PDFs, the right way: Swift Newspapers of Carson City, Nev., developed a series of instruction sheets for its six newspapers to use in preparing Portable Document Format files properly. The cheat-sheet itself was, of course, a PDF file.

America West: mixed reactions from suppliers, newspapers

RENO, Nev. -- The most common comments on the floor of the America West newspaper trade show were not about new technology, but about the viability of the show itself, which was held here Sept. 23-24.

Exhibitors and attendees continue to be concerned about slow acceptance of America West among newspaper executives. This year, even though America West merged its trade show with the National Newspaper Association's trade fest, America West drew only about 300 people. But since the NNA drew about 250 attendees, the 150-plus exhibitors displaying their wares here had a pool of 550 prospects.

America West, presented by the California Newspaper Publishers Association, has always been envisioned as the West Coast complement to America East, the long-running annual newspaper trade show sponsored by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association in Hershey, Pa. The western incarnation, only in its third year, has yet to have met the expectations of many of the exhibitors, though.

"I love this show," one supplier representative said. "But when I ask the head office to buy space next year, they're going to say, 'Where are the prospects you got at America West?'"

Other exhibitors criticized the conference program, saying there were not enough sessions to attract their typical customers. "I looked at the attendee list this morning," said another supplier representative, "and the job titles just don't mesh with the people I call upon."

This year's trade show merger with NNA was a one-time venture -- NNA has said it will no longer have a trade show with its annual convention -- so there are serious questions about the future of the America West trade show.

Despite this gloom, a little straw poll showed attendees and exhibitors universally expressing support for the show and conference.

PDF in the small-paper world
Calling the Portable Document Format (PDF) "the promise that almost delivers," Rob Carrigan explored how small papers can use Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat to transmit display ads and pages.

Carrigan is publisher of two weeklies in Colorado, the Ute Pass Courier in Woodland Park and the Gold Rush in Cripple Creek. The papers' combined circulation is less than 5000.

"In less than two years, AP AdSEND has revolutionized the way advertising is distributed across the country," Carrigan told a concurrent session on Sept. 25. With peak periods of distributing more than 8000 Pdf files per day, Carrigan said the AP system forced publishers to become familiar with PDF, and once they had done so, there "came more and more ideas on using the technology."

Carrigan said that though there were still some problems with PDF, "hope still exists." His list of woes: spot color is still difficult; bleeds, trapping, imposition and duotones are impossible, and the ability to work with pre-press software such as Quark XPress is not perfect.

In addition to promises by San Jose-based Adobe that these problems will get fixed soon, Carrigan pointed to the effort by the Committee for Graphic Arts Technologies Standards of the American National Standards Institute, which will produce a standardized version of the Adobe Acrobat format to be called PDF X.

Carrigan said PDF X would support pre-assigned color in TIFF format, International Color Consortium (ICC) support, trapping, and simplified insertion of external and non-PDF files within PDF X files.

Carrigan pointed to Swift Newspapers of Carson City, Nev., as a good example of papers that have adopted PDF for page transmission. The company's Nevada Appeal in Carson City is the hub for five other papers, which are 12 to 60 miles away. Combined, the six newspapers average about 40 press runs a week, churning out 100 to 200 broadsheet pages a day. Of those pages, 85 percent come into the Appeal plant as PDF files, via a frame relay network.

Swift developed a cheat-sheet to show the employees at the various plants how to prepare a PDF file. "It shows the users exactly what every setting needs to be," said Carrigan.

Another Carrigan example, the Jackson Hole News in Wyoming, is moving toward a complete PDF workflow. The first step concentrates on the display ad department. Ads are sent to the Acrobat Distiller program, which creates the PDF files; the fresh PDFs then can be sent to a fax server, which will fax a proof of the ad to the customer.

Carrigan's own operation provided another example. His press is 65 miles from his offices, so "it takes an hour and 15 minutes to drive to the printing plant." This makes PDF essential, as he can now send late remakes of Page 1 to the press facility quickly and easily.

Look ma, no stripping
Whether you call it "direct-to-plate," "digital-to-plate" or "computer-to-plate" (our preferred appellation), the process of getting digital page files imaged directly onto printing plates has attained a certain momentum in the U.S. newspaper industry.

Witness the Billings Gazette in Montana. The 50,000-circulation morning newspaper has been adapting its workflow to take advantage of computer-to-plate for the last two years.

"In the designers' mind, pre-press doesn't exist any more," said Bob Gibson, the Gazette's interactive media manager (and former production manager). "In fact, in our plant, it doesn't exist any more."

The Gazette executive, speaking at the same concurrent session, explained that certain questions need to be answered before moving forward with computer-to-plate. A key question: "Why are you considering it? No, really -- why are you considering it? Are you willing to make the investment (not just dollars) to reap the benefits? Are you digital (100 percent paginated)?"

