BANG keeps press running as it retools deliveries

By Chuck Moozakis
Editor In Chief

In an era where mothballing presses has become the norm, the Bay Area News Group last month launched a home delivery and distribution strategy that gives carriers more time to deliver papers and also yields enough annual savings to support the continued operation of a press slated for shutdown.
“Our goal is simple: to get papers out into the field earlier,” said BANG Publisher David Rounds.
The group, a unit of MediaNews Group Inc., publishes 11 daily newspapers in northern California, including the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and Fremont Argus. Together, BANG prints more than 240,000 newspapers each day.
BANG worked with Harding Consulting Alliance to craft the strategy, which HCA President Ken Harding likens to “monetizing minutes.”
“Whether it’s just instituting more discipline in start times or resequencing the press, basically the goal is to improve performance to drive the minutes necessary to get papers to carriers earlier,” Harding said.

Common end point
Harding said he worked with BANG execs and press management to ensure that all 11 papers got off the presses at approximately the same time.
That step, in conjunction with using fewer, larger delivery trucks, allowed BANG to get papers in the hands of subscribers more quickly, in the process reducing the amount of time and money it formerly took for distribution, Harding said.
“If you can get the carrier an additional 15 minutes, that’s significant,” he said.
Employing HCA’s workflow, dubbed Page Flow2Consumer, allowed BANG to move its press off-time up about an hour without altering news deadlines, Rounds said.
“It was good to get some fresh eyes on our operation,” he said. “We had gotten very efficient in printing the papers, but we hadn’t been able to maximize the transportation. Now we get the runs off faster, we pre-stage the zoned copies and we get everything loaded to fewer, but larger trucks,” he said.
Optimizing distribution allowed BANG to pick up some additional revenue through the distribution of the rival San Francisco Chronicle.

Restarting press
Rebalancing how it produced and distributed editions also enabled the publisher to restart a press it no longer needed at sister paper the San Jose Mercury News.
Like other publishers, BANG has seen demand for its printed editions drop, forcing the company to trim the number of presses printing its papers from four to three. BANG kept its Walnut Creek and Concord plants — with three presses between them — operating, but no longer had the circulation necessary to keep one of four presses at the Mercury News running its products.
“By showing us how to be more efficient, HCA showed us how to be more effective with our press crews,” Rounds said. “This allowed us to keep all four presses in operation instead of mothballing” the fourth machine.
“We are excited about the strategy. It will save us money, get papers to consumers earlier and give us the flexibility to do other things,” he said.
Rounds declined to disclose how much money BANG will conserve as a result of improving its distribution, but HCA said it anticipates BANG will save well in excess of $1 million annually.

Trinity firms content oversight

Photo: Trinity Mirror Trinity Mirror's new multimedia newsroom at its Fort Dunlop facility in Birmingham, England.

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

U.K. newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror Plc is consolidating content management across its properties as the company fortifies its multimedia foothold.
Trinity last year built a content management data center at its print site in Birmingham, England, to link all of its United Kingdom sites, said Chief Information Officer Toney Pusey.
“We agreed to transform the business into a multimedia company and we needed new models in all the core areas of the business,” Pusey said. “We wanted to see if there was innovative technology that would assist us.”
Trinity identified ad production and editorial as key areas for consolidation, and installed Mediaspectrum’s Web-based Media 2.0 platform, including AdWatch and ContentWatch, to anchor operations.
“We installed AdWatch in a pilot site (two years ago) and we were very impressed,” Pusey said. “We rolled that out to regional and national newspapers and we then started on ContentWatch.”

Tracking and publishing
AdWatch gives Trinity the ability to virtually track digital and print advertisements across the organization while ContentWatch allows it to publish content through multiple channels, spanning five national dailies, more than 150 regional papers and more than 400 Web sites, Pusey said.
Trinity began using ContentWatch last summer and the app is currently in use across its Midlands region titles, including those in Birmingham and Coventry, England, as well as the Scottish Daily Record. Because of the varying specifications among titles, the editorial workflow required numerous enhancements, Pusey said.

Photo: Trinity Mirror The exterior of the Fort Dunlop facility, which houses the Birmingham Post.

