WSJ taps EidosMedia for print, online
 

Dow Jones & Co. tapped EidosMedia for its Methode publishing app to manage the print and Web editions of The Wall Street Journal, its weekly Barron’s magazine and MarketWatch Web site.

The implementation will serve reporters, editors and designers at newsrooms in the United States, Europe and Asia, all of which produce main print editions. All of the U.S editions of WSJ, encompassing localized news and advertising, will be created and managed with Methode’s planning and tracking, Eidos said.

“The big objective is to truly unify print and online news production,” Jim Pensiero, WSJ’s vice president of news projects, told Newspapers & Technology. “The technology works across media channels and it’s on us to use it effectively — and we will.”

Methode’s online operations for WSJ.com are currently separate from the newsroom.

Pensiero said WSJ’s goal is to roll out Methode a section at a time and go live with the app by February 2009.

The Seattle Times in February became become the first U.S. newspaper publisher to choose Methode. That install is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2009 (see Newspapers & Technology, March 2008). Milan-based Eidos has numerous European Methode installations, including the Financial Times.

Look for complete coverage of WSJ’s Methode purchase in the July issue.

 

Ferag sells inserters to Dow Jones

Dow Jones & Co. selected Ferag to install two MSD inserting lines to handle inserting for The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s.

The lines, to be installed at Dow Jones’ South Brunswick, N.J., production facility in 2009, each consist of a MultiSertDrum MSD-2C inserting system with RollStream. They will enable the daily zoned inserting of six supplements into the main product, Ferag said. A MultiDisc DiscPool winding/unwinding system will buffer the product off two existing Ferag gripper conveyor lines.

WSJ currently uses carriers to insert materials distributed to the New York market. The paper is also launching a magazine later this year that will be inserted by the equipment.

“We are excited about continuing our valued relationship with Dow Jones and News Corp.,” said Joe Colletti, president and chief executive officer of WRH Marketing Americas, Ferag’s U.S. marketing arm.

Goss International Corp., which represents Ferag’s products in North America, said the deal reflects the wide variety of postpress products the firms can provide newspapers, according to Doug Gibson, vice president of newspaper sales.

“By having a large product portfolio, we were able to offer Dow Jones several different system configurations and allow them to choose the solution that best met their objectives,” he said.

Tribune to ‘right-size’ papers

Tribune Co. will assume a 50/50 ad-to-editorial ratio as a floor to cut back on the size of the papers it now prints, according to an e-mail message sent last week to Tribune employees by company Chairman Sam Zell and Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels.

The two, in commenting about Tribune’s first-quarter earnings, said the business model for newspapers “no longer works.”

“Supply and demand are not in balance, and that manifests itself in two ways,” they wrote, adding that “We are not giving readers what they want, and … we are printing bigger papers than we can afford to print.”

To that end, the executives said Tribune papers will be redesigned to accommodate customer demands for unbiased journalism and more graphics such as maps, lists, rankings and states. The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel June 22 will be the first paper to incorporate the new design, they said, with all of Trib’s papers reflecting some portions of the design by the end of September.

Papers will also adopt a 50/50 ad-to-editorial ratio to “right-size” papers, Zell and Michaels wrote. “With that benchmark we can significantly scale back the size of the papers we print, and take significant costs out of our operating run rate.”

Newspapers and publications have historically tried to maintain a 60/40 ad-to-editorial ratio to ensure profitability.

Finally, Zell and Michaels wrote Tribune will add new capabilities to its properties’ Web sites, supporting such features as e-commerce and social networking. The company’s television stations will begin rolling out the retooled sites later this summer, with the papers adopting the new features in the coming year, the two said.

QIPC sells new markless reg systems to Transcon

Q.I. Press Controls said it has sold its mRC and IDS markless control systems to Transcontinental Inc., which will install the technology on manroland Colorman XXL presses at two North American sites.

The first deployment, at Transcontinental’s Montreal facility, will include 16 Intelligent Density System color control scanners and 12 mRC markless register control system scanners for cutoff and sidelay control.

In Fremont, Calif., where Transcontinental is building a new plant to print the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, QIPC is installing 18 IDS scanners and 18 mRC scanners.

Transcontinental is the first North American customer to purchase mRC, which was introduced earlier this year.

Additionally, QIPC said printers in Norway, Denmark and Kuala Lumpur are adding mRC systems to their sites.

Va. dailies to share distribution load, expense

The Daily Press in Newport News, Va., and the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch have agreed to provide reciprocal delivery of their respective publications to subscribers and sales locations in several areas bordering their markets. The exchange of services will be implemented in phases throughout the summer, the Daily Press, said.

