11th Aisa Media Awards11 April (Wed)

The best Asian publications in Print, Design, Content, Infographics, Marketing, Community Services and Photojournalism will be honoured during an entertaining gala dinner awards ceremony.

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CEO Conference11-12 April (Wed - Thu)

This conference will look at how the media landscape is changing and how publishers can adapt and define their strategies to ensure a successful future.

Limited seats for these events are available to Publish Asia 2012 delegates on a first come first served basis. Register early to avoid disappointment!

Full programme and registration at www.publishasia.com

Only weeks before the German press maker commenced insolvency

proceedings, commercial web printing giant PMP announced it was solving an upgrade issue at its Perth plant by ordering not one, but two manroland 48-page presses.

Now the printer is one of two in Australia with major equipment orders caught up in the insolvency process. GXpress understands that both have sent representatives to Germany to gain clarification.

The fully-duplexed dual Lithoman – configured to be capable of 96-pp production – will be a world first. The order came on top of a succession of large heatset presses, a positive boom in Australia’s ‘two-speed’ economy.

Recent months have seen orders for IPMG and Franklin Web, and a greenfield installation – based on two late model manroland presses – at Webstar in New Zealand. The IPMG press is yet to be delivered.

Unlike the stacked 48-page Lithoman for IPMG will install at its new Warwick Farm, Sydney, location next year, the PMP presses set for Bibra Lake (Perth) is to be installed side-by-side, enabling them to be run separately or as a single 96-page press. This provides the flexibility to print higher paginations or multiple copies of the same product at the same time.

The Lithoman is specified with the latest automation and robotics, including closed loop control systems.

PMP says the extra capacity will permit local production of catalogue, magazine, heatset tabloid and insert products previously shipped from interstate, reducing costs and improving lead times.

The company’s WA general manager Clinton Willis says the investment adds strength to PMP’s national capability and brings “exciting opportunities” for

its customers. “This means our customers and the WA market, will benefit from more efficient and flexible printing solutions to world class standards,” he says.

The new press is planned to be in production in September 2012. It replaces 30 year-old equipment at the site, and mirrors the newer presses at other PMP locations, ensuring consistency of print quality.

Chief executive Richard Allely says PMP had enjoyed a 30-year relationship with manroland which had been successful for both parties. “Clearly our major strategic partner, manroland has proven to be a reliable, long term supplier of equipment of the highest quality and performance,” he says. “Perth is one of our more distant sites, so the 24/7 service offering of manroland was also considered important for this decision.”

Allely says the investment in Western Australia will make its Perth business a world leader: “It demonstrates our continuing confidence in the Australasian printing industry and our continued confidence in manroland.”

As others have before, PMP is taking advantage of a buyers’ market for press equipment and international and local manroland heads rushed to express their gratitude for the order and the expression of confidence it represents. A year ago, PMP was reported to have been thinking of a secondhand 64-page web for the Perth site.

manroland chief executive Gerd Finkbinder described PMP as “one of our most valued customers” and

congratulated them on choosing the company’s advanced technology: “I want to thank PMP for their very significant order and assure them of our utmost support throughout and after the completion of the project,” he said.

Managing director of manroland Australasia Steve Dunwell also “greatly appreciated” the order and the confidence it provides. “We employ 35 specialist web technicians in Australasia so orders like this make our own investments worthwhile,” he said.

“This is one of several orders for very large commercial heatset presses placed in Australasia in recent times and that level of investment can only mean a great future for the industry as a whole.”

ASX-listed PMP reports revenues in excess of $A1 billion and employs more than 2600 staff across 16 locations in Australia and New Zealand, where it is the largest printer in both countries.

The company offers a complete range of end to end marketing solutions for the regions’ biggest retailers. This extends from mining of consumer information, through the full range of creative services, multi channel marketing and planning, printing and distribution to the mail box.

Commercial web presses are operated in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in Australia, Auckland and Christchurch in New Zealand. nngx

Richard Alllely (left) is congratulated by Steve Dunwell

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The first printer in Germany to install a 96-page web press system, Stark will have the second four-unit line, with a 2860 mm web width running in Pforzheim by the middle of next year.

It will have high-speed pinless combination and former folders, and an additional Goss former folder is to be supplied for the first Sunday 5000 press, which went into production early this year. Stark Druck also operates two Goss Sunday 4000 48-page short-grain presses.

“The performance of our existing Sunday presses, including the newest 96-page system, and the advantages

they allow us to provide for our customers were the key factors in our decision to invest in a second Sunday 5000,” says Stark managing director Reiner Wormitt.

Goss installed the world’s first 2860 mm wide press in 2009, and claims to be the only supplier with presses of this type in full daily production.

Both of Stark’s Sunday 5000s are specified with fully automatic plate changing technology and DigiRail digital inking. The PCF-3 combination and PFF-3 former folders are both designed to run at up to 100,000 copies per hour. nngx

Another big heatset press (or two) as Australians tap a buyers’ market

Chinese research site goes for a ninth Goss M-600

Goss is installing a ten-colour Akiyama Jprint sheetfed press at GHP’s West Haven, Connecticut facility. Support capabilities of the large Goss team in the USA are among factors listed by chief executive John Robinson (pictured) in reaching their decision.

Goss now represents Akiyama products – built by another company within Shanghai Electric – in North America. The Jprint presses use a linear sheet transport not unlike that of a web press, which allows printing on both sides in a single pass without reversing or restacking.

Two 48pp KBA Compacta 618 heatset presses with a unique V5 variable-format gripper folder have gone into service at Lenglet Imprimeurs in France. The group now boasts a homogeneous press fleet of seven KBA gravure and offset presses.

manroland had been enjoying a boom in demand for its heatset presses in Turkey, with a 48-page and two 32-page presses among recent

orders. Bilnet Printing Systems in Istanbul is installing 32-page Lithoman and Euroman presses while Caglayan in Izmir has opted for a 48-page Euroman.

Bilnet Printing Systems bought a new 17,000 m2 building last year, and is adding another because of strong growth.

The Euroman at Caglayan will print textbooks and magazines on what is now the largest commercial web press in the Turkish market.

Latin America’s largest printer Abril Grafica is pioneering the use of AVT’s next-generation MicroColor/Mercury remote ink control system and ColorQuick closed-loop colour control system, of which it has four installed on publication and commercial web presses.

Updated versions have new views to help printers react more quickly to print conditions, for which 30-50 per cent faster make-readies and ten per cent waste reductions are claimed.

Abril Grafica’s more than 1000 employees produce over 500 million copies of magazines, supplements and catalogues a year. When founded in 1950, it produced only the ‘Donald Duck’ magazine.

Brazil is the world’s fifth largest economy and the chosen venue of the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

A new 48-page manroland Lithoman for Leykam Druck is “a very special treat with a price tag of around ten million Euros” right in line with the Viennese lifestyle.

Austria’s largest printing company has sites in Neudîrfl, Höe/Maribor (Slovenia) and Müllendorf, where the short grain press was due to start up early next year. nngx

Chinese printer C&C Joint Printing – which also operates as a research base for commercial web print standards

in the country – has ordered a ninth Goss M-600 heatset press. The installation will be its 11th new press from the now Chinese-owned maker, having installed its first, also an M-600 in 1998.

Chief executive Jackson Leung says the company’s strong focus on ‘green’ issues was a key factor in the specification of technologies designed for low waste and low energy consumption: “We are highly committed to providing a sustainable solution that will ensure print maintains its profile within the media mix for many years to come.

“Today’s Goss M-600 package supports this objective with efficiencies that improve productivity and reduce waste.”

Rated at up to 61,000 impressions per hour, the new 16-page press with 598.5mm cut-off and 965mm web width will feature automatic plate changing and a JF55 Plus folder with quarterfold capabilities and

a four and eight-page module for added versatility.

The fourth M-600 press at the Beijing facility, it will also be equipped with a Goss SH splicer and Ecocool dryer with integrated afterburner, closed-loop controls and Goss Web Center technology for automated makereadies, presetting and control.

The company currently has eight M-600 presses and two Goss Sunday 2000 presses now installed across a number of plants for high-quality commercial and magazine printing. In its role as China’s designated ‘National Commercial Web Offset Standards Research Base’, it employs its Goss presses in print tests aimed at developing optimum standards for the commercial web offset industry in China.

“C&C has spearheaded the campaign to offer true, high-quality print within the Chinese market, so that today their name is synonymous with the highest standards,” Goss Asia commercial web press sales vice president Tim Mercy says. “We are very proud that our M-600 press has not only kept step with the requirements of such an influential leader in the Chinese market, but also enabled them to broaden their long-term business and environmental objectives.” nngx

Pictured (front, from left) C&C chairman Wen Hong Wu, Leung and Mercy, with other officials from the two companies

Second 96pp Goss for Stark


gxpress.net


gxpress.net August 2011 29

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MAILROOMgxpress.net


Mailroom systems vendor Ferag has commissioned its first ‘drag and drop’ control system at Küster-Pressedruck in Bielefeld, Germany.

The installation is part of a 25 million Euros investment in two new Wifag presses and the Ferag mailroom equipment. The company provides publishing services for ‘Neue Westfälische Zeitung’, a 200,000 circulation daily with 16 local editions.

Technical manager Hans-Henning Holdorf says the investment was prompted by the partners belief that printed newspapers have a future, especially in the regional sector.

“To match marketplace demands, we had to update all of our technology,” he says.

“With increasing complexity in the mailroom, we were looking for a solution that would take

control to a new level.”Ferag presented its Navigator

concept and was able to persuade Küster-Pressedruck to come on board and get the new control working under real production conditions for the first time. The maker claims it brings innovative user guidance familiar to iPhone and iPad users to the mailroom.

Two Evolution 473/4 presses now replace the three previously used, and the Ferag mailroom runs at 45,000 cph to handle the products of both presses.