“This has changed the editorial model and it’s groundbreaking,” he added.
Prior to ContentWatch, Trinity’s editorial workflow consisted of separate title-specific news and picture desks. ContentWatch allows Trinity to use templated pages for copy layout, thereby combining editorial and production processes across titles and moving production up earlier in the workflow.
“We have increased the news value by cutting the time it takes for something to appear in print and online,” Pusey said. “We are looking at templates and then developing new ones for different requirements.”

Gaining efficiencies in ad workflow
On the advertising side, the Web-based AdWatch platform — now in use across Trinity’s Midlands and Southern region titles — has allowed the publisher to centralize and scale up ad production to drastically reduce the number of ad centers it operates.
“We are saving costs with fewer people and (ad production) no longer needs to be done at a certain geographic area because of the Web-based interaction,” Pusey said.
The publisher’s latest endeavor is to streamline online ad booking, with a pilot installation of Mediaspectrum’s AdSalesForce at its Southern region site. That initiative, which includes self-service classified ad booking, will free up field staff.
“We are focusing not just on getting people to use self service, but also on driving new revenues from new sources,” Pusey said. “We are doing this in a smarter, better way to appeal to customers.”

Catalyst for change
Trinity’s editorial and advertising initiatives have fueled workflow modifications through its other departments as well and Pusey said he’s seen significant changes in the way other business units are operating.
Although Trinity launched the upgrade before the recession deepened, Pusey said it’s become even more crucial for publishers to find efficiencies and improve processes.
“It is even more important to be prepared when we come out of this recession and be focused on multimedia, not just newspapers.”
Mirror at a glance
Trinity Mirror’s national titles include the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and The People in the United Kingdom as well as the Daily Record and Sunday Mail in Scotland. Its regional division operates print and digital media titles across Scotland, and throughout Britain and Wales.
Trinity’s manufacturing arm operates nine print sites across the United Kingdom, from which Trinity publishes its own titles as well as a variety of other publications. Its Midlands facility in Birmingham, built at a cost of more than $80 million, houses four Goss International Corp. Colorliner presses.

Scripps says link and be merry

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

LAS VEGAS – E.W. Scripps Co. is experimenting with a new form of storytelling that encourages newspapers to play a more active role in deciding how content about a specific issue or development is presented online.
Several Scripps-operated Web sites have incorporated the concept, dubbed link journalism, to reach readers, said Jay Small, executive director, content and product development at Scripps Interactive Newspaper Group.
“Link journalism is a way to curate the Web. You are managing the presentation of a story online to act as superintendent for all of the comments and discussion on the Web,” he said at a mediaXchange seminar.
Last year, for example, when the University of Tennessee fired its head football coach, The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel corralled links to news and commentary about his replacement from a multitude of sources, including competitors.

Bigger than Obama
“That story was much bigger in Knoxville than (the presidential election),” Small said, adding that News-Sentinel Director of News Innovation Lack Lail spent a few minutes each day for three weeks updating the Web site with new material.
Small said news relating to the coach’s replacement became the paper’s 22nd most trafficked article, generating more than 315,000 page views.
The spike in traffic was fueled in part by users reading the linked story and then returning to The News-Sentinel’s Web site to comment.
That behavior flies in the face of some Web architects who believe it’s risky to allow users to click away from the newspaper’s site to obtain additional news, but Small said he’s skeptical of those concerns.
“I don’t buy the argument that providing a list of links to other resources, to put a story in context, is going to drive people away from your site,” he said.

What works
Small said Scripps has determined that link journalism works best with issues the audience feels passionate about and stories covered by multiple sources.
“Newspapers need to have a willingness to venture beyond their kitchen and taste the competition’s cooking,” he said. “Don’t worry so much that you are linking to your competitor,” he said, adding that providing contextual links not only enhances a paper’s credibility but also elevates its search results.
Scripps has anchored its linking capabilities around software from Publish2, a news aggregation app designed specifically for journalists.
But papers can use other methods, including building their own RSS feeds or even cutting and pasting links into HTML, Small said.

