LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- The trade show frequently dominates discussion of NEXPO, but there was also a conference.
Unfortunately for those who work a.m. paper shifts, these conference sessions usually happened around 8 in the morning. This causes many NEXPOnents to avoid these stimulating presentations -- sometimes, including our own staff.
We did attend many sessions, but frankly, much of our coverage comes from casting an attentive ear toward tapes of the meetings -- an effort often undertaken in the evening.
Eric Wolferman should have called the question earlier, before part of the audience, probably suffering from severe platitude poisoning, bolted for the door.
Still, the opinions from the audience listening to his forum on traditional suppliers were telling nonetheless:
Patricia Harrington, manager of digital imaging at the Houston Chronicle, described her paper's color operation, which solves the "too many cooks" color correction problem by turning former lab technicians into imaging technicians.
Editorial has taken over color scanning, correction and separation, handing off the electronic files to a production color department which builds the pages created on Agfa Catalyst terminals.
Barbara Boyer, systems planning manager at the Chicago Tribune, warned of the problems awaiting the publishing industry if it fails to lead in the establishment of electronic advertising commerce.
If newspapers wait for advertisers to dictate solutions for electronic ad delivery, Boyer said, papers will face a proliferation of competing systems and applications, incompatible file formats and missing graphics and fonts. And, she noted, not only must the ad materials be available electronically, so must facilities for standardized electronic order entry, electronic billing and electronic payment.
The workshop made it clear that for mass electronic ad delivery to succeed, there will have to be people in the middle -- to insulate advertisers, agencies and papers not only from multiple software standards and data formats, but institutional idiosyncrasies as well. Whether these will be service bureaus, value-added networks, the Associated Press, or some organization not yet conceived, remains to be seen.
The session on the Electronic Times mirrored the rapid rate of change in the industry as a whole in the '90s.
The pace of change is so great that the start-up effort of this all-digital experiment in producing an actual newspaper already is the subject of fond reminiscences. Electronic publishing has made great strides in the five years since the first issue was produced at Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and reminiscences were in order.
John Cranfill, publishing technology manager of the Dallas Morning News and chairman of the Electronic Times, smiled as he recalled using a pre-release version of Photoshop 1.0 to process photos for the 24-page broadsheet. "And it took two hours to RIP a page," Cranfill recalled.
But Cranfill and the panel made it clear that this affair, sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association, has become an important place to test the concept of a total electronic newsroom. And it's also a good place for newspaper production people who are unsure of the overall scope of this new technology to learn while putting out an actual publication.
Increasingly, newspapers are being asked to be good corporate citizens with regard to their workers' health and safety, and the environment.
Lissa Walls Vahldiek, VP of Houston-based Southern Newspapers Inc., told the session on workplace issues how Southern dealt with -- or, as she put it, "endured" -- Osha inspections at two newspapers: the Baytown Sun in Texas and the Daily Sentinel in Scottsborough, Ala.
The result was a workbook and questionnaire based on Southern's experiences to help its other small newspapers find out how to meet compliance regulations. Southern is making these materials available to other newspapers.
Paul Reynolds, director of facilities and engineering at the Hartford Courant, spoke on waste water discharge permits, describing ways the paper found to comply with Connecticut regulations. As much hassle as the process was, he said, the paper benefitted from examining how it was handling waste. By changing some practices, the Courant reduced both waste and costs.
The many recipes for pagination have one spice in common: uniqueness.
Each paper's economics and staff skills determine which path to follow: traditional supplier, integrator or going it alone.
The Enterprise of Brockton, Mass., turned to Harris Publishing Systems Corp. because "we believed in the need for the skill of an experienced traditional vendor," said System Manager James Fuller. "Newspapers come first for these vendors."
In Arlington Heights, Ill., the Daily Herald "decided on a third-party supplier to make this happen more quickly," said Mike Schoepke, manager of computer operations. So the Herald commissioned integrator Digital Equipment Corp. to move it from a '70s-era newsroom to full-page output in one year.
The Sun-Commercial in Vincennes, Ind., dived into "pagination for the little guy," according to Mark Crowley, the photo/graphics manager. After several iterations, his paper uses Macs -- LCs and Quadras -- running software from Baseview, Quark, Multi-Ad, Aldus and Adobe.
In the face of these success stories, consultant David Neeff argued that he still hears "we're two years away from pagination." That line was acceptable 12 years ago, when first he heard it said seriously, but "there are no excuses any more -- the economy has settled down and there are plenty of vendors to give a hand," Neeff said.
Moderator Robert Decherd asked the panel on tailored newspapers to address two questions: Would the evolution of tailored newspapers lead to the development of products with household-specific advertising and editorial content or, differently, rely on newspapers' more traditional strengths at handling large amounts of diverse information?
"What we do," said Decherd, chairman of the board, president and CEO at A.H. Belo (owner of the Dallas Morning News), "relies on our assessment of two key questions: Can the costs be justified by new revenues or prevention of erosion of existing revenues? Does the Daily Me version of a tailored newspaper capitalize on or undermine a newspaper's primary asset, namely the ability to add value by editing, distilling and cogently presenting huge amounts of information?"
With regard to the economic near term, Decherd said, development costs of tailored newspapers will exceed revenues, and improper ad rating strategies could substantially erode revenue from traditional products.
-- Staff report