After each line was commissioned, the Navigator system was implemented, delivering a better overview with more transparency. Intuitive user guidance makes it easier for staff to master the increasingly complex mailroom processes efficiently. nngx

Pictured: Drag-and-drop set-up simplifies the Navigator controls

Navigator control journey starts at German site

N ews Limited has added Brisbane and Perth to the long list

of Australian print sites to which it has added Ferag’s inline trimming facility.

SNT systems are already in use in Adelaide, Sydney, Hobart, the Gold Coast and Townsville. Queensland Newspapers in Murarrie and Perth Print have added the latest SNT-50 technology.

In Brisbane – which prints the metro daily ‘Courier-Mail’ and other group titles, weekly supplement circulations are approaching the million mark. Paginations of processed products lie between 44-72 pages tabloid.

The Sunday figures

are also impressive: immediately after the SNT-50 was commissioned, weekly print volumes were well above a million.

The SNT-50 has been integrated into existing system structures, some of which are part of News’ original ‘colour newspapers’ initiative of the 1980s. At both locations, Ferag installations are more than 20 years old and in perfect condition. nngx

With an increase in demand for trimming, News has opted for the latest SNT-50 rotary drum technology

Taiwan’s China Times has ordered a package of Ferag mailroom

equipment for two print sites, following a long relationship with local partner Joinpack.

The Want-Want China Times Media Group will install the Swiss maker’s UTR and MultiStack technology with its state-of-the-art Navigator controls at their Taipei and Kaoshiung printing centres.

Printing department administrator Mr Chen, who helped develop the project, cites the “longstanding positive association” with Joinpack, which is Ferag’s marketing partner in Taiwan among reason for the decision.

He says the publisher

also considered top-ranking expertise in all aspects of mailroom technology, sound and open-minded advice and also the winning solution Ferag presented.

“Ferag was able to show us how, thanks to the steel guide channels and tough chain construction, we would benefit from the equipment’s long service life and also the low maintenance and operating costs that are unprecedented for the industry,” he says. “And then we have the Navigator, which is currently the best concept for production control.”

The system will provide security of investment with upgrade optikons including inline inserting, stitching and trimming, as well as a variety of advertising formats. “We saw it would offer us big opportunities for growth and prosperity – added value functions which can be phased into the system environment at relatively low cost,” says Chen. nngx

Mr Chen (far right) is pictured with (from right) Susanne Rau-Reist, chef executive and chair of WRH Walter Reist Holding, China Times advertisement department vice president Mr Yu, and Michael Ho, chief executive of Joinpack.

China Times sees prosperity ahead in mailroom options

News sites get latest inline trimming for supplements

The first Müller Martini Listo stackers in India have been installed at ‘The Hindu’ in Kozhikode (Calicut). The automated mailroom including a Newsveyor conveyor, is a response to higher print runs, distribution costs and labour costs. Stacks are produced on the Listo, which suits thin to medium newspaper products, have printed topsheets applied by hand, and are automatically film-wrapped and strapped.

The Newsveyor has been configured with intermediate take-off and delivery stations, providing for future expansion for inline inserting.

Ferag is reinstalling equipment from the former Dagblad-Trykk in Oslo at the new Nr1 Trykk plant in Biri, and will add new components to create a state of the art mailroom concept, the company says.

It will have a high speed MSD2-C inserting drum with MultiDisc and RollStream technology, with the existing SNT trimming drum together and a new StreamStitch adding value for customers. Bundles will be protected. Production is arranged by three MultiStack MTS units controlled by a LineMaster

system with facilities for single copy addressing and online top sheet printing. A new PKT bundle transport system will link the MultiStack lines with the dispatch area.

Two Müller Martini ProLiners at Bangkok’s ‘Daily News’ are used both for jacketing the broadsheet newspapers with heatset commercial products and for inserting tabloid inserts relating to entertainment, tourism, healthcare and teenage issues.

Production director of Si-Phya Publishing, Paramet Hetrakul says this has opened up completely new advertising options, which has already helped the 800,000 circulation ‘Daily News’ to achieve considerable growth in sales.

“To be successful, you have to take the first step and test the market,” he says. “We will now work on boosting our successes and implementing more ideas and visions for the future.”

With four feeders, there are a number of options, including the use of a carrier medium, into which the newspaper and two preprint sections can be inserted. nngx

Big four publishers drive merger of PANPA into new owned Australian peak bodyA ustralia’s four largest newspaper

publishers are driving a plan to merge PANPA/Newspaper

Publishers’ Association into a new group they will own, based on The Newspaper Works and headed by Tony Hale.

A statement says News, Fairfax, Seven West and APN will continue to own the group, with “membership broadened to include other publishers and industry partners as associate members”.

The group says members of NPA – which incorporates the longer-established Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association – will benefit from a better-resourced industry group with a wider range of skills. An extraordinary general meeting will be needed to sanction the decision and approve how its surplus funds should be allocated.

It is not clear what role current PANPA chief executive Mark Hollands – credited with pulling the organisation back from the brink after numerous leadership changes – will play, but he says he is “completely in favour” of the changes.

“I’ve been encouraging it for more than two years, and have always believed in one voice for the industry,” he told GXpress.

“Fragmented groups and separate priorities never made any sense to me.”

He says The Newspaper Works will be a new organisation, “not a mish-mash of disparate groups”, and will have a strong sense of its future strategy and priorities.

“I can’t be specific about what I’ll do because there are lots more skills and experiences in the combined group,” he says, “but I’m cool with that.

“I’m committed to making sure I can add value to the industry and be fulfilled professionally. Tony is a great guy, and I’m more than happy to be working with him.”

He emphasises that money is not the driver for the changes: “NPA/PANPA is a very healthy organisation financially. We have three years’ worth of operating funds in reserves. “This is not about money but about helping secure a better future for the newspaper industry and our colleagues within it.”

The announcement follows a TNW board meeting attended by APN News & Media chief executive Brett Chenoweth, then-chairman and chief executive of News Limited John Hartigan, Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood and West Australian Newspapers chief executive Chris Wharton.

It says the “new single industry group for the country” will operate as The Newspaper Works. Its scope will encompass advocacy, marketing and advertising, government lobbying, regulation, press freedoms and the environment. “The Newspaper Works will promote newspapers across all print and digital platforms to audiences such as advertisers, consumers, governments, shareholders and industry,” it says.

Chairman of The Newspaper Works, Greg Hywood, said: “Our industry needs one peak organisation with a strong voice to represent newspapers in the many forms they now take – print, web, mobile and tablet.”

Core NPA activities, such as the annual conference and the Newspaper of the Year Awards, will continue. All the services and engagement previously under taken by PANPA will continue under the leadership of The Newspaper Works. It says it is vital that the new body embraces and encourages members to participate in the PANPA awards, which are among the largest for newspapers in the world.

“The strength of much of NPA/PANPA’s activities comes from the participation of members from New Zealand, the

Pacific Islands and Asia,” it says. “PANPA’s relationship with New Zealand and Asia-Pacific titles remains important.”

The new organisation will also assume the responsibilities of the Publishers’ National Environment Bureau and the advertising compliance body, the Publishers’ Advertising Advisory Bureau, as they relate to newspapers. Tony Hale will continue as chief executive of the new-look organisation.

“This is a big and exciting step,” he says. “The time is right to create a new powerhouse for the industry given the success we’re recording with the explosion of new technology in our industry. Our many audiences can only benefit from The Newspaper Works’ new scope of operation.”

Staff from NPA/PANPA will move under the banner of The Newspaper Works and continue with services including its weekly newsletter, newspaper and yearbook, plus a YouTube channel, regular tweets and Facebook updates. Work will begin in the New Year to integrate these with The Newspaper Works’ website.

As PANPA has in the past, the new body will create advisory groups to cover core industry areas. nngx


gxpress.net


ago, when Facebook had been a newcomer and the iPad still two years away, “people had rushed to proclaim the death of newspapers”.

Talcott was happy to report that newspapers were not only alive and well, but active participants in a rate of change which was both “incredible” and slower than anything we can expect in the future.

Greg Hywood’s message was that the business model on which newspapers had been based for 150 years had been junked and replaced with a new one, “based on the core of what we do... journalism”.

The success of tablets – “don’t you love them,” he said – had led to 210,000 ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ and ‘The Age’ apps being downloaded, enough for one in three of the iPads in this country. And next, these apps would go right onto TV.

Hywood says ‘What’s the future of newspapers?’ is the wrong question: The real issues centred around paywalls and how too-costly print could be rationalised, “so we can spend more on what we do.

“It’s about breaking stories and selling ads,” he said.

There was misty nostalgia as he recalled his alcohol-fuelled first day at wealthy Fairfax’s then unprofitable ‘Australian Financial Review’ in the heady days of 1976. But he said Fairfax was now engaging with 20 per cent more people than in those “great old days”.

He’d seen the future when shown internet search software on a visit to California’s Silicon Valley: “You didn’t have to be real smart to gather that it was the end of that 145-year-old business model,” he said.

But while the US had suffered a bloodbath,

PANPA RETROSPECTgxpress.net


Strength of ideas in digital newspapersHyperlocal and personalised

newspapers and a national title using a ‘distribute-and-

print’ production model are among the unique propositions made possible by digital printing.

Called in to brief delegates at this year’s PANPA Future Forum, consultant Andy McCourt posed these and other propositions including the possibility of digital plants in Cairns and the Gold Coast producing ‘home’ editions for holidaymakers and expats.

“This is not an offset replacement technology, but one that changes the game,” he says.

With productivity greatly increased, a 32-page tabloid newspaper or section could be printed at 2000 cph… a lot less than with a conventional single-width offset press but with the capability to publish “at the speed of light”.

With say, ten presses, a new national magazine with a circulation of 100,000 could be published simultaneously in different markets such as Sydney, Melbourne, Wodonga, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Cairns and Darwin. “With PDFs distributed to each site, there’s a lower power footprint, no air freight or truck costs other than local transport,” says McCourt.

“And digital presents the opportunity to vary data on each copy, so that advertisers can pitch an individual message to readers.”

So far – in Australia and New Zealand – all of this is theory. While there are now 13 sites around the world using inkjet digital technology to print colour newspapers, all of the nine local installations print only transaction/promotional or book work. One, in New Zealand, is experimenting with newspapers.

Technology in an “oversupplied” digital market is available from any of 13 vendors including digital press manufacturers HP, Impika, Kodak and TKS, OEM suppliers Screen and Miyakoshi, and Fujifilm, Fuji Xerox, Océ and Ricoh.

German offset press maker manroland has a marketing partnership with Océ, and works with Kodak on digital imprinting – the process which uses an inkjet printhead to print variable data on the web of an offset newspaper press (in use at Cumbrian

Newspapers in the UK). McCourt says many more partnerships between offset and digital companies are to be expected.

While a variety of finishing equipment is used in other digital print applications, all the newspaper sites use equipment from Swiss specialist Hunkeler, which now has a gluing option.

The market opportunities are many: One high-profile example is the German ‘niiu’ newspaper concept, through which readers can request an individual paper based on selected pages from the favourite titles.

Most popular so far, is the market for ‘expat’ newspapers and editions for businesspeople travelling on business. So far there are presses in Malta, Cyprus (two sites), Belgium, Spain (three sites), Italy and the UK (two sites), plus Dubai, Réunion Island – which prints ‘Le Monde’ and ‘Le Figaro’ for French-speaking locals – and New Zealand. Seven sites – including Miller Distributors in Malta, which won the UK’s ‘digital newspaper of the year’ title for the ‘Sunday Times’ – use Kodak VL4200 or VL6200 presses, three use Screen’s TruePress Jet 520Z, and three Océ’s JS2200.

Most sites use PDF distribution specialists such as Newspaper Direct, which has 2000 newspapers on its database, although four ethnic titles have direct file arrangements.

“Digital presses don’t discriminate on cut-off and size, or number of pages for that matter,.” says McCourt. “Productivity has grown exponentially, and with compound annual growth at 36 per cent, the market is probably growing faster than any other.” nngx

Océ Australia marketing manager Damian Schaller (below right with Herbert Kieleithner) and specialist Robert Kiekies represented the company at the PANPA event, which it and parent Canon supported with a variety of digital printing.“Digital newspaper production is an option to create new sources of income by producing smaller runs of a broader range of titles that would be uneconomical for offset production,” says Schaller.

Two contrasting perspectives came out of this year’s PANPA Future Forum in August – from Fairfax Media’s Greg Hywood and Earl Wilkinson, who heads US industry group INMA – confirmed

a message you’ve read here before: That Australia’s newspaper industry differs fundamentally to that in North America (writes Peter Coleman).

And that we have – then, at least – nothing to be depressed about.

The upbeat assessment was an apt opener to a celebration of the local industry’s successes which continued that evening with the Newspaper of the Year awards dinner.

And the tone was confident: In the trendy Dockside function rooms a floor above Sydney’s Darling Harbour, staff from member newspapers gathered to hear about ‘the power and passion’ of newspapers, ‘in every way, on every platform’.

Fairfax chief executive Hywood has a message to impart to financial markets and to the industry itself. Investors who had made media stocks the country’s most-shorted were wrong to assume that the bloodbath among North American publishing companies would follow here.

“What the market believes is worse than wrong; it’s nonsense,” he said.

But he acknowledged that there was an evangelical challenge beyond that of ill-informed investors: to change the culture of those who work within the newspaper industry itself. “If you go through an endless debate about when you are going to die, you get a bit depressed, but there’s nothing to be depressed about.”

That message was emphasised throughout the one-day conference, which was full of ideas about the role of publishing businesses within a multimedia environment. And was echoed even by INMA chief executive Wilkinson, back for his second PANPA forum in as many years, and with Australian papers in his portfolio of success stories (see page 33). Comments about the difference between Australia and markets such as North America were “very fair”, he conceded.

Culture – which Wilkinson says, “trumps strategy” – was another area of agreement, Hywood having urged, “Let’s develop the culture to make the future live, and be confident about it”.

Earlier, News Limited’s Joe Talcott, who is president of NPA/PANPA had looked back on the address he’d given to the conference in 2005, as a newcomer to the newspaper industry. Just six years

PANPA awards honour mobile and online alongside best news performances in printT he best news website

ranked alongside top print editions in this

year’s PANPA Newspaper of the Year awards, presented in Sydney during the Future Forum.

News Limited’s couriermail.com.au was named national news destination of the year, and its Darwin stablemate, ntnews.com.au regional news destination. News also won the innovation award for news.com.au, with Fairfax New Zealand’s Rugby Heaven iPhone app named specialist site of the year.

News also won the innovation in pre-production process or technology award for its national view of advertising inventory application.

Regular winners were again prominent in the technical excellence awards.

Double width category winners were ‘The West Australian’ (90,000+), Fairfax Media’s Capital Fine Print for the ‘Canberra Times’ (25,000-90,000 copies), News Chullora for the ‘Weekend Australian’ and Fairfax Printing Ormiston for its production of the ‘Australian Financial Review’.

In the single-width category, Apple Daily’s ‘Apple Daily’ (90,000+) and ‘Sharp Daily’ (25,000-90,000) was joined by APN News Zealand for the ‘Bay of Plenty Times’ (under 25,000).

West Australian Newspapers was also honoured for its ‘Habitat’

supplement (90,000+), with Capital Fine Print again honoured for ‘A Day to Remember’ (25,000-90,000) and Fairfax stablemate FRP Tamworth for ‘Lifestyle of the 50-plus’ (under 25,000).

Images and issues from the Christchurch earthquake dominated the winners list in this year’s PANPA Newspaper of the Year awards, with the local Fairfax daily, ‘The Press’ taking the title in its 25,000-90,000 circulation category.

Judges recognised the “incredible and outstanding efforts in capturing the tragedy of the moment and the stories behind it”.

Earthquake coverage also helped APN flagship the ‘Sunshine Coast Daily’- a title judges said was “doing everything right” – to a win in the 10,000-25,000 circulation category.

At the big end of town, ‘The Age’ was named over 90,000 copies winner, and the Sunday newspaper of the year.

The full list of winners was: Newspaper of the Year–90,000+: The Age25,000-90,000: The Press10,000-25,000: Sunshine Coast DailyUp to 10,000: Gladstone ObserverNon-Daily Newspaper of the Year- 90,000+: St George & Sutherland Shire Leader25,000-90,000: The Christchurch Star and The Land (tie)10,000-25,000: Stock JournalUp to 10,000: Geraldton Guardian and Koori Mail (tie)Sunday Newspaper of the Year: Sunday MailNews Destination of the Year–National/Metropolitan: Couriermail.com.auRegional/Suburban/Rural: NTnews.com.auSpeciality/Niche Site: Rugby

Heaven iPhone App – Fairfax NZInnovation in Digital Publishing: news.com.auNews Photograph of the Year–National/Metropolitan: Craig Greenhill Daily Telegraph – Christmas Island Tragedy and Iain McGregor, The Press – Christchurch Earthquake (tie)Regional/Suburban/Local: Paul Carracher, Wimmera Mail-Times – Locusts AttackFeatures Photograph of the Year– Metropolitan/National: Brad Hunter, Daily Telegraph – Under the SkinRegional/Suburban/Local: Michael Copp, Moonee Valley Weekly – The Road BackLifestyle Photograph of the Year– National/Metropolitan: Richard Robinson, New Zealand Herald – Ice DivingRegional/Suburban/Local: Andy Drewitt, Diamond Valley Leader – Dusty StarSport Photograph of the Year–National/Metropolitan: Phil Hillyard, The Daily Telegraph – The Sports PortraitsRegional/Suburban/Local: Andrew Ritchie, Western Suburbs Weekly – SwimmerPortrait of the Year–National/Metropolitan: Gregg Porteous, The Daily Telegraph – HackettRegional/Suburban/Local: Roy Vandervegt, Messenger Leader – RacketThis year’s Hegarty prize winer is Nigel Tutt of Fairfax NZ.The environment awards went to Nationwide, News Limited, marking the individual contribution of Dr Tony Wilkins. The Health and Safety award went to Fairfax Regional Printing, Dubbo, for a retrofit guarding system, and to Nationwide News for its ‘industrial athlete’ scheme.Technical excellence:Single-width, over 90,000 copies– Apple Daily; 25,000-90,000– Sharp Daily; Up to 25,000– APN Print New Zealand.Double-width, over 90,000– The West Australian; 25,000-90,000– Capital Fine Print and News Ltd Chullora; up to 25,000– Fairfax Printing Ormiston.Preprint or supplements, over 90,000– West Australian Newspapers; 25,000-90,000– Capital Fine Print; up to 25,000– Fairfax Regional Printing, Tamworth.

with 105 newspapers closed in a year and many going online-only, Australia was different to the “deeply conservative” US industry. “They didn’t confront the reality,” he said.

And while US networks had captured online news leadership, newspaper publishers owned seven of the top ten news websites in Australia (with smh.com.au newly moved to the top of the list).

“When you have a big online audience, you’re in the game,” he said.

And in a nod to News Limited, he acknowledged, “They’re the best thing we have going for us – a best practice competitor... and we compete against them effectively”.

Earl Wilkinson – who admitted the US industry had been wrong to take high profits out of the business instead of going for growth – added Australian newspapers to a list of newspapers whose approach to change was leading the world. Contrasting the print culture where 95 per cent of revenue was “already allocated”, he pointed to a “very different” digital culture in which only 50 per cent went on overheads, and 50 per cent on “everything else”... allowing a willingness to fail, and “go on the offensive”.

Other overseas contributors at the forum included ‘Wall Street Journal Asia’ editor-in-chief Almar Latour, Guardian UK data journalist James Bell, and international newspaper designer Mario Garcia, who at 64, now refuses to take on commissions that don’t involve the creativity of tablet as well as print versions. “I don’t have so many more years that I can waste them,” he said.

And there were creative perspectives from Hegarty prizewinner Zac Skulander and Jarod Green, whose company Radical Love produced the cartoon spoof ‘Beached Az’. nngx

REASONS TO BE CONFIDENT... and (reprise) why Australia’s not like the USA

Thought leaders: (from left) Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood; ExplorEngage’s Scott O’Brien with his company’s technology; Joe Talcott leads forum discussion; Andrew Holden of Christchurch’s ‘The Press’ with Mark Hollands; and newspaper designer Mario Garcia


gxpress.net


Having in many cases wrecked their businesses by putting profits before growth, newspapers in the USA need to innovate to save themselves from oblivion.

In Sydney a second year to address the PANPA Future Forum, INMA chief executive Earl Wilkinson spent a few minutes looking at where they had gone wrong, and many more outlining solutions.

From the golden age of the 1980s, newspapers’ popularity with investors had waned as cost-cutting increased to maintain high profit margins. “We told them they needed to go for demonstrable growth, but they mostly chose the other way, with disastrous consequences,” says Wilkinson.

In 2011, he advocates an urgent change, and explained how newspapers around were already implementing it. He told of:• the 50/50 project in which staff on 23,000-circulation Norwegian daily ‘Fredrikstad Blad’ pushed rapid digital growth by resigning and reapplying for print/digital jobs. While print revenues are unchanged, digital now accounts for 20 per cent of revenues.• ‘El Columbian’ In Columbia moved from a ‘no’ culture to an ECOlab initiative in which interdisciplinary teams for projects are shielded from routine. Criteria and specific, measurable and timely, Wilkinson says.• In Norway, Schibsted had established a brand academy which teaches newspaper executives how to build and manage brands.• A transformation project at Postmedia Network in Canada put cross-functional teams on 23 transformation projects covering digital, cultural and brand-orientated areas.

Culture, Wilkinson says, trumps strategy,.And he contrasts cost structures which,

in print see 95 per cent of print labour and overheads are allocated, and only five per cent for ‘everything else’, while digital cultures share overheads 50/50 with an allocation which allows innovation, marketing, research and speed… a willingness to fail and ‘go on the offensive’.

“What we have is too many print people touching digital, and not enough digital people touching print,” he says.

Wilkinson says that innovation doesn’t always go with traditional ownership cultures: In the US, the Journal Register Company reports to banks, the UK’s ‘Guardian’ and Canada’s ‘Toronto Star’ belong to trusts, and Deseret Media is part of the Mormon Church. And he contrasts ‘the Google way’ – speed over perfection; low-cost innovation; and the placing of many small bets as it addresses massive changes in media and technology in the next 18 months – with traditional industry attitudes.

In a targetted strategy, the ‘Toronto Star’ cut 70 newsroom jobs but doubled the number of investigative reporters,

the closure of two other afternoon dailies, its declining 200,000 circulation switch to a 700,000 distribution, and was expected to put the paper in profit by next year.

• A packaged, miniaturised version of the UK ‘Independent’ called ‘i’ sold for 20 per cent of the cost had soared to a circulation of 175,000, beating the sales of

its parent and cannibalising them by 3000-5000.• The Arizona ‘Republic’ had launched a branded business-to-business division;• De Persgroep in Belgium had abandoned traditional advertising formats to go for pricing based on impact and return on investment.• ‘Extra Bladed’ in Denmark had launched a ‘bullseye’ game, selling 96,000 game categories based on newspaper sections and scoring a 30 per cent share of the knowledge games market. Sales rose by ten per cent on each campaign day.• In Singapore, ‘The New Paper’ had partnered with a bar owner to create a branded sports bar for football-crazed youngsters. The no-cost promotion baited subscription campaigns and brought advertiser participation.

outsourced retail and classified advertising sales and prepress to focus on major customers and agencies and increase its marketing spend. With diversification of revenue streams, the expansion of digital communities and new business development, the publisher cut reliance on print advertising from 80 per cent to 40 per cent.

Wilkinson quotes consultant Jim Chisholm that newspapers are losing readers, “not because we don’t write for them, but because we don’t speak to them and we don’t invest in understanding them”.

Gen Y members, for example, “don’t see the value of a print edition”: They prefer screen access and don’t value original content or objectivity highly.

In a world of new business models for newspapers, he cited standouts including:• The ‘Christian Science Monitor’ (USA) which killed its print daily to focus on a web-first policy, launching instead a 75,000-circulation weekly magazine and a paid daily e-newsletter. Web traffic had tripled in the year to 2010, he says.• Conversion of the ‘London Evening Standard’ from paid to free had seen

PANPA RETROSPECTgxpress.net


Good wraps, bad raps… How News learned to stop worrying and love poly (for now, at least)N ewspapers rolled in cling plastic suffer

a bad rap… but what’s to be done about them in this environmentally supersensitive age?

Bowled backstroke or boomerang-like – often by a ‘one-handed’ car driver negotiating twisting residential roads with what seems excessive confidence – it’s little wonder.

If it misses a passerby, chances are the paper pellet terminates its trajectory under a bush… out of sight if not out of mind. In hilly Avoca Beach, NSW, I found ‘hunt the newspaper’ became a regular pastime. Often we caught up with the latest news on a garden working-bee, some weeks later.

Other issues have concentrated the minds of publisher – among them that CDs and videos don’t roll well – and led to a search for a better way.

As you’ll be aware, the outcome is flatwrapping… but the surprise, is that more plastic is the way to go. News Limited environmental manager Tony Wilkins tackled the topic during a closing afternoon at PANPA’s Future Forum in August, placing the decision to use polyethylene in the context of Australian newspapers’ environmental initiatives on ink constituents, water conservation, world-leading newspaper recycling and most-recently, emissions control.

“Plastic wrapping is going to be controversial from the inception,” he says.

Readers at News’ Adelaide outpost, Advertiser Newspapers are used to being brought into the discussion, and in 2009, responded enthusiastically to a trial of flatwrapping: they liked the way the paper was easy to find, in better condition and easier to unwrap than a rolled paper.

Almost 80 per cent found it improved their enjoyment of the newspaper.

Four years before, they’d been standout supporters of having their suburban papers delivered in plastic bags, while those in other cities (although in favour) were more ambivalent about the idea. And Wilkins says that while the use of biodegradable corn-starch bags brought a more consistently positive response in other capitals, its

Canberra’s paper’s in the bag, readers raptC irculation staff at the

‘Canberra Times’ are old hands at the business of home delivery, having

launched discounted direct subscriptions in 1993 when the paper – now part of Fairfax Media – was owned by WA businessman Kerry Stokes.

Then, self-employed contractors delivered about 2800 copies of the federal capital daily, with ‘on the lawn’ delivery guaranteed by 6 am. Twenty casual staff rolled papers in the same way as newsagents until 3000cph Ferag Rollflat machines were trialled and then installed online to bring a 75 per cent saving in staff numbers.

Printing and distribution project manager Barrie Murphy says problems arose as papers became thicker and heavier, with some Saturday editions exceeding 400 pages. “We eventually needed an alternative, as commercial inserts got heavier and the Rollflats had difficulty folding them,” he says.

Investigations into online bagging led to the installation of a customised CMC bagging line in 2007.

Murphy says that, unlike rolls or Rollflats, light unfolded newspapers in bags are “almost impossible” to throw from a moving car. A fold unit in the

CMC system allowed paginations under 64 pages broadsheet to be folded in half, and drivers learned to handle and throw papers differently.

“Bags can puncture on landing, leaving small holes through which water can penetrate… and bagged paper absorbs water like a sponge,” Murphy says. A solution has been to use heavier 35 um film on wet days… and encourage drivers to slow down. Complaints have fallen, leading to an average 35 redeliveries from 20,000 delivered copies.

Murphy says the technology is quicker than any other available, and allows CDs or other material to be onserted for targetted subscribers. Reader response has

been “very positive” – with little or no reaction about the environment – and with throughput now running at 240,000 copies a week, the possibility of inkjetting extra advertising onto the bags is being investigated.

“The drivers now prefer bags, and we’re even wrapping papers for some newsagents,” Murphy says. “We put a lot of resources into gathering news, take pride in technical production of the highest quality, and we all want more subscriptions… so why don’t we all put more effort into delivering our paper in a way that adds value?” nngx

With direct delivery experience extending back to 1993, the Canberra Times has found a flat-wrap solution which adds value and keeps everyone happy

“different physical properties” and much higher cost made its widespread use unrealistic.

“Right now, I believe polyethylene is the best option,” he says.

Wilkins also cautions on the use of ‘biodegradable’ plastics, following ACC action against a bag maker

whose product contained heavy metal and did not biodegrade, disintegrate or compost in accordance with Australian standards. “Biodegradable or recyclable claims must be substantiated and must not mislead consumers,” he says.Peter Coleman nngx

Drivers had to learn to throw newspapers differently

On your lawn… guaranteed

The CMC bagging system installed by Mailpack

wilkinson enCourages a fresh look aT what readers and advertisers expect from newspaper publishers.

In Australia, News Limited ethnographic research had found that while there was no decline in demand for news, print had become less relevant in routines, and a shift in platform preference had taken place.

Newspaper represented a brand promise, and asked what they were doing while browsing the web or an app, participants answered ‘reading the newspaper’.

Wilkinson observed that INMA had changed its name from ‘newspaper marketing’ to ‘news media’… “maybe that was a mistake,” he said.

on soCial media, wilkinson urges publishers to “find your device” and figure out how it is social. “Social media is about relationships with devices secondary;” he says. “It can’t be ‘set and forget’... there has to be a perceived personal touch, and content should be shared equally between insights, conversation and general announcements.”