MediaNews unit sets plans for tailored news

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

MediaNews Group’s Targeted Products Division said it hopes to begin testing its “individuated newspaper” concept this summer in an undisclosed market.
The project, dubbed I-News, will deliver targeted and customized newspaper content to subscribers via their home desktop computers, said Peter Vandevanter, MNG’s vice president of targeted products.
I-News is the latest step in MNG’s initiative to deliver new-form, niche products to newspaper readers (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008).
“We’re trying to create a new experience for our subscribers,” Vandevanter told Newspapers & Technology. “It will be news people choose, delivered on a home printer in conjunction with their subscription to the paper.”
Once MNG settles on a test market, I-News will be offered to interested readers who will receive their targeted content three or four days a week.
“Some newspapers make money on the big insert days and lose money on other days and that’s why publishers like Detroit have said they will no longer print on those days,” Vandevanter said. “Our idea is that we don’t want to lose these subscribers, but instead we want to better serve them.”
Detroit Media Partnership in December announced it would cut home delivery of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News to only a few days a week and devote the bulk of its editorial resources to online distribution.
DMP, which is making the shift March 30, is the first major metro to make such a move. Vandevanter said Detroit is a model he’ll be “watching like a hawk.”
“We are trying to take the best of both worlds — give people the paper when it’s valuable with inserts, etc., and then give them a product they want on other days,” he said.
MNG is also looking at ways to allocate I-News so that it will count as paid circulation in its participating papers’ Audit Bureau of Circulations numbers.
“We want to be able to grow circulation — something newspapers haven’t done in decades,” Vandevanter said.

Growing circulation

The home printer technology, currently being developed by a printing vendor that does not wish to be named, will not be tethered to a computer, Vandevanter said. Instead, users will plug in their devices into a conventional phone line in order to enable the printers to output the requested information.
The printing manufacturer participating in the test and the publisher may subsidize the price of ink and paper — up to five sheets per day — to offset users’ costs.
Vandevanter said MNG is still hashing out other I-News details, including the pricing model and how many days out readers will be able to select the news they wish to receive. MNG is also evaluating how to pair targeted advertising with users’ content.
Meantime, MNG is continuing its research on the role high-speed digital printers might play in the future of personalized newspapers. To that end, it’s working with Océ to develop suitable workflow options to drive I-News and other potential products.
MediaNews’ Targeted Products Group is one of a number of companies mulling the future of customized newspapers. The Washington Times and German software developer Syntops are also developing their own initiatives (see Newspapers & Technology, February 2009).

Reading Eagle spreads wings

By Chuck Moozakis
Editor-In-Chief

The Reading (Pa.) Eagle last month went on-edition with its new Koenig & Bauer AG Colora Berliner press, becoming the second North American paper to embrace the format.
The family-owned newspaper (daily, 58,532; Sunday, 78,567) in 2007 ordered the Colora as part of a $33 million project that added a new press hall to its downtown facility.
“When we made this commitment, we viewed it as an opportunity to take a hard look at our entire business model,” Associate Publisher Larry Orkus told Newspapers & Technology. “We’ve recommitted to our franchise, which is Berks County news and information, and we did a lot of listening to our readers, advertisers and commercial customers.”
The doublewide press is configured as four eight-couple towers, totaling 32 printing couples. It’s equipped with a double KF3 folder (2:3:3/2:3:3) with variable web width capability, and sports five formers for newspaper and semi-commercial production.

Photo: Ryan McFadden Left to right, Eagle Production Manager Mike Engle, Associate Publisher Larry Orkus and Publisher William S. Flippin, next to the paper's new press.It's also engineered with a plow former, two-part section stitcher and quarterfolder. The Eagle also decided to add a gluing system to the machine.

Saying adieu to flexo
The press is replacing a 38-year-old Goss International Corp. press, which the Eagle converted from letterpress to flexo in the mid-1990s. The paper also operates a singlewide flexo press to handle some commercial work, which will continue in operation for the time being, Orkus said.
EAE provided the control software, which allows press operators to produce a variety of products, simultaneously.
The Eagle built a 77,000-square-foot addition — designed by Reading-based Muhlenberg Greene Architects — to house the press, distribution and packaging operations. The expanded building will allow the Eagle to sell its existing packaging facility, currently located a few blocks away from the main plant.
In switching to the new press, the Eagle is converting from a broadsheet measuring 22.75 inches high and 12.5 inches wide to a fully-sectioned Berliner broadsheet 18.5 inches high and 11.5 inches wide.