“By partnering with the Times-Dispatch and strategically sharing resources, we'll be able to improve delivery to our customers and reduce overall operating expenses," said Daily Press Publisher Digby A. Solomon. “We'll continue to compete with each other on local news coverage and advertising sales where our markets overlap.“

Quipp, ITW deal closes

Illinois Tool Works last week closed its deal to purchase Quipp Systems Inc., paying $5.41 per share, or about $8 million for the postpress vendor.

Quipp shareholders June 2 voted to accept a bid by suburban Chicago-based ITW to acquire the company.

An ITW spokesperson said Quipp will become part of the diversified company’s packaging business, which already includes Signode Packaging Systems Inc.

Quipp said it doesn’t expect any operational or management changes as a result of the acquisition.

Yahoo Consortium beefs up

Yahoo Inc. said that 94 more publications joined its newspaper consortium, brining the total number of participants to 779.

New companies in the consortium include the Sun-Times News Group, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and a number of other suburban Chicago papers; Black Press; Stephens Media Group; Independent Newspapers and Yankton Media Inc.

The new members will be able to cross-sell recruitment ads on Yahoo’s HotJobs network and also add the forthcoming Yahoo Advertising Management Platform technology to their portfolios.

Member newspapers can also integrate Yahoo’s paid search technology across their sites and be able to distribute their content across multiple Yahoo properties.

Later this summer, Yahoo said the first of its newspaper partners will begin to install AMP. The ad management software provides tools aimed at allowing consortium members to target ads to specific audiences, as well as to package greater amounts of inventory from across the network.

German pub live with Generation news, others taps Kodak CTP

Pressehaus Stuttgart Druck GmbH of Stuttgart, Germany, is live with a Generation News platesetter from Kodak.

The platesetter, which can image up to 260 plates per hour at 1,270 dpi at the publisher’s current plate size, has been in testing at the Stuttgart printing facility since the end of March. The Generation News was installed and fully commissioned within two days, according to Reiner Wormitt, managing director for Pressehaus Stuttgart.

The Generation News, which replaces three Newsetters, will produce the Stuttgarter Zeitung and Stuttgarter Nachrichten and deliver plates for Sonntag Aktuell, the Sunday newspaper, various weeklies and a number of advertising materials.

Norwich, England-based newspaper publisher Archant, meantime ordered two Z Speed versions of the Generation News at drupa, along with Newsmanager and Prinergy Evo software.

The Los Angeles Times’ downtown Olympic production facility is the beta site for the Generation News in the United States and The Atlanta Journal Constitution purchased three of the machines in April (see Newspapers & Technology, June 2008).

Finally, Kodak said Graphic Communications Group in Ghana, West Africa, ordered a Trendsetter 800 III, and Quad/Graphics added nine Kodak CTP units, including seven Magnus VLF Quantum platesetters and two Magnus 800 Quantum units to be installed in multiple locations across the U.S.

Daily to extend manroland pact with printnet apps

Freie Presse in Chemnitz, Germany, selected manroland unit ppi Media for its printnet workflow app. The buy follows the publisher’s 2007 order for three Colorman XXL presses, slated to be in production in 2009.

The app will comprise PressManager, Pecom press automation, printnet Monitor, the jobplan digital planning board and printnet output manager.

The digital planning board all jobs are automatically assigned to devices and machines with defined start and end times and the entire production line can be visualized on a monitor.

Printed by Chemnitzer Verlag und Druck, Freie Press has a daily circulation of more than 3000,000 copies throughout eastern Germany.

Meantime, ppi at drupa introduced a number of enhancements to printnet, as well as the online ad reservation app AdInvent.

Austin Aecom to focus on consulting

Austin Aecom said it will focus on its consulting and best-practices advisement services as it reacts to a dearth of newspaper facility design projects.

“Strategic projects just aren’t there to go after,” said Darrin Miller, associate vice president of Austin Aecom Consulting. “But we are full-blown going to be involved with business and process consulting.”

The shift in focus has led to a reshuffling of personnel, with Mike Pusich, vice president of Austin Aecom’s newspaper and media group, leaving the firm. Pusich joined the company in 2006.

Pusich told Newspapers & Technology he intends to continue working with newspapers that might need facility-, process- or equipment-related consulting work. He can be reached at pusichmm@hotmail.com.

GateHouse adding social networking

GateHouse Media New England said it will roll out a social networking service on all of its 159 Wicked Local community Web sites in Massachusetts using software from TownConnect, a Waltham, Mass., vendor. The Wicked Local People service will let residents communicate with each other and organize online communities, GateHouse said.

“When we launched the Wicked Local network last fall, we wanted to combine professional journalism, lots of community information, and lots of opportunities for residents to interact with us and with each other,” said Kirk Davis, president of GateHouse Media New England. “Working with TownConnect allows us to take that interaction to the next level – immediately.”