Wilkinson says explosive growth is expected in smartphones and tablets in the next three years: “Individually, the two trends are big; combined, they’re transformative”.

One market leader is the ‘Chicago Tribune’, which is training 1000 employees to use Twitter effectively.

wilkinson says sales inTegraTion “musT happen”, with a move to providing solutions and responses, moving advertiser conversations beyond rates and discounts. Publishers need to deliver target-rich environments with high-engagement content; relevant data and actionable audiences.

Additionally, publishers can provide value-added services for small and medium business advertisers… build website and apps, provide QR codes, social media and mobile sites.

And again, he provided examples: The 1100 Broadway agency of ‘The Tennessean’; mobile sites and promotions for dealer advertisers of Freedom’s ‘Orange County Register’ and ‘Victorville Daily Press’; Facebook pages for a customer of Press Enterprise, all in the USA.

Newspapers have moved from being a destination purchase to highly discretionary, and publishers need to recreate demand for their products. A focus on what they sell needs to turn from content to ‘convenience and delight’; from news, but ways of helping improve people’s lives. “We need to transport hearts and minds to a world of discovery,” he says.• This is an edited version of a presentation to the PANPA Future Forum in Sydney in August. nngx

CHANGETHE CULTURE

INMA chief executive Earl Wilkinson says publishers need to change attitudes to improve their fortunes, writes Peter Coleman

An alternative to paywalls is in the form of clubs and communities, INMA chief executive Earl Wilkinson.

The UK’s ‘Daily Mirror’ scored two million uniques monthly from an English Premier League football community, drawing revenue from ‘fantasy football’, book and memorabilia sales.

‘Aftonbladet’ in Sweden had launched the first and best weight-loss club, scoring a 50 per cent profit margin from subscriptions of more than 200,000 members. A social media site launched by Belgium’s Mediahouse Limburg turned its attention to small and medium businesses.

While the iPad isn’t the game-changer it’s made out to be, it delivers speciic characteristics.

Research by the ‘New Zealand Herald’ showed three times as many pages were viewed per session on an iPad than other mobile platforms, 50 per cent more than for the website. And the clickthrough rate was between four and ten times as high as online.

Australia’s ‘world-leading’ ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ had focussed on paid apps for dating, dining out, parenting and news, Wilkinson says.

“The iPad fits in as a second screen at home, a niche device in transit, and as a lean-back, immersive experience,” he says.


gxpress.net


Papermakers struggleThe world’s newsprint and paper

giants are struggling to come to terms with reduced demand as a result of changed reading habits

and a global downturn.Norske Skog and UPM have both

announced they will close paper mills and have taken a range of other measures.

After having its credit rating downrated by international agency Standard & Poors, Norske Skog reported a better quarter, crediting the improvement to price increases in Australia and higher sales volumes.

Gross operating earnings were NOK 469 million in the third quarter, the improvement over the second quarter due to lower costs, higher volumes and better prices. The company says cash flow from operations also improved markedly, and net interest-bearing debt was reduced.

President and chief executive Sven Ombudstvedt says the result shows a positive change after a rough period: “Even so, we remain committed to doing everything possible to turn Norske Skog into a company showing satisfactorily profitability.

“It is still necessary to align our European production capacity with future demand,” he says.

The net loss was NOK 1,841 million, compared to a loss of NOK 280 million in the second quarter of 2011 and a loss of NOK 244 million in the third quarter of 2010, and the company says net interest-bearing debt was reduced from NOK 8.4 billion to NOK 8.1 billion during the quarter.

The positive results in Australasia were set against weak ones in South America. A third quarter decline compared with the same period last year was mainly due to a positive one-off item at Norske Skog Boyer last year.

The NS board has decided to shut Follum mill – its smallest in Norway – by the end of March. “Small mills are expensive to operate, and Norske Skog has phased out a number of small mills in Norway and overseas over the past five years,” he says.

Ombudstvedt says that Norske Skog “has lost billions… and if we do not act now, the entire group and all the jobs will be at risk”.

The company is also talking to work councils about a deal to sell its Parenco

mill and Reparco Group recovered paper business in the Netherlands.

At UPM, the Myllykoski paper mill with job cuts affecting almost 400 people. Permanent closure by the end of this year follows attempts to negotiate continuation of operations with employees. Overlapping operations in paper sales, the supply chain and its functions in Finland will also be cut.

Paper business group president Jyrki Ovaska says the Myllykoski mill had been making a loss for several years despite numerous measures: “The mill’s cost competitiveness is weak – the high costs of raw materials and energy have further increased total costs and permanently damaged the mill’s opportunities to reach a profitable level,” he says.

As part of a ‘job to job’ programme, 1.5 million Euros will be invested in training, and those losing their jobs will be encouraged to become entrepreneurs and offered a business start-up allowance.

The company has also announced it will close a paper machine at its Ettringen mill in mid December, and restructure ‘overlapping’ operations in the Ettringen, Plattling and Hürth mills in Germany. nngx

INDUSTRY

34 gxpress.net August 2011

NEWSPAPER HISTORYgxpress.net


rodk

irkp

atrick

It was almost a throwaway line. “The geographic barriers that you enjoy today are going to be broken down,” Brian McCarthy warned country newspaper proprietors when they gathered in

November last year to celebrate the centenary of the Victorian Country Press Association.

McCarthy, managing director of Rural Press Ltd, 1994-2007, and chief executive officer of Fairfax Media, 2008-10, was thinking particularly of the rollout of the National Broadband Network. In fact, however, the “geographic barriers” have been gradually breaking down over the past 40 years.

The erosion began when Australia’s regional daily newspapers spent many millions of dollars during a dozen years or so from 1968 (Burnie was the first), converting from letterpress printing and hot-metal composition to web-offset printing and computerised typesetting.

The cost of the new equipment and the significantly better production results meant that each daily generally became the site of a centralised printery that churned out its own paper as well those smaller papers formerly printed on antiquated letter presses in surrounding towns. It was the snapping of a geographic link between the towns, such as Taree, Chinchilla, Horsham, Home Hill and Port Augusta, and where their papers were printed, who printed them and who set the copy deadlines.

And now in the second decade of the 21st century, the geographic barriers have become significantly weaker, even without taking into account the ubiquitous internet. Few regional dailies are printed on their own press and so the non-dailies they formerly printed have often been transferred to an even more distant printing location.

More than four decades of the “centralised printing” revolution continue to produce bottom-line dividends for companies but, often, personal sadness and bewilderment for individual printers in country centres.

Nobody put it better than R.A. Moncrieff, a Toowoomba ‘Chronicle’ printer who, after nearly 50 years in the printing trade, warned in 1980 that although the wind of change had often swept through the newspaper world, this time it was different. “This time it is freighted with the seeds of destruction – of the precious craft pride and the bright sweetness of the spirit that sustains it.”

Graham Gardiner was told he had “a job for life” when he started a five-year printing apprenticeship at Bundaberg’s ‘News-Mail’ in 1963 with 34 production-room colleagues, one of whom was his father, Noel. Noel Gardiner enjoyed “a job for life” there, 1936-84, as had Noel’s own father, Jack, 1908-56. When Graham Gardiner retired in November 2007, there were only five production room employees and he reflected that many of his colleagues had not had “a job for life”.

Brian (‘Bud’) Cash and Bruce Devlin both had jobs for life at the ‘Daily Mercury’, Mackay,

although Cash did spend four years at the ‘Coonabarabran Times’ and in Sydney early in his career. But the trade they entered in 1952-53 changed dramatically over the years as the technology made obsolete the old skills. “It took a lot of the artistry out of the job,” Cash said. He felt like he was losing his job, as “they gradually took this off you and that off you”. By the time they finished in 1996, Cash and Devlin did not enjoy their jobs.

Many printers have either changed careers or changed their town of residence as APN has closed newspaper presses progressively over the past 13 years: Maryborough (May, 1998), Warwick (October, 2001), Ipswich (November, 2006), and in recent months, Bundaberg (August 20), and Mackay (September 10). Lismore was replaced by Ballina in August 2008.

APN, which publishes ten Queensland dailies, now produces them from only three print sites: Yandina, Toowoomba and Rockhampton. Yandina produces the Sunshine Coast, Gympie, Bundaberg and Fraser Coast dailies, as well as the Saturday edition of the Ipswich paper; Toowoomba produces the Toowoomba and Warwick dailies and the weekday issues of the Ipswich paper; and Rockhampton produces the Rockhampton, Gladstone and Mackay dailies. In NSW, APN prints its four northern rivers dailies – Coffs Harbour*, Grafton, Lismore and the Tweed* – at Ballina.

Outside of Sydney and Melbourne, Fairfax

unit, Centro, at Maroochydore. Each daily has its own Centro design sub and text sub; they are centralised ‘localists’. They belong to a ‘pod’ under the guidance of a chief sub. Each pod is responsible for two dailies. Each daily retains its own locally based editor who is entirely responsible for local content.

When the Bundaberg and Mackay print centres closed in August and September, most of the 40 printers suddenly found they did not have “a job for life”, well, certainly not in their own city. Fifteen had the opportunity of transferring to another APN site, but only five (four from Mackay and one from Bundaberg) did so.

The two dailies – Bundaberg’s ‘NewsMail’ and Mackay’s ‘Daily Mercury’ – both announced in May that the print centres would close. When the presses stopped rolling in Bundaberg, the ‘NewsMail’ devoted five pages to the “end of a long era”.

The pages of the ‘Daily Mercury’, however, were silent when the Mackay press stopped. Your columnist, armed with camera and notebook, joined the printers on the final night. We shared pizza and soft drink before the Goss Community press, with four reel stands armed, began “thundering out” the final section of the 96-page Saturday edition.

Adrian Holzwart, the print manager, was at the end of 25 years with APN (and its predecessor, PNQ). He had become an apprentice printer at the ‘Central Queensland News’, Emerald, in 1986, choosing to move to Mackay in 1989 when APN closed the Emerald print site. This time, because of family arrangements, he would not move, even though “printing has been my passion”.