The Montana paper adopted computer-to-plate because "this is a place to save some costs and gain some quality," Gibson said.

Savings came from decreased labor costs, such as pre-press paste-up, imager maintenance and operations, plateroom stripping, camera, and process and traditional plate exposure. (People displaced by the new technology were retrained and given growth-driven new jobs in the organization.)

More savings come from reduced or eliminated costs for certain materials, such as paper, film, chemicals, stripping supplies and traditional plates and processing.

Unfortunately, Gibson said, "plates cost as much as three times as much as traditional plates, but the other savings offset that."

In addition, the Billings executive said, computer-to-plate imposes other costs, such as buying and using large "dot-for-dot" scanners to digitize camera-ready reflective artwork, and maintaining and operating the new computer-to-plate device or devices.

Gibson also said there were "someday savings" in the arena of depreciation of the new equipment and savings in floor space by eliminating pasteup, the camera room and plate-making.

The Gazette, Gibson said, had spent between $250,000 and $300,000 on imagers, raster image processors, networking, plumbing, proofers and new scanners. The paper did a complete workflow analysis before making the purchases.

"Look at your whole copy flow process -- from the front door, when an ad or a reporter walks in," he said. "Redesigning the whole process will give you the greatest benefits."

Quality is the key reason for moving to computer-to-plate, Gibson said. Calling it "an investment for your customers," he noted that reproduction is better -- dots are of higher quality and the color registration is consistent. In addition, by taking a step out of the production process, risk of error is reduced.

"The bottom line is, there are fewer places for mistakes to happen and we need fewer billing adjustments for print quality," said Gibson. "If you have ever written off an ad because the mauve an advertiser has in his logo didn't appear right in Monday morning's paper, then you can understand."

Lastly, Gibson pointed out that computer-to-plate reduces press make-ready waste ("the plates don't stretch") and extends deadlines (in the Gazette's case, between 10 and 30 minutes).

Peekaboo, newspapers see you
USA Today Publisher Tom Curley touched on a range of topics in wrapping up the third America West, but none of them addressed the title of his presentation, "Will I have a job in 10 years?"

Distributing a layout from the Feb. 11, 1998, issue of his paper, Curley told of the steps the paper took to get a photo of U.S. skier Picabo Street at the Olympics in Japan. The photographer caught her as she rounded a gate in what was to become her gold medal-winning run.

The photo was taken at 11:02 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Through the miracles of modern technology, the page was transmitted to various USA Today printing plants at 11:28 p.m.

Photographer Robert Deutch and an assistant hiked with ice clamps up the side of the ski run hill and huddled with cameras and computers in the fog and driving snow for hours to get what turned out to be an exclusive picture, Curley said. The photo was transmitted via cell phone to the newspaper's Olympic headquarters in Nagano, Japan, and then over dedicated data lines to the home office in Arlington, Va.

"That all happened not because of technology," Curley said, "but because of some dedication to the fundamental tenets of journalism."

The publisher said USA Today has shown its greatest circulation gains during the weeks Olympics are held, and that the paper no longer sees covering the Olympics as an operating loss, but as an opportunity for growth and increased revenues.

A previously unsponsored monthly section on the Olympics is now about to have all its advertising sold out. "We have a home team -- we can create a forum for our readers and as a platform to grow circulation," said Curley.

Discussing circulation, Curley talked for a moment about changes that the Audit Bureau of Circulations of Schaumburg, Ill., is considering. "The ABC will soon allow reporting other than paid -- this represents an enormous change and a wonderful opportunity," Curley said.

He went on to relate that when newspapers competed on the local level, "publishers had to push circulation year-round." Today, he said, publishers have cut out marginal circulation and "we got further from our readers as a result."

Looking to the future, Curley described this summer as a watershed: "All the hype about the Internet finally happened."

As "the number of eyeballs have doubled" on the World-Wide Web, "the number of advertisers has zoomed," he said. Advertising on the Internet is no longer "leftover TV spot money," but now consists of real advertising expenditures, Curley said.

Consolidation of retailers concerns Curley, as it means fewer advertisers will be in a given community to buy newspaper space. "In Southern California's San Fernando Valley," he said, "there used to be 17 General Motors retailers. Now, they've been consolidated into three superstores. These things are happening and we need to respond."

Curley also said that though the 'Net was a big story this summer, the bigger story was that in June, more people were tuned to cable television programming during prime time than to network television programming.

"In the last 11 years," he said, "NBC has lost 45 percent of its prime time audience. Money is being shifted."

The USA Today publisher wrapped up by saying, "None of us know where this will lead, but newspapers will remain the dominant medium. ...

"We can come back as winners; this doesn't have to be the era where newspapers have to be in second place. We have to, as newspaper managers, provide the equipment and platforms to roll out new products. The bigger challenge is that we can and will win, if we play differently."

-- dmc

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