2003 Newspaper Technology Preview

By: Jim Rosenberg Correction:The original version of this story mistakenly reported that the Heidelberg Mainstream press ordered by The Roanoke Times was already in production. The press has not yet shipped. The new Times plant is expected to be completed this summer and the press put into production in late October. The project's progress may be viewed at http://webcam.roanoke.com. Updated at 4:10 p.m. EST.

The year ahead brings something more important than new products or processes. It provides a first look at how some new technologies fare in sustained live production.

From overall production management to smarter control of packaging, software's importance to operations will increase. And this year may see a new generation of European publishing systems marketed to American newspapers by a growing roster of mostly new suppliers. New York-based consultant Bill Rosenblatt has "high expectations" for Italy's EidosMedia because its former Unisys employees "really know the U.S. market." The others, he says, will have to fill U.S. offices with staffers who understand this market. Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps/Media Technology Strategies, sees "at least another two years" before any makes much of a mark in North America.

Unlike established competitors with big, complex systems and customer bases that may welcome upgrades but resent radical revisions, smaller startups have the advantage of designing systems and writing software from scratch for (prospective) users they cannot alienate and need not support.

As former big names in the U.S. systems market merged into other (often foreign-owned) firms, Digital Technology International (DTI) reinvented itself, aiming for high-end and overseas markets with a retooled system that went furthest in integrating new Adobe technologies. But as the number of former U.S. vendors' sites dwindles, pressure comes from imports, notably Great Dane CCI Europe on the news side and Sweden's Mactive, which appears to be top dog on the ad side.

Were it not for Y2K, says Rosenblatt, more papers would still be using Atex and System Integrators Inc. products. But needing to upgrade, U.S. newspapers (generally 18 to 24 months behind Europe in embracing new technology, according to Rosenblatt) were happy to have what the likes of CCI and Unisys were offering.

Among evolving media, a hybrid of paper and pixels that resembles ink on paper is an edition prepared for viewing on recently launched Tablet PCs. Unlike earlier electronic versions of print editions, which may be read online or as printouts, editions for the new portables are to be read offline but on-screen -- readers pick up the tablets, not printouts. NewsStand Inc. and Olive Software Inc., which pioneered the former model, are prepared to exploit the latter.

A Los Angeles Times project, undertaken with newspaper technology visionary Roger Fidler, may show a tablet edition by spring.

For hard copy, however, computer-to-plate output is spreading fast. New in the new year is the chance to see ultraviolet CTP in action on deadline. Unlike visible-light and thermal platesetting, UV uses familiar, