December 1999, Vol. 10, No. 12

The ´90s

A review of a volatile decade of publishing systems’ technology

Through happenstance, the 10th anniversary of this newsletter and the end of the decade have coincided. It’s been a good decade for the publishing systems' industry and it’s been a good decade for The Cole Papers.

I decided that the close of the decade -- and the close of our first 10 years -- deserved a certain amount of reflection and a certain amount of contemplation.

At the start of the decade, the Holy Grail of newspaper systems' technology -- the ever-elusive "pagination," or output of full-pages to film or plate -- was within the grasp of but a handful of papers. By the end of the decade, more than 50 percent of all U.S. dailies, according to the 1999 TrendWatch Newspapers survey, had achieved the goal.

In the early ’90s, publishers and suppliers were just beginning to make the transition to off-the-shelf hardware and software. By the late ’90s, no one gave a second thought to the notion of integrating "best of breed" technologies to get a unique publishing system.

There have been major changes in the way newspapers and magazines are published in the decade. Inside, we detail many of those changes, on a year-by-year basis.

Rather than using the on-line digital archives of the newsletter, either for browsing or searches of specific words or phrases, I chose to pour through the physical, printed issues, which I keep in three-ring binders right here next to my right hand. (Don't you?)

Paging through the back issues, the changes of the industry became clearer and clearer: We went from an environment where a publisher needed to specialize in only one or two platforms and one or two major systems, to a world where there are literally dozens of platforms and dozens of major systems.

The yin and yang of off-the-shelf solutions became evident: You could buy or build systems that were cheaper and more effective than in the past, but you had to have a cadre of experts you'd never had before.

And, to make matters worse, you made those experts portable. In the good-old-days, an Atex or CSI or Hendrix expert had limited mobility -- they usually had to move across the country to get a new job. In the era of off-the-shelf, you trained someone in Novell networking or Oracle databases and they could move to the local bank or utility and make more money. And you were in the position of finding a new Novell or Oracle expert -- and either train that person or pay prevailing wages.

After reviewing a decade’s worth of Cole Papers, I asked myself: If I had to pick a technology of the decade, what would it be? The answer came quickly: Adobe Acrobat and the Portable Document Format. Acrobat and PDF have pushed page and element makeup out of the plant and put it anywhere.

Similarly, if I had to pick a supplier of the decade, it would be San Jose-based Adobe. From the inkling of Acrobat at the beginning of the ’90s, to the ubiquity of its Photoshop image application and its Illustrator drawing package, to the development and release of its new InDesign page layout program, Adobe dominated publishing systems throughout the last 10 years.

This is not to denigrate the contributions of companies large and small -- whether you're talking about Quark or NewsEngin -- but it’s clear that we wouldn't be where we are today without Adobe Systems.

It’s been a great decade and a great first 10 years for The Cole Papers.

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Holiday Cheer Desk: We here at The Cole Papers wish you a good holiday season and we thank you for your support in 1999.

At the dawn of a new decade the possibilities are boundless and we hope that your 2000 will be great.

-- David M. Cole