Not all the mice at conference
were connected to computers

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Would it be too facile -- too glib? -- to say that the Newspaper Association of America's annual EDI/pre-press symposium at Disney World here was "Mickey Mouse?"

Perhaps a pejorative indicating simplistic would be too harsh, as many of the topics covered were important. But it seemed organizers spent too much of the participants' time covering elementary subjects, leaving the complex issues to be discussed in the plentiful session breaks.

More than 160 people attended this year's event April 13-15. Included were tracks on pre-press technologies and electronic data interchange (EDI -- the method of handling orders and invoices that's being adopted by most major retailers). Last year, each subject had its own symposium.

Starting and ending with general sessions, the symposium featured 44 speakers who covered topics ranging from the open pre-press interface (OPI) to electronic funds transfer (EFT).

Keynote speaker Eric Wolferman, director of production systems at Gannett Co. Inc., said that in light of off-the-shelf hardware and software, there are "substantial gaps in welding together" fully functional newspaper systems.

"We need software to lasso the commodity building blocks into systems," said Wolferman. Referring to newspapers themselves, he said, "We are partially to blame."

"I fear we have fallen victim to what I call the PC Magazine syndrome," Wolferman said. "We look at the ads in the back of the magazines and we can't image why we should pay more than $1000 for anything."

Wolferman said this attitude discourages software companies from developing newspaper-specific products. If a developer has a product that is good only for newspapers, Wolferman said, then "he's not going to make much money at $200 a pop, even if he sells to every one of the 1700 papers in the country."

Saying that the newspaper industry must recognize the value of the "welding" software, Wolferman challenged the industry to "support such prices."

"Unless we find a real answer," Wolferman said, "we're going to become a technologically orphaned industry."

If his production group gets a color page that's "properly prepared" -- without complex drawing files and one that uses good page layout techniques -- "we can process that page in about six minutes," Cusack said.

His group can make a color proof in another 14 minutes, but he asked, "Is it necessary to provide your pressroom with a proof if you can't match it?"

Cusack's theory is that a "video proof" -- along with a standard Cmyk graybar and what Cusack calls a cluster of "microdots" on the plates -- is more than adequate for the pressroom. Put a microcomputer with a calibrated color monitor in the pressroom and press operators will be able to see the intent of the page, he said.

"If you have the proper controls in place," said Cusack, "you can get repeatable, consistent results."

To provide the larger newspaper perspective, Don Morris, the publishing systems manager of the Journal & Constitution of Atlanta, detailed his newspaper's installation of a pilot pagination project.

Using products from Digital Technology International of Orem, Utah, the 690,000-circulation Cox flagship papers are producing about 40 pages a week on the system.

Pagination has taught the papers two things, Morris said: New skills are required in the paginated world, and traditional work flow changes. While pagination encourages more creativity, he said, it requires more support.

"Be patient," he advised.

Saying that there are good and bad aspects of pagination, Morris highlighted the good points of page production in the newsroom -- better page design, and editors actually do see what they will get.

Bad aspects Morris cited included slow delivery of software and limited supplier support, with such support "not necessarily cheap."

Morris said training must be thorough: "We must commit to a total training program, from the editorial users, to the advertising users, to the production users, to the systems people."

Morris said the papers sent users to outside Macintosh training companies -- ones that showed the users "how to use the mouse."

Morris summed up the Atlanta project as "so far, so good." Layout editors "love it," he said, but reporters have mixed feelings. He said the papers would "continue cautiously."

A Cox colleague of Morris, Jeff Adams of the chain's Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, also emphasized training in a paginated environment.

"You need to come to the realization there are no panaceas -- there are no magic bullets," said Adams. "We can buy machines and we can maintain machines, but we have to train minds.

"The real 'how' in my opinion is training," Adams said.

Another rider on the training bandwagon was Barry Briggs, the commercial printing manager for the Roanoke (Va.) Times & World News. Speaking of his experiences in the production department, he said that even after extensive training, his staffers still "need at least a year to become competent."

The result of poor training, said Briggs, "is that the production people learn just enough to be productive."

"The real depth of knowledge doesn't come from training," he said. "It comes from learning."

EDI and SAI (standard advertising invoice) are not one and the same, Lindsay said, and EDI isn't one-order, one-bill, either.

"EDI is not a complete electronic commerce system. It's only one of several tools," said Lindsay. "EDI doesn't specify what you do with the data after you receive it."

Lindsay did suggest that EDI would "allow implementing one-order/one-bill on a much larger scale."

Lindsay -- and other speakers on EDI -- acknowledged that implementing EDI would entail a lot of work for newspapers and advertisers alike. "The hard work," he said, "is to motivate people on both sides of the equation."

That motivation might come from two sources, said Lindsay: EDI eliminates overhead at both ends, and EDI transactions are more accurate.

One advertiser's use of EDI is growing. "Fifteen hundred of our trading partners send in electronic invoices," said Howell Taillac, the EDI manager for Dillards, the large retail chain in the south and southwest.

Among them are newspapers: Dillards added the eighth newspaper to its pilot project at the end of March, he said. Other newspapers in which Dillards buys space are to receive a letter "in the third quarter of this year inviting you to participate in EDI insertion orders," he said.

Dillards has said that newspapers that don't embrace EDI will be charged a fee for processing paper insertion orders and invoices.

One of the papers in the Dillards pilot project, the Dallas Morning News, reported fairly good experiences with EDI.

Explaining that the Morning News has used EDI for other purposes, Lorie Schrader, the paper's applications programming manager, said, "After a year of talking about it" -- and four hours of actual work with a PC and EDI software -- "we received a purchase order from Dillards."

An executive at another newspaper sounded a warning about EDI.

"There is a perceived scope of EDI that can be oversimplified," said Susan Shows, director of information and technical resources of the Houston Chronicle.

Shows pointed out the real complexities of EDI come when a large percentage of a paper's advertisers -- each using different application software -- all attempt to send in EDI transactions, with some destined for the retail ad order entry system and others headed for the classified ad order entry system.

Following in that theme was a presentation by Kevin Pape of Supply Tech of Ann Arbor, Mich., a supplier of EDI software.

"If you're doing EDI today with different trading partners," said Pape, "you're going to find each trading partner handles things differently."

-- dmc

From THE COLE PAPERS, May 1994, Copyright (c) 1994, All Rights Reserved.