Photo: Ben Hasty The Eagle spent more than $33 million to expand its downtown office to accommodate the new press.

The Colora will enable the Eagle to produce as many as 48 color pages in the daily paper, substantially boosting the color capacity it possessed with its legacy press. It will also let the newspaper produce five sections each day and ensure that popular features will be anchored in the same section consistently.
In promoting the new format and press, Orkus said the Eagle consciously avoided describing its new size as Berliner.
“That’s just confusing to our readers,” he said, describing the term as “industry jargon.” Instead, the Eagle marketed the format as being “more convenient and more compact,” Orkus said.

Off-center fold
The Eagle’s new format differs a bit from that of the Journal & Courier in Lafayette, Ind., which converted to Berliner in 2006. The Journal & Courier, like other broadsheets, is folded at its midpoint. The Eagle, by contrast, sports an off-center fold, with a lap of approximately 8.5 inches.

The Eagle converted from broadsheet to Berliner, becoming the second North American daily to embrace the format.

The asymmetrical fold will enable the Eagle to use existing newsracks without modifying them. And it will also allow postpress operators to insert circulars without worrying about the finished edition’s appearance, Orkus said.
“The conversion is almost a non-issue,” he said, citing focus group meetings the paper has conducted with readers and advertisers. “We didn’t get a single negative. We informed people that we are not going to give you less, but we will give you more. The paper has been completely redesigned, and color-coded into five sections.”
To further lay the groundwork for the conversion, Orkus said Eagle editors met with their counterparts at the Journal & Courier to get their input.
“We knew this would change every single department and affect how we write and edit, how we layout and design and how we sell.” The Eagle’s independent and family-owned culture also seasoned expectations. “We viewed this as a chance to go back to our readers and advertisers to get input from them” regarding the change. “It’s what you need to do. We encountered vociferous reactions from our readers, who continually described the Eagle as ‘my paper.’ We respected that loyalty.”

Commercial boost
The change should fuel an uptick in commercial work, Orkus said. The company already produces a wide variety of commercial products for clients ranging from local retailers to the minor league baseball team.
Now the Eagle is ready to court new customers, including nearby newspapers.
“It’s important to acknowledge that whatever economic assumptions were made three or four years ago” when the press decision was originally made “are now in a state of flux,” Orkus said. “And since this decision was made, the concept of outsourcing has gotten traction and we have been contacted by other papers” interested in adopting the Eagle’s format as their own.
“We won’t know until the phone rings. And we will spend as much as it takes to help newspapers evolve with the new design. We have done a lot of homework. That’s a positive value to others, and someone with vision will take advantage of it.”
In addition to the press, the Eagle upgraded its prepress, adopting a computer-to-plate system engineered by Southern Lithoplate’s CTP Alliance. The digital foundation incorporates two Screen (USA) PlateRite 2000LE thermal platesetters, SLP’s Viper 630 thermal plates and ProImage’s NewsWay workflow software.
The lines feed into a punch bending and plate management system from Burgess Industries Inc.

Double-digit savings
Goss International Corp., meantime, supplied NP200 gripper conveyor, some new conveyor belts and modified the Eagle’s existing 30-hopper 632 inserter to accommodate the paper’s new format. It will also oversee moving the inserter from the Eagle’s existing packaging center to the expanded site as soon as possible, Orkus said.
Until the inserter is moved, the Eagle will use The Patriot in Harrisburg, Pa., to provide Sunday inserting, he said.
The switch in format and the new design should yield the Eagle newsprint and consumables savings in excess of 15 percent, but Orkus said economics played only a part of the paper’s motivation to upgrade its infrastructure.
“In our opinion, what the rest of the industry is doing” in mulling new formats and taking steps to reduce expenses “is not our concern,” Orkus said. “It’s our commitment to readers, advertisers and commercial customers. That’s what drove most of our decision-making.
“We did not acquiesce to the common self-deprecating self-analysis of newspapers in general.”
Bruce Richardson, eastern sales manager of KBA North America’s web division, said the Eagle’s conversion to offset printing and Berliner format will benefit the community.
“It’s been a great newspaper to work with,” he said. “We’re excited about the project and the format.”
The Eagle used ink supplier US Ink’s UseIT coldset press simulation program as part of its press operator training efforts. The program is priced on a per-user, per-hour basis.
It also tapped The Busby Group to provide process analysis consulting help throughout the project.