Three pre-press employees – Bob Ward, Richard McGuire and Peter Molloy – with a total of 139 years’ experience took redundancy packages. Molloy, production manager for 11 years, had joined the ‘Mercury’ in November 1966 as an apprentice hand and machine compositor.

He recalls separate investigations being made in 2003 and 2007 of the possibility of shifting the printing to Rockhampton, with both giving their thumbs down to the idea. The copy deadline for the ‘Mercury’ is now 7pm because the paper has to be on the press in Rockhampton by 8pm. “The ‘Mercury’ is just another product there,” Molloy says. “They have to print Emerald, Biloela, Gladstone and Rockhampton, too.”

Now there is no Friday night sport in Saturday’s ‘Mercury’ and there are no mid-week Lotto results in the next morning’s paper. You have to visit the paper’s website for that.* As this issue was being prepared, APN announced that it would turn its ‘Tweed Daily News’ into a Saturday weekly and the ‘Coffs Coast Advocate’ into a biweekly free, supplementing them with improved digital sites.• You can contact Rod Kirkpatrick at email [email protected] nngx

Media operates only 13 print sites across Australia: Beresfield, Dubbo, North Richmond, Tamworth, (NSW); Canberra (ACT); Ballarat, Albury/Wodonga (Vic); Ormiston, Mount Isa (Qld); Murray Bridge (SA); Launceston, Burnie (Tas); and Mandurah (WA).

In some instances, the emotional connection between a town and its newspaper has been further weakened, some would argue, by the establishment of centralised subbing units, where the sub-editing of stories and the designing of pages have been removed from the local paper to a central location.

Yet, Max Tomlinson, when he was general manager of North Queensland Newspapers (1998-2003), abolished the sub hub in Townsville and shifted the subbing back to papers such as the ‘Northern Miner’, Charters Towers. Tomlinson wanted editors to be “breathing the same air as the townspeople they served”.

He had to battle to convince News Limited’s board to approve the change. He argued that distance and distinctive communities in north Queensland meant that small-town papers needed their own editor. “I’ve seen examples where the subs in head office have actually over-ruled the wishes of the locally based editor because ‘we know best’,” he said.

APN has gone a long way to combatting such criticisms with its centralised subbing

HOW LOCAL IS LOCAL?How ‘centralised printing’ has forced change and an effective end to the notion of ‘a job for life’

End of the line: Staff see the final edition of the ‘Mercury’ produced in Mackay, and pause to mark the end of an era

If their presses aren’t underwater, paper supplies or delivery routes are –

Bangkok’s daily newspapers have been doing it tough in the ongoing flood crisis.

The ‘Nation’ website, www.nationmultimedia.com reported that transportation problems were leading to slimmer or cancelled editions with some publishers in the city forced to move trucks to higher ground.

GXpress understands that while the ‘Daily News’ print site is operational, supplies of press consumables had become a problem. Others, like

‘Thairath Daily’ – which has a large circulation in the north of Thailand – was having difficulty getting trucks out.

Nation says the crisis in Bangkok forced publishers to cut down editions and move vehicles to higher ground. The newspaper itself had slimmed down editions and made a free PDF version available for subscribers. The ‘Bangkok Post’ also announced more reduced-size editions, while the daily ‘Naew Na Daily’, based on Vibhavadi Road, was reported to have suspended some printed editions in favour of an online version.

While ‘Daily News’ moved vehicles to higher ground, it is reported to be making sure every subscriber gets a printed copy every day, according to a source quoted by Nation.

Both it and ‘Matichon’ – which has offices in the Chatuchak district – were said to be exploring alternative printing facilities. A variety of initiatives are in place to help staff affected by the flooding: Daily News was reported to have been using its trucks to give lifts to employees “until it became impossible”, while some publishers are providing shelter, food and cash aid.

Nation said it was providing shelter at its headquarters on Bang NaTrat and Bt10,000 in assistance to staff members whose homes are flooded, while Matichon was also providing shelter to its evacuees and planning cash aid.

Quoting an editorial source, it said about 200 staff members and their families have moved into the Daily News office and are provided with four meals every day.

“If you visit, you will see an active atmosphere day and night. It has become our home, and everybody is doing their best,” the source said. nngx

Bangkok publishers rally to help staff, readers


Class act a winner for catalogue printers

gxpress.net


36 gxpress.net August 2011

INDUSTRYgxpress.net


German press maker KBA says that while it has taken 15 per cent more orders in the first nine months of 2011 than it did in the same period last year, shipping delays and the cost of capacity cuts led it to a 32.5 million Euros net loss.

While demand is robust in niche markets such as security printing, metal decorating and industrial coding – up by 26 per cent in a division which also includes web presses – sheetfed is flat at 2.2 per cent. With domestic sales up 28 per cent, exports fell, although the Asia-Pacific’s share of group sales stayed high at 26.7 per cent, the company said.

New president Claus Bolza-Schünemann says KBA will be the “absolute exception” in the press engineering sector if it scores a targetted pre-tax profit for the third year in succession.

• KBA had a new website ready for IfraExpo. Page structure has been simplified and functions improved to make searching for specific information easier and faster. Videos have been integrated in product pages, a mouseover glossary of print-related terms provided, and download and contact details expanded.

Press controls and plate register and management specialists EAE and Nela have signed an agreement to market each other’s colour control systems for offset presses.

The deal will see close cooperation to market and distribute Nela’s OPRC colour register and cut-off control systems and EAE’s closed-loop colour density control system. An announcement by sales directors Guido Eckenwalder (Nela) and Oemer Senguen (EAE) says the ‘quality alliance’ will enable both parties to offer the coordinated product of the two technology leaders, “especially as customer demands for these systems goes hand in hand”.

Both believe they can achieve higher market penetration from sharing existing distribution channels.

Platesetter maker Dainippon Screen is set to triple production with the opening of its second CTP manufacturing plant in China (right). Screen Australia managing director Akira Hayakawa who attended the October opening, says demand

Democratic spirit encourages Burma’s would-be publishersRelaxed media laws in Burma

(Myanmar) are bringing the prospect of new publications and

even a national award competition. The government has promised new media laws, with the president praising the ‘fourth pillar’ of democracy and ministers regularly calling press conferences.

Among new journals preparing to enter the market is the ‘Express Times’, published by Winner Computer Group, which launched in October, while IGE-backed business title ‘Myanmar Wall Street’ has also assembled its editorial team.

In the ‘Myanmar Times’, media trainer U Ye Naing Moe says news

journals’ launch highlighted other weaknesses in the industry: “There are many new journals and it’s likely more will come out, but there are simply not enough readers to support the large number of publications.

“People can’t spend much to get information and the media market hasn’t grown large yet,” he says.

The paper quotes U Thiha Saw, editor-in-chief of monthly business magazine ‘Myanma Dana’, saying the media industry faced a shortage of human resources in not only editorial departments but also management: “It will be more noticeable when the government permits private companies to publish daily newspapers.”

continues to rise, especially in the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. “We are also seeing signs of renewed demand in developed economies as printers seek to become more efficient in the plate room by producing plates faster and using less electricity and chemistry,” he says.

Kyoto-headquartered prepress and digital printing giant Screen entered manufacturing in China with a first CTP plant in 2003.

Three new ISO standards – for proofing, measurement methods and validation printing with digital devices – have been approved as new Australian Standards for the graphic technology industry. They will AS ISO 12647-2, the industry’s only current Australian ISO standard.

Standards Australia’s Jason Lazar says the quality of submissions was very high and the amount of stakeholder support pleasing. Australian TC 130 chairman Luke Wooldridge says “they were a long time coming but the committee has always aimed to introduce more standards to the Australian industry. These are part of the 12647 group and are designed to

be implemented with each other in order to achieve optimal print quality.”

ISO 12647-8 covering validation print processes working directly from digital data, will only be eligible to become an Australian standard once it has been accepted at international level.

Heidelberg chairman Bernhard Schreier has taken over the chairmanship of DRUPA’s exhibitors’ advisory board from Martin Weickenmeier. The managing director of Kîrber PaperLink, Weickenmeier resigned following strategic reorientation of the company’s paper segment. He had been the head of the executive committee of DRUPA since the 2008 fair.

Schreier (57) says he is delighted to accept the role. “DRUPA 2012 is a really crucial initiator for the print media industry, and I will contribute significantly to the successful planning and organisation of it,” he says.

Sustainability will be the theme of a Media Mundo industry initiative at DRUPA next May. About 200 m2 of exhibition space is being given over to visitor information, live discussions and

presentations from experts and industry players.

Lectures will be streamed live online with facilities for interactive participation via Chat and Twitter. Themes include sustainable forestry and paper, energy efficiency and climatic change, recycling and material efficiency, process optimisation and sustainable corporate management, sustainable product design, and print as a social medium.

Current trends and highlights will also be documented by the Media Mundo congress on sustainable media production in Düsseldorf from March 20-21.

APN has switched two of its New Zealand dailies to tabloid, signalling what may be a trend away from the country’s broadsheet paid-sale culture. The ‘Oamaru Mail’ and ‘Wairapa Times-Age’ made the change this month, joining the ‘Gisborne Herald’, previously the only daily tabloid. The Friday edition of the ‘Mail’ will remain a broadsheet.

It continues to be printed by the independent Ashburton Guardian, while the ‘Times-Age’ is moving from APN Hastings print site to the presses of the ‘Wanganui Chronicle’.

Dutch OEM and digital printing equipment manufacturer Punch Graphix is changing its name to Xeikon – its digital brand – after seeing sales for the third quarter of this year fall by a fifth on last year.

While digital equipment sales went down 5.5 per cent, the big drop was in prepress solutions where sales were down 44 per cent as a result of the effect of increased competition on margins and as a result of economic developments.

The company says the sales decrease is entirely in Europe, while America rose by 12.8 per cent and Asian sales were steady.

