Global view: An electronic tearsheet from the Boston Globe illustrates how advertisers can see proof of publication.

LAS VEGAS -- When the printers converted from making up galleys of lead type in chases sitting on turtles to making up pages with X-Acto knives and waxers, they called it "playing with paper dolls."

It was a painful transition for many, made better only by cynical comments on how their craft had changed. But one aspect hadn't: it was still pretty dirty in the composing room. Printers and makeup editors were among the few who had to wash their hands before going to the bathroom.

Presses, though, were always a dirty business.

Up until a few years back, we had even eliminated the grunge that wax brings to pasteup boards and ink brings to a building -- electronic makeup and remote printing plants got the last vestiges of a manufacturing ambiance out of the newspaper business.

Well, almost: there were still plenty of people who had to get their hands dirty cutting out and folding tearsheets so that advertisers had proof their material had been published.

But even that touchstone to the past has fallen by the wayside at many newspapers: the au currant process today is the electronic tearsheet, a digital representation of an advertising page kept in a database where an advertiser can easily see that it has published.

Though we had thought that the momentum on electronic tearsheets had built to a frenzy at NEXPO 2002, it’s clear that this year’s event -- held here June 16-19 -- had more in store in this particular product category.

Controversy still rages on whether pages should be scanned (giving an idea of reproduction quality) or whether digital workflow copies (PDFs) will suffice. Also, the question is asked whether you want to host the system in-house or whether a service bureau is a better idea. Oh, and there’s also debate about file formats.

We encountered 15 different suppliers at NEXPO 2003 that had, essentially 15 different electronic tearsheet products.

Inside I take a look at not only the products, but the business processes and the industry intrigue surrounding electronic tearsheets. It turns out that what’s really needed in the category is a "super database" of all the electronic tearsheet systems, so advertisers can sit down at one place and see all their tearsheets across a variety of newspapers. One newspaper technology executive suggested what he was looking for was "a Google for tearsheets." Though there hasn't been much movement on the topic for the last six months, it appears that industry committees and industry organizations are finally beginning to move forward on the concept.

Elsewhere inside, we supplement last issue’s look at suppliers at the show.

With more than 100 exhibitors in our bailiwick at the show, it’s always difficult for us to pick just a dozen (or 14, actually) that we believe deserve highlighting.

Unfortunately for some companies, they continue to sell good products that continue to either make or save papers money; it’s just that at NEXPO they're not very exciting.

Senior Correspondent L. Carol Christopher and Correspondents George Powell and Jason Zappe give us their insights on seven companies we (I) felt were important for you to know about.

You should realize, though, that we all left here with bulging notebooks and while we're done with our NEXPO reviews, that doesn't mean we don't have plenty of ideas that sprang from the show that we'll cover in the future.

Moving tearsheets from a manual, hand-dirtying process to something digital probably won't have the emotional angst that moving from hot to cold type did. But nobody is playing with paper dolls anymore.

-- David M. Cole, e-mail: dmc@colepapers.net

Index

• Tearsheets
• Anygraaf
• Mactive
• Managing Editor Inc.
• Modulo
• Net-linx
• NewsEngin
• Pongrass
• Hellbox

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 2003
Copyright © 2003, All Rights Reserved.