Paper seeing real savings with ink optimization

By Tara McMeekin
Editor

The Tyler (Texas) Morning Telegraph ramped up its initiative to reduce color ink usage when the publisher went live with OnColor Eco ink optimization software from ProImage at the end of 2008.
The Telegraph (daily, 35,600; Sunday, 39,100) deployed OnColor Eco ink optimization software from ProImage, said Andrew Clyde, chief operating officer.
The daily nearly two years ago began evaluating ink optimization as a cost-saving measure, Clyde said.
“It started at Nexpo in 2007 and there were 10 or more vendors selling software and we narrowed it down to two and then at Nexpo last year we focused in on those two,” he said.
The decision to go with ProImage was based on the performance of the software and on the fact that the publisher had an existing NewsWay workflow.
“It was a separate install on a separate server and it integrates really well with NewsWay — there’s nothing to it,” said IT technician John Huseth. “Everything goes through NewsWay and then through OnColor and back to NewsWay for page pairing.”
OnColor Eco leverages GCR technology to reduce ink consumption on offset presses. The app analyzes EPS or PDF files to determine the amount of ink necessary to produce the best quality, according to ProImage. EPS files from The Telegraph’s APT front-end software are sent through OnColor Eco for ink optimization and to NewsWay for page pairing and finally to one of the two Fuji Luxel V-6 violet CTP imaging devices used to produce plates for the paper.
ROI under one year
“I believe we will pay for the software, installation and hardware in less than 12 months,” Clyde said. “Any time we have a product that has an 11-14 month ROI, we can capitalize and reduce expense.”
That ROI, Clyde said, is based on ink and waste savings.
The anticipated savings are being quickly realized, according to the reporting function of OnColor, which tallies and logs ink usage on every page of the publication to determine the savings, according to Huseth, who uses that information to generate monthly reports for the publisher.
For the month of December 2008, The Telegraph reported total ink savings of 13.7 percent and total cost saving of 25.5 percent, according to Clyde. January numbers were 12.7 percent and 21.4 percent, respectively.
In addition to the significant ink savings, The Telegraph is seeing increased consistency, faster startup and less waste with OnColor.
“We had to lower the ink settings and water curve because it’s using less ink and water to start the press up,” he said. “Plates also clean up faster on startup because they aren’t carrying unnecessary ink — and printing is more consistent from start to finish.”
And there’s been no skimping on quality, Clyde said.
“Things look better — you can tell a difference.”

A front page produced before the publisher deployed ProImage’s OnColor Eco (above) and a front page produced using the software (below).

Minn. newspaper printer reducing ink
Minnesota newspaper printer Cannon Valley Printing began using Kodak’s Ink Optimizing Service in a bid to decrease ink consumption, reduce waste and makeready time, enhance reproduction fidelity and improve stability on press, Kodak said.
“With the Ink Optimizing Service, we no longer have many of the reproduction quality issues caused by images that come in without proper editing,” said Roger Stolley, general manager of Cannon Valley Printing. “We’ve seen substantial improvements to the quality of photographs printed in our newspapers and realized significant savings on ink.”
Kodak’s Ink Optimizing Service is an ICC DeviceLink profile plug-in to the vendor’s Prinergy Evo workflow app, which Cannon also uses. The ICC DeviceLink profile leverages GCR to replace CMY inks with less-expensive black ink, while limiting the total area coverage to a predefined level.
Cannon Valley Printing, a division of Mainstream Publications in Northfield, Minn., produces two dailies, the Owatonna People’s Press and the Fairbault News, as well as 14 weeklies for its parent company. It also prints 30 outside weekly, monthly and bi-montly publications.
Cannon Valley Printing also uses Kodak’s Staccato screening app, two Kodak Trendsetter News thermal platesetters and Kodak NS digital plates.