Fujifilm has raised its environmental profile sky-high with the completion of wind turbine power generation at its Tilburg plate manufacturing site (left). Five turbines installed at the site in partnership with Eneco are now fully operational.

They will generate about a fifth of the total energy used on the 63 hectare site, as part of meeting target to become carbon neutral. The company has also installed water recycling and other sustainability measures. nngx

H eatset web printers in Australia and New Zealand shared honours

in this year’s Australian Catalogue Awards, with IPMG group members Offset Alpine and Hannanprint taking the top prizes.

The awards were presented at a gala event in Melbourne.

The David Jones ‘Brand Book Summer 2010’ (right) won Catalogue of the Year in the up to 1.5 million category, printed by Offset Alpine Printing from prepress by Quay Digital, while the over 1.5 million copies category went to the Freedom ‘Autumn Collection’ catalogue, printed by Hannanprint.Other category winners were:Major retailers:Chain Stores General – 250,000 to 1.5 million catalogues: Myer – ‘Melbourne Revealed’ (Hannanprint Victoria).Over 1.5 million catalogues: Freedom ‘Autumn Collection’(Hannanprint).Special Event or Theme – 250,000 to 1.5 million: SYD Tax and Duty Free ‘Christmas’ (Offset Alpine Printing).Special Event or Theme – Over 1.5 million catalogues: Freedom ‘Autumn’ (Hannanprint).Supermarkets, Liquor and/or Produce – Over 250,000 catalogues: Woolworths ‘Autumn Fresh Food Sale’ (PMP Limited).Campaign Series – Over 250,000 catalogues: Adairs Seasons Series (Franklin Web).High Volume Fashion winners:Adult Apparel – 250,000 to 1.5 million catalogues: David Jones ‘Brand Book Summer 2010’ (Offset Alpine Printing).Over 1.5 million catalogues: Myer ‘MyStyle Discover Summer 10/11’ (IPMG).General Apparel – Over 250,000 catalogues: Target ‘20% off tops and pants for the whole family’ (Franklin Web).Fashion Accessories & Personal – Over 250,000 catalogues: Betts ‘Autumn Winter Twenty Eleven’ (PMP Limited).Home Interiors – 250,000 to 1.5 million catalogues: David Jones ‘Home Book Winter 2011’ (Offset Alpine Printing).Over 1.5 million catalogues: Freedom ‘Where we live, Spring Twenty-Ten’ (Hannanprint).Home Repairs & Outdoors – Over 250,000 copies: Hitachi ‘Petrol Garden Tools Range’ (Offset Alpine Printing).Furniture, Bedding, Manchester – Over 250,000 catalogues: Freedom ‘Autumn Collection’ (Hannanprint).

Letterbox categories:Whitegoods & Home Entertainment – Over 250,000 catalogues: Winning Appliances ‘Kitchen Solutions’ (AIW Printing).Electronics and/or Office Supplies – Over 250,000 catalogues: Harvey Norman NZ ‘Now Showing’ (PMP Limited NZ).Hardware – Over 250,000 catalogues: Home Timber and Hardware ‘The Big One’ (Franklin Web).Children’s Toys – Over 250,000 catalogues: Big W ‘Toy Spectacular’ (PMP Limited).Automotive Parts & Accessories – Over 250,000 catalogues: Bob Jane T-Marts ‘Big Brands, Big Value’ (Franklin Web).Specialty Retailers & Marketers Categories:Shopping Centres – Up to 250,000 catalogues: Castle Towers ‘Indulge This Winter’ (Webstar).Fashion Apparel – Up to 250,000 catalogues: R.M.Williams ‘Autumn/Winter 2011’ (Offset Alpine Printing). Fashion Accessories & Personal – Up to 250,000 catalogues: Estee Lauder ‘Re-Nutriv Heritage’ (Offset Alpine Printing).Liquor & Specialty Food Retailers – Up to 250,000 catalogues: Camperdown Cellars ‘Winter 11’ (Newstyle Printing).Real Estate – Up to 250,000 catalogues: ‘Tip Top’ (Place to Print).Vehicles & Transportation – Up to 250,000 catalogues: Mazda Australia ‘Mazda2’ (Lithocraft).Leisure Activities – Up to 250,000 catalogues: Paddy Pallin ‘Winter Handbook 2011’ (Offset Alpine Printing).Travel & Tourism – Up to 250,000 catalogues: Perisher Ski Resort ‘Perisher Snow Holidays’ (Who Printing & Presentations).Education and the Arts – Up to 250,000 catalogues: ‘Keune Academy 2011’ (Craft Inprint).Campaign Series – Up to 250,000 catalogues: ‘Laminex’ (Lithocraft).Environment & Sustainability: Paddy Pallin ‘Winter Handbook 2011’ (Offset Alpine Printing).• Full list of winners and credits at www.catalogue.asn.au

Newspaper printers in Victoria missed a chance for kudos when the state’s Printing Industry Craftsmanship Awards went by without a coldset web entry. The category was one of four in which there were either no winners or no entries.

Heatset printers however, got involved in their two categories, with two majors sharing the honours.

In heatset web-offset, Hannanprint took all the available prizes – gold in for ‘Racing Mode August 2011’ for Fairfax (printed on Sappi’s 74 gsm Somerset Gloss PEFC), silver for ‘Habitat Magazine Vol 39/4’ (Burgo Mill’s Respecta 100 gsm Matt), and bronze medals for two Fairfax products, ‘Good Weekend’ (Norstar 74 55 gsm) and the ‘Melbourne Recital Centre Autumn 2011’ (Galerie Fine Gloss 100gsm).

Andrew Gaspar from Hannanprint is pictured receiving the award from Marvel Bookbinding’s Wayne Eastaugh

It was the same story in the category for web-offset publications with a cover price, but this time the luck was with PMP Print.

It won gold for ‘Belle Dec/Jan’ (ACP Magazines), printed on 80 gsm Alma from Cellmark; silver for both ‘Marie Claire June 2011’ (Pacific Magazines), printed on Sappi’s 74 gsm Somerset gloss, and ‘Shop till You Drop – September 2011’ (ACP), printed on UPM Kymmene’s 80 gsm Finesse Classic.

PMP Print’s Jo Davidson collects the award from Wayne Eastaugh

Bronze medals also went to PMP Print for the August issue of ‘Shop Till You Drop’, and for ‘Good Food – May 11’ (ACP), printed on Sappi’s 74 gsm Somerset Gloss.

Newspaper and web-offset printers scored highly in the NSW Printing Industry Craftsmanship Awards, presented last month. And not only for their printing.

In the category for education and training initiatives (medium to large business), Offset Alpine Printing took gold, and PMP Limited Moorebank bronze. The same PMP site also won the gold award for environmental initiatives.

Fairfax Media’s FRP Dubbo site won gold for occupational health and safety initiatives in its small business category, with Offset Alpine Printing taking gold and PMP Moorebank bronze in medium to large business category.In the print categories, Offset Alpine won a total of 21 awards, nine of them gold.They won silver for one, two and three colour printing (Marcs Icon Catalogue), both gold in leaflets (for Country Road – Modern Australian Style Preview Spring 2011) and silver (for Seafolly Summer 2011 Kids Insert).In booklets, catalogues and magazines saddle-stitched, Offset Alpine took gold (for David Lawrence Spring 2011) and bronze (for Estee Lauder Re-Nutriv). In the booklets, other than saddle-stitched category, it took one of two golds awarded (for David Jones Winter Brand Book 2011), while Blue Star took silver for The Summer Cooking Book.A batch of six postcards for Seafolly added another gold for Offset Alpine, and the company took gold (Avon Christmas 2011) and silver (for

its own Capabilities promotional leaflet) for impact, sensory and direct mail.Web offset printing awards went to: Heatset, gold– Offset Alpine (David Jones Winter Brand Book 2011, and RM Williams Spring/Summer 2012); silver– Hannanprint NSW (Myer My Style), and Offset Alpine (Country Road Christmas 2010); bronze– Offset Alpine (Country Road Summer 2010), and PMP Moorebank (Harvey Norman – Mothers Day).Web offset printing, coldset, bronze– Rural Press Printing (Hawkesbury Gazette).Web offset publications with a cover price, gold (three awards)– Offset Alpine Printing (for Selector Spring 2011, Bride to Be Flowers Annual, and Best of Outback Tracks); silver– Hannanprint NSW (two awards, for Delicious Magazine August 2011 and Masterchef Magazine Issue 09), and Offset Alpine (for Just Be Magazine Issue 2 ); bronze– Offset Alpine (for Donna Hay Magazine 58), and PMP Moorebank (for Diabetic Living, and New Weekly 38).Offset Alpine’s Capabilities booklet also won bronze in the self-promotion and innovation categories.

PMPˇPrint won gold in the web fed newspaper inserts and direct mail categories of the Western Australia PICA competition, announced in late August. Gold for coldset web inserts went to Colourpress. In other categories, Scott Print and Geon WA cleaned up with about 25 awards apiece.

Cadillac Printing cleaned up its category in the South Australia and NT PICA awards. The company won gold for Frewville Foodland, silver for Clipsal 500 Calendar, and bronze for Living in Style. There was no coldset category.

Roger Baynes of Cadillac Printing is pictured receiving the award from Ian Johns, managing director of DIC Australia.

PICA successes... but you have to enter


month saw the departure of John Brehmer Fairfax from the Fairfax Media share register, ‘Sloop John B.’ slinging his hook, so to speak.

Fairfax sold out of the business which still bears the family name overnight on November 10 and as expected, son Nicholas has since resigned from the board.

The patriarch of a once-proud dynasty must rue the day he sold his successful Rural Press business – itself rescued from the pickings of young Warwick’s foray – as the savage loss is crystallised.

