Winds of change: Accu-Weather's hurricane forecasts are only one potential outsourced component of the paper

Hiring outside companies to handle weather, stocks, comics

ATLANTA -- As if newspapers haven't changed enough in the 1990s, get ready for outsourcing.

"Outsourcing?" Is this just another word for downsizing?

Well, they're related, as both make for a slimmer company profile. But while downsizing can sometimes be the equivalent of cutting off an arm or a foot, outsourcing is like giving over control of that arm or foot to an outside entity composed of nothing but arms and/or feet.

Let's put it another way: Say the brain department decides that its time could be better spent concentrating on management duties below the belt. So it decides to turn over the body's management duties above the belt to an outside entity, Above The Belt Inc.

Above The Belt promises to keep the heart pumping and the lungs taking in air -- in return for a financial consideration -- while the brain, relieved of these duties, can focus more of its attention below the belt.

How did this concept come to newspapers? It's not easy to pinpoint, for in a way, many newspapers always outsourced some major functions that were important to their overall business, i.e., the supplying of newsprint. Hardly any newspapers own their own newsprint mills, which makes it tough to find a supply in an open market.

The actual printing of many smaller papers is also outsourced, because of the high cost of purchasing a printing press. As newspapers grew larger, they assumed more direct control of such functions as printing and distribution.

But even in the profitable 1980s, the trend began to change.

Recognizing the changes that the new, digital-based technology was bringing to newspaper production, as the decade moved along technology made it increasingly easy to get camera-ready type and ads produced outside the plant on a page. First camera-ready ads were mailed in, ready to be photographed and placed on a page. With the advent of higher-speed modems and more universal and reliable data compression schemes, graphics, as well as text, could be sent in via modem.

But if this is a form of outsourcing, it's more a simple technological fact, rather than part of an overall cost-cutting design. Reporters still remain employees, no matter where the stories are keyboarded. The rise of the personal computer at home, and the rapid demise of the proprietary production systems of the 1970s and early '80s decentralized editorial production naturally. With the right modem in 1995, a virtual newsroom can be set up anywhere, with drawings, photos, text -- even whole camera-ready pages put together on battery-powered laptops and transmitted to the newspaper by cellular phone.

This is decentralization, but not real outsourcing. Piecemeal outsourcing began with advertising and the conversion from hot metal to photocomposition of type. Ad makeup printers were no longer necessary when an ad could be simply pasted on a page of type and then photographed. The words for what was happening then in the back shop had not been attached to the process. It was gradual, and printers retired, or moved on to other departments.

For newspapers, the area below the belt has encompassed weather, stocks and TV pages, where outsourcing got its start in the late '80s.

Spurred by the appearance of USA Today's colorfully made up weather page, many newspapers thought, "We ought to do this, too." But gathering and presenting such pages was easier to design than do 365 days a year.

Three companies were around to take up the slack in the late 1980s, and the three are still competing today. All had booths at NEXPO, and all have gained numerous clients in the 1990s.

Alphabetically, the companies are Accu-Weather Inc., based in State College, Pa.; WeatherData Inc. of Wichita, Kan., and Weather Services Corp. of Lexington, Mass. No doubt this trio collectively has provided more camera-ready pages to newspapers than any other group.

All three have expanded as computers, modems and software became more powerful, so all three offer more services now than they first did.

Weather Services produces many weather pages in languages other than English, and has clients throughout the world. It also provides a consultation service for clients on any weather story.

While WeatherData and Accu-Weather have signed up most of the medium and large papers in the last eight years, they differ in how they size up the future. Mike Smith, president of WeatherData, is taking a long look at the Internet before dashing out onto the infobahn.

On the other hand, Accu-Weather already has an on-line service, AccuNet, which is being offered to client papers for inclusion in their electronic versions. Or, Accu-Weather will create an electronic bulletin board for a newspaper for a "modest cost," serving as a method of outsourcing a modest presence on the Internet almost immediately.

For now, WeatherData is emphasizing the work of its Weather Research Division, which can provide -- on deadline -- custom graphics and data for in-depth local weather stories that can add interest to coverage of newsworthy weather events.