Papers eager for e-reader growth of smart phones, e-readers

By Marcelo Duran

Associate Editor

Like a digital Swiss Army knife, newspapers are offering different ways to access their content — whether by broadband, mobile or air.

Fueling the growth: the increasing popularity of mobile phones, particularly smart phones, in the U.S. marketplace (see box).

Penetration is expected to grow even further as mobile readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle and devices from other vendors, gain traction.

Amazon Kindle

As a result, newspapers are accelerating their deployment of software enabling smart phone and e-readers users to view and interact with their content. More than 60 percent of the top U.S. newspapers now offer some type of mobile news service, according to the Bivings Group, and that number is expected to increase.

The New York Times, which launched its iPhone software last year and its mobile site in 2006, is eager to capture more readers, and advertisers, from its mobile marketing efforts, said Robert Samuels, director of mobile products.

“Since our launch we’ve overhauled the formatting quite a few times and added a lot of functionality including the ability to send articles via text messaging,” he said.

Additionally, the paper has spiced up its mobile offerings with content from more than 40 blogs on mytimes.com, video, podcasts, and a slideshow containing the day’s most significant pictures.

As a result, site traffic has soared, growing from 500,000 page views per month in January 2007 to more than 30 million page views in December 2008.

Apple boost

Last summer’s launch of software tailored to iPhone and iPod Touch users further accelerated traffic, Samuels said.

The 3G-compatible phone made it possible for The Times to pump its mobile content by enabling more graphically intensive features, audio and video feeds.

“As the networks grow faster, the browsers get better and eventually support for content will make it similar to how a PC browser works,” Samuels said. “Eventually you’ll see support for Flash and we’ll find most of the content indistinguishable between a mobile or regular Web site.

The Times uses an automated process, based on industry-standard XML, to transfer content from its content management software to its mobile sites.

The Times has also seen advertiser interest grow, especially as the paper offers companies the ability to target their campaigns to users depending upon the devices they use to access Times content.

“We work with ad networks and it has gone very well in 2008, we had tremendous growth over 2007,” Samuels said. “And already in 2009 we’ve had strong interest from blue-chip-rated advertisers from auto to tourism and we’ll see a lot of ads on the iPhone client and the mobile site in the coming year.”

Kindle calling

Meantime, The Times is mulling how to expand distribution of its content to e-reader users. The paper has offered a Kindle edition since 2007 and Samuels said The Times has been pleased with the success and growth on the platform.

“I can’t speak to exact numbers but you can see with the sales rankings on Amazon.com and in most cases we’ve been in the top 3 best selling newspapers,” he said.

Kindle subscribers receive updated daily editions through the device’s WiFi connection and can access about 30 U.S. and international papers, including USA Today — which charges Kindle subscribers $12 a month — The Washington Post, San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News and The Irish Times.

Samuels said The Times is experimenting and in discussions with several other electronic reader companies to offer the paper on their platforms (see box).

“Whatever way our users and readers want to consume the NYT content we’ll offer them as many opportunities as we can whether it’s print or if it’s on their phone or mobile device,” Samuels said.

Newsworld taps Screen in project to produce newspapers in Gulf

Newsworld Corp. said it’s partnered with Atlas Media Communications for the digital production of U.K., European and U.S. newspaper titles in the Gulf region.

The deal includes a $2.6 million investment in a Screen Truepress Jet 520 digital press, which could be commissioned as early as April, Newsworld said. Through its “distribute then print” service launched in 2007, Newsworld leverages and pairs publishers with printing outlets equipped with a Screen digital press and Hunkeler inline finishing system.

“This area is of great interest to publishers who are looking to reach the increasing number of business executives, expatriates and visitors to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Kuwait with timely, relevant news and information,” said John Ashfield, chairman of Newsworld.

Meantime, Newsworld this month began distributing Associated Newspapers’ Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday to New York residents.

