Dateline: June 9, 2008
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 1st 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
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