September 1998, Vol. 9, No. 9

Evolution

Oklahoma City paper moves to its third pagination system in 15 years

Who knows what problems lurk out there for the potential newspaper pagination adopter?

Setting aside all the heartburn that hardware and software glitches can provide (pass the Tagamet), there are tremendous workflow and training issues that can swamp such a project.

How many copy editors will you need?

How many page layout editors?

Should you use composing room staff to lay out pages in the newsroom?

And the biggest problem always turns out to be the ads -- how many of them are digital, how many are "analog" (reflective copy), and how many are you going to have to make up in-house?

Who checks the ads to make sure they're on the right page (and they fit the right space)?

These questions have been asked -- and mostly answered -- for more than a decade at the Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. An early adopter of the late, great Hastech system, the Oklahoman has been partially paginated since 1984.

After the Hastech hardware gave up the ghost in the early ’90s, the paper moved to a classified, editorial and pagination solution from System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento. Though the users didn't complain about the editorial front-end, there were problems with pagination, and two years ago the paper decided to move to its third pagination system.

Now pretty much fully on a NewsMaker solution from Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., the Oklahoman seemed to be a ripe candidate for us to look at as a symbol of evolution.

Senior Editor Pete Wetmore trekked to Oklahoma City recently to take a hard look at the system. We have reviewed Harris installations before (see The Cole Papers, February 1994), but this is certainly the first time we've had the opportunity to have long-time users compare and contrast pagination system experiences.

Another evolution of pagination is that of element tracking. When it was paper, you could go chase down a piece of copy or a Velox. When it’s just digital bits, finding that stuff is much harder. Inside, Correspondent George Powell has brought together all the element-tracking products we know about and has taken a quick look at all of them.

One of Oklahoma City’s concerns about a new pagination system was whether it had evolved so that it could support the paper’s on-line effort. Correspondent Marion J. Love takes us through a number of new on-line community-building products (whose goal has been defined as "getting to know people without having to get dressed"). Love has been keeping track of existing products and saw some new ones at last June’s Connections and NEXPO conferences.

And a publisher needs to evolve to the point where high-quality color is consistently produced. We pointed a new contributor, Russ Leseberg, toward telling us how to get there.

The president of Avail, a consulting firm based in Sandy, Utah, Leseberg has worked in web press operations as well as in the software business, making him something of an expert on color reproduction.

Leseberg gives us a thorough look at color management systems and what they entail.

Lastly, we would be remiss if we didn't mention last month’s bid by Quark Inc. to acquire control of Adobe Systems Inc.

I have laid out my theories in a recent copy of our sibling newsletter, NewsInc. (http://colegroup.com/newsinc/), but suffice it to say:

It would be a backward step in the evolution of newspapers if the deal went through.

-- David M. Cole

See also Hellbox.

From THE COLE PAPERS, September 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.