The papers are produced on a Truepress Jet 520 press under a deal with New Jersey-based AlphaGraphics (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008).

“As we continue to invest in this technology and form partnerships worldwide, we are opening up a very exciting opportunity for newspaper publishers to grow their brand, not only locally but in a more effective and efficient way,” said Newsworld’s David Renouf.

Trib goes tab for single copies

By Chuck Moozakis

Editor-In-Chief

The Chicago Tribune last month unveiled a tabloid version of the venerable broadsheet daily, earmarked for weekday single-copy sales.

“Many consumers have been telling us that they wanted more ‘friendly’ packaging, while insisting the edition include  all the useful, high-quality news and information that’s in the broadsheet,” said Publisher Tony Hunter. “They asked and we delivered.”

Becky Brubaker, the Tribune’s senior vice president of manufacturing and distribution, said the paper will probably print “upwards” of 75,000 copies of the tab Monday through Friday.

Production challenges associated with printing the tab will be minimal, she said.

“We just have to lay out the paper twice,” Brubaker said, adding that the Tribune ‘s CCI Europe front-end software can easily handle the new workflow.

The paper is working with advertisers that may need to resize their ads to accommodate the tab, which will measure 12 inches wide and slightly over 12 inches tall.

The Tribune will earmark one of its 10 Goss International Corp. presses to produce the tab version.

 Same content for both

Brubaker said content, color and ads in the tab will exactly mirror the information published in the broadsheet Tribune, and that the company has no plans to alter the broadsheet version now delivered to subscribers.

“We don’t believe in a compact for home delivery, but we’re in a very heavy commuter market that already has a successful tab (the Chicago Sun-Times),” Brubaker said. “In the end, this will give us a chance to attract more readers and to create more interest in the product.”

Tribune already prints the tabloid Red Eye, which is geared to younger readers and available for free. The tab Trib will retail for 75 cents, the same price as the broadsheet version.

The Tribune isn’t the first paper to experiment with producing a tab version of its broadsheet product. In 2005, The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., launched a compact edition called The Patriot. The tab contained condensed versions of the articles printed in The Patriot-News. It lasted about six months before the publisher shut it down.

Chicago venture attempting to marry blogs, printed papers in U.S. rollout

By Chuck Moozakis

Editor-In-Chief

In a twist to print-to-Web migration, a Chicago startup last month began producing a printed newspaper based on content posted on blogs and other online sites.

The Printed Blog produced its first paper Jan. 27 for distribution in two Chicago neighborhoods, said Joshua Karp, who founded the company.

For now, the paper will be produced weekly, and only in Chicago, but plans are to print a twice-daily print publication for distribution in city neighborhoods nationwide.

“The printed newspaper isn’t going away,” Karp said. “I believe people still enjoy the tactile experience of reading a printed newspaper and I don’t believe the emotional experience you receive from reading a paper will be replaced by an iPhone or a BlackBerry. They are great devices, but it’s not the same experience.”

Automatic formatting

Karp said Chicago versions of The Printed Blog will be produced by “franchisees” equipped by the firm with color printers. The content will be accumulated and edited by a team of staffers in Karp’s downtown Chicago office. Karp said he’s written proprietary software that will automatically funnel the laid-out content to the appropriate site for printing and distribution.

“We have 11 different types of modules that can be formatted automatically, so it’s more of a feed,” he said. “As editors select the content, it will be formatted into one of the modules.” Ads will be added, and the completed document will “go out the door,” he said.

The papers are designed to be printed on 11-by-17-inch pieces of paper, in full color.

Local support

Karp said he believes he can profitably support The Printed Blog by tapping local merchants for advertising.

“When you buy an ad for, say, Red Eye, it might cost $1,000 for all 200,000 copies,” he said. “With us, you can buy an ad for the location that’s best targeted to your local operation, and at a fraction of the cost.”

The Printed Blog is not the only venture attempting to marry electronic information with the printed page. The Bakersfield Californian is in the midst of a two-year project to develop a model, dubbed Printcasting, which allows readers to customize publications containing content from participating blogs and newspaper Web sites (see Newspapers & Technology, September 2008).

The Californian hopes to launch its first Printcasting publications later this year.