In Massachusetts, GateHouse publishes The Enterprise in Brockton, The Patriot Ledger in Quincy and a number of weeklies.

Woodwing lands 1^st Korean customer

WoodWing Software said JoongAng Daily, the English-language edition of JoongAng Ilbo, will roll out its Smart Connection Enterprise software.

The app replaces the paper’s current QPS installation and represents Woodwing’s first sale in South Korea.

Obituary

John Hall, formerly chief operating officer of TKS (USA), passed away last week. Mr. Hall was a pressroom superintendent at The (Baltimore) Sun when he was asked to join Tesco, which distributed TKS presses. He then continued to work for Tesco, becoming president of the firm’s PII rigging unit before being named president when Jim Price retired. As COO of TKS, Mr. Hall oversaw the move of the company from Chicago to suburban Dallas, where it operates today. He was also instrumental in introducing digital ink pumps in the U.S. market.

In Brief

Paul Briand last week retired from his position as director of operations at Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, N.H., to become an industry consultant, specializing in newspaper operations. He can be reached at pbriand@gmail.com.
 

E.W. Scripps Co. named Jim York director of information technology for its newspaper division. York most recently was publisher of The Daily Journal in Park Hills, Mo.

Shaw Newspapers said it will deploy AdPay’s marketplace software across all of its Illinois and Iowa newspapers. The apps will include AdPay Classified Network, Call Center and AdPax commercial sales tools.

www.adpay.com

Newspaper Direct Inc. said it is adopting the Automated Content Access Protocol for its digital publication networks, in a bid to provide its publishing partners with more protection over their content. ACAP is a non-proprietary, global permissions tool backed by the World Association of Newspapers, the European Publishers Council and the International Publishers Association and developed by publishers in collaboration with search engine vendors.

www.newspaperdirect.com

German newspaper publisher Ingolstadter Anzeigerin selected Anygraaf to implement its advertising and publishing production software at several Bayerische Anzeigenblatter publications. The installation will include Doris32 asset management and Aprofit ad management software.

www.anygraaf.com

GMG announced GMG Connect, an app that links the vendor’s proofing and color management products to create a central, scalable color management workflow, GMG said.

The networked app is centrally controllable to allow monitoring and permit access to GMG installations at various locations via an intranet or the Internet.

www.gmgcolor.com

CCI Europe released NewsGate 2.2, an upgrade that allows papers to incorporate user-generated content.

www.ccieurope.com

BrandMuscle Inc. launched BuildMyAd, which the vendor said allows small, independent advertisers to customize print and online advertisements. The app leverages Adobe Flex and enables users to create print ads, direct-mail pieces and other promotional materials.

www.buildmyad.com

The International Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress completed the convergence of Networked Graphic Production with CIP4, and released a new and expanded version of the JDF Integration Matrix, which illustrates the integrations between vendors that use JDF. The online matrix is available at http://www.cip4.org/matrix and will be updated frequently, with the next printed version to be released at Graph Expo in October.

Meantime, CIP4 announced that the JDF 1.4 Specification will be released for review on June 20.

iCopyright launched two new licensing services aimed at helping publishers promote lawful reuses of their copyrighted content while protecting their rights.

Instant PDF E-Prints allow licensees to obtain a crisp rendering of an original article in a standard PDF file that can be posted on a site for a defined period. Licensees pay a fee to the publisher for the rights according to the duration of the posting. Instant Web Post licensing service, meantime, gives publishers two options for permitting reuse of content — by duration in months and by page view counts. Publishers can enable either or both of the options. Original content is rendered in html and hosted by iCopyright to secure and monitor it for compliance. 

www.icopyright.com

De Telegraaf is rolling out the video module of MerlinOne Inc.’s asset management software to allow users to search for words spoken in audio tracks. It will be meshed with the paper’s Trax assignment and budget software, MerlinOne said.

www.merlinone.com

German publisher Verlag Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin purchased an integrated editorial management app from Atex that includes pagination software from ClassWizard GmbH to.

The sale follows similar deployments at De Telegraaf in the Netherlands and Westdeutsche Verlags und Druckerei GmbH in Germany.

www.atex.com

Chicago Tribune Media Group and Chicago Public Schools said they will introduce a new weekly newspaper and Web site this fall that is aimed toward – and largely written by – CPS high school students. The newspaper and its companion site will be the only media products in the Chicago market exclusively serving teens. The Tribune will distribute 100,000 copies of the new weekly newspaper to all CPS high schools beginning in September.

Technotrans AG said it sold its first contex.c blanket cleaner system to be used by a newspaper printer. Zehnder Print AG in Rickenbach, Switzerland, will install the system on its Goss International Corp. Universal 50 press later this year, the vendor said.

www.technotrans.com