Sold for an estimated $193 million, the shares were among those acquired as part of a merger deal which furnished $114 million in cash and about 216 million Fairfax shares, then worth $4.72 apiece.

in Common wiTh oThers, GXpress has been Trying to get a handle on what kind of organisation News Limited is going to be, not that it’s headed by someone who is less news than entertainment.

Accordingly, we’re grateful to Nick Leys, media diarist at ‘The Australian’ for the story of how Kim Williams came into the Holt Street headquarters to meet editors – and got stuck in the lift.

“Every few minutes, someone checked on him via the intercom, and Diary understands that his language and tone indicated he might not always be the urbane type we imagined,” he writes.

a blasT from my pasT, The kenT messenger group – to which I sold my family’s newspapers before heading here in 1987 – was in the news in a couple of scores while I was in Vienna for Ifra... and both send a message that it may be better to own nothing.

The UK regional publisher has become the first user of DTI’s cloud-based SaaS publishing systems service, a move which follows them having to scrap their highly-customised Goss Visa/Colorliner press after outsourcing printing to Trinity Mirror.

Latest news is that the UK competition watchdog has stamped on their plans to buy two newspapers in the area, one of which was a local competitor of mine in past days. Now the current owner, Northcliffe is likely to shut the titles... which will also be a lower-cost option for KM than buying them.

DTI’s David Page – who once worked for the Canterbury ‘Kentish Gazette’, now also a KM title – and I are watching developments with interest! nngxne

wsw

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On saving manroland, print quality and readability, changes on the News and Fairfax boards, and back in the ‘old Dart’, as Peter Coleman wraps it up

T housands of words have been written about the problems at manroland– and that’s even before the company sought insolvency protection in a German court.

It’s sad, but it is not the end, any more that it was when then US-headquartered Goss went into Chapter 11.

And what is saddest is that for whatever reason, manroland took so long to put its house in order that someone else will now do it instead.

In Australia, manroland presses are at the pinnacle of print production for all three newspaper groups, and prominent in South East Asia and in the inventories of commercial web printers. So successful has the two-year-old ANZ subsidiary been that chairman Gerd Finkbeiner

clearly with other things on his mind – singled out its “really outstanding” performance for special praise.

One customer – who is behind the ‘Save manroland’ campaign, but prefers to remain anonymous – is still in awe of performance and points to the bucketloads of money, the pressmaker’s customers have made from their acquisitions. “Help by paying your bills, ordering parts, writing to board members... or better still, order a new press,” he urges.

But despite the worldwide success in web presses, other areas have been a drag.

It’s worth recording the extent to which manroland has been a champion of print self-interest maybe, but a cause few others have put as much into. If they hadn’t cancelled it (and if we hadn’t got our November issue out sooner) this is the message they would have trumpeted.

whiCh prompTs me To menTion The reacquaintance I have been making with old friends: Box upon box of books, stored before the renovation before last have found a home on new shelving, installed now that not only the builders, but also the last house guests from the wedding of the elder of my two daughters last month, have left.

A copy of Peter Carey’s ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ – which I also have out of the library at the moment – is among them, and Carey’s Miss Leplastrier is correct... there is in travelling north, “a problem with mould”.

Most noticeable, however, is the degree to which book production has improved; the 290-page Vantage edition the library bought a couple of years ago infinitely easier to read than the 512-page one published in 1988.

Encouraging therefore that we have learned something over the years about the basics of what reading a printed page is all about. And

interesting that among the clearest of all the many tomes was a rebound volume in French, ‘Tartarin sur Les Alpes’ published in Paris in 1888, and passed on and inscribed by a relative of my wife’s in 1906.

so whaT was ThaT brown funk ‘The AusTrAliAn’ got itself into a few weeks back all about?

Yes, ‘gold’ is what the publicists called it, marking the launch of the paper’s online premium content – though it could equally have been something to do with the teaser ads for American Express which started on the front page and led inside. Or the death of Joe Frazier, perhaps?

No need to be picky and point out that you can’t print gold with CMYK. Let’s just say the heavy tint did nothing to enhance readability.

Time as well to give credit where it’s due: A few weeks back I wrote online that it was depressing that – barring technology improvements in consumables – printing of the local metro daily ‘Courier-Mail’ was unlikely to get better. By which I meant the was precious little hope of new kit solely to lift print quality in a market in which Murdoch titles have a monopoly.

Well it has. Colour pictures particularly are noticeably improved, at least on some webs from the Murrarie presses, so congratulations to those concerned.

The best quality here is still free, however. My hinterland local, APN’s ‘Noosa News’ is both superbly printed on improved newsprint – down the road from me at Yandina – and considerately stitched to ensure flyaway pages are not a problem in this beautiful part of the world.Talking of fairfax... alas poor John b: The

forwardplanning2012]Mar 1-2 WAN-Ifra 22nd World Advertising

Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (www.wan-ifra.org)

Mar TBA Single Width Users Group Australia, Brisbane, Queensland

Apr 2-5 NAA mediaXchange, Washington, DCApr 10-12 WAN-Ifra Publish Asia conference and

expo, Bali, IndonesiaMay 3-16 DRUPA, Düsseldorf, Germany

(www.drupa.com)Sep 2-5 WAN-Ifra 64th World Newspaper

Congress, Kiev, Ukraine

Sep 12-14 PANPA/Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum (www.panpa.org.au)

Sep 24-26 Printcom exhibition, Sydney (www.gasaa.asn.au)

Oct 29-31 IfraExpo, Madrid, Spain (www.ifraexpo.com)

October TBA Asean Newspaper Printers conferenceNovember 26-28 WAN-Ifra Digital Media Asia with

Asia Digital Media Awards, Kuala Lumpur

2014Mar 26-Apr 2 Ipex 2014, ExCeL Centre, Docklands, LondonContact the organisers for fuller information about any of

the above events and to confirm dates. nngx

PEOPLEgxpress.net


peoplenewsAustralian heatset printer PMP says the appointment of Anna Cicognani as marketing services executive general manager signals its intention to invest in growth opportunities in digital channels and develop new partnerships and revenue streams. She has previous digital and media experience with companies including Fairfax, APN and Telstra.

Dubsat has opened an office in Perth with Sue Johnson – previously with Red Bee Media – as WA senior account manager. Chief executive Grant Schuetrumpf says the move meets the needs of a rapidly growing WA client base.

Agfa Graphics Oceania newspaper segment manager Steve Marshall adds sales manager for South Australia and Western Australia to his responsibilities under changes announced by the company. At rhe same time, Harry Kontogiannis becomes digital imaging and workflow solutions manager.

KBA chief executive Helge Hansen made an early move in advance of the IfraExpo and retirement at age 65, handing over the reins to Claus Bolza-SchÅnemann. Bolza-SchÅnemann (55) has been deputy president responsible for engineering and web press manufacturing. Chief financial officer Axel Kaufmann (41) adds deputy president to his financial and IT duties, and the contract of Christoph Müller has been extended.

And Jens Maul has been named as head of the company’s web press service, moving from manroland. Maul joined manroland in Plauen in 1993, set up a project and installation management unit for newspaper presses, and became its head in 1997.

America’s NPES vendors’ group has honoured both Goss president and chief executive Jochen Meissner, and its rival manroland. Meissner received the Harold Gegenheimer award for leadership and participation in NPES and print industry activities as well as civic leadership.

manroland was awarded the Gegenheimer corporate award for industry service, received by North American managing director Vince Lapinski in recognition of the company’s industry leadership through participation in NPES and industry activities, civic leadership, and technical innovation.

manroland was cited for being a top developer of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) for well over a decade, most recently recognised with an InterTech Award for its APL autoprint (automatic plate loading system). nngx

Gold without the glitter in ‘The Australian’ and the ‘print can do’ ad manroland had to pull

Kim Williams takes over at News as ‘Harto’ steps downK im Williams, previously chief

executive of Foxtel, succeeded John Hartigan as chief

executive of News Limited at the end of November. Rupert Murdoch has announced he will take over the role of chairman, previously held by Hartigan who steps down after 41 years with the company.

The shake-up sees the job at Foxtel go to Richard Freudenstein, who has moved quickly up the News tree, recently adding chief executive of The Australian and to his role as boss of the group’s digital media business.

Williams, whose boisterous corporate self-interest was evident

when he spoke at PANPA’s Future Forum last year, has led the pay TV broadcaster since December 2001. He had previously been chief executive of several Australian media businesses including Fox Studios Australia, Southern Star Entertainment and the Australian Film Commission.

He had also been a senior executive at the ABC. Chairman of the Sydney Opera House since 2005, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2006.

Making the announcement, Rupert Murdoch paid tribute to Hartigan, adding that his decision “ends a distinguished 41-year career with News in which he has given us

exemplary service and incredible leadership.

“John has been an outstanding reporter, an editor with few peers and an inspiring executive. Few people have contributed as much as John to the quality of journalism in Australia,” he says.

“He has earned enormous respect among both colleagues and competitors. I thank John for contributing so much to our company and applaud his great integrity and immense talent as a journalist and an executive.” nngx

One of the dummy frront pages created by News titles to mark John Hartigan’s departure

NZ honours top apprenticeSWUG NZ apprentice of the

year Jamie Melgren who works for APN Print Tauranga

– travels to next year’s Australian SWUG and PANPA events as part of his prize. His expenses-paid trip is hosted by sponsor D S Chemport,

The award was announced at the SWUG NZ Conference in Wellington, where committee member John Green said that the standard of entries had been very high, but he and fellow judges Ian Gibson and Sue

Archibald had been drawn to the accomplishments of one candidate.

Melgren left school when he was 16, not knowing what he wanted to do. “I then got a job at Webco, and then managed to fit in at APN Print nicely,” he says.

An indication of his impending success came when he was placed third last year.

He is pictured (centre) with APN Print Tauranga manager Michael Hall and press supervisor Jason Sycamore. nngx

GENERICgxpress.net


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GX Press Universal XL ad.indd 1 7/23/10 1:24:20 PM

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