Like the weather pages, the daily TV page used to be a chore to produce, but Chicago's Tribune Media Services and TV Data Technologies of Queensbury, N.Y., have made TV logs and grids just a modem connection away. Either company will produce Sunday TV books in zoned editions, with off-site pagination an option.

The newest part of the newspaper to board the pre-press outsourcing train is the daily comics page, and three companies are clamoring to punch its ticket.

Based on NEXPO showings, the smallest company, Reed Brennan Media Associates Inc., seemed to offer the most convenience, and the largest, the Associated Press, the least. Somewhere in between is American Color, which is also providing other outsourcing services (see sidebar).

Reed Brennan, started by former Tribune Media executives and operating out of Winter Park, Fla., has no special name for its comics service, but has begun to offer it to its customers.

With Reed Brennan, the comics page will come in much like a weather page -- complete except for folio. After consultation, a complete Quark XPress page, with comics and all other features such as horoscopes and crossword puzzles, will be downloaded to a client's Macintosh in time to check it, put on the folio and send it to film. (So far, no option for Sunday or color comics is offered.)

Phoenix-based American Color offers two products: FunNe, the digitized components of the page, and the FunNe Pager, which assembles the page at the client's site.

Since American Color is not a monochromatic operation, FunNe offers black-and-white, colorized daily, and Sunday digitally-separated comics from a server that will have digital versions of the files as soon as they are released by their syndicates.

Once the digital components are downloaded, FunNe Pager, a Quark XPress XTension, calls a predesigned template and supposedly sticks everything in its proper place automatically.

I was not able to see this XTension in action, but it's certain that the speed of page construction depends on the speed of the computer it runs on. And left unanswered is the question, what happens if a comic is mislabeled?

In the truest sense of complete outsourcing, FunNe does not offer a mostly hands-free approach. Nor does AP's Comicsend (hey, can we declare a moratorium on cute names with Lottsacaps?).

The behemoth in this trio is the Associated Press, as it demonstrated when it began testing its system with major comics syndicates this summer. If you're AP, you can say to the syndicates, "You will use the software we provide to scan and transmit your comics to our Comicsend central server."

Once there, a custom template will be opened for each AP member and the appropriate comics and features linked to that template. A file containing one week's worth of comics will be saved and then sent automatically to AP's satellite service, or posted on an electronic bulletin board for downloading.

The week's file can then be opened in XPress (or similar software, according to the AP literature) and checked. But the way the process was described in the AP booth (there was no demo), after checking each day's elements a user must manually put everything in its proper place on the template, without any way to automate the process.

Pricing of this soon-to-be offered service for AP members had not been determined at NEXPO time.

And finally, there's one example of pre-press outsourcing that not only can produce finished newspaper pages, it may possibly finish off a few more editorial slots on a struggling newspaper.

Available now to newspapers everywhere, thanks to Better Homes and Gardens Features Syndicate, are ready-to-print special sections delivered electronically. The special sections are already laid out, and the copy is written.

Open the pages in XPress. Edit the copy. Modify or redo the layouts. Add some local color and advertisements, and there you have it --- instant feature pages on topics such as Halloween Fun, Holiday Cooking, Healthy Living or, for the farm state, Livestock and Farm Crops.

Even the smallest newspaper can get water from this well, because all it takes is a Mac running Quark XPress and a CD-ROM drive. Cost is based on size of newspaper, but runs from $16.67 to $75 a page, and it's not necessary to pay until after publication.

Now, appealing features can be as homogenized as wire service copy, but with a total package of text, graphics and pictures.

Is this kind of outsourcing enhancing diversity in newspapers, or killing it? As a newspaper person, it's hard for me judge this as anything but dangerous to future increases in newspaper employment opportunities.

It's that slick, and that good.

-- George Powell

Accu-Weather Inc.,
(814) 237-0309;
American Color FunNe,
(716) 684-8100;
AP ComicSEND,
(800) 386-6972;
Better Homes and Gardens Feature Syndicate,
(800) 678-8135;
Reed Brennan Media Associates,
(407) 539-2157;
Tribune Media Services,
(312) 222-4444;
TVData Technologies,
(800) 338-8838;
Weather Services Corp.,
(617) 676-1101;
WeatherData Inc.,
(316) 265-9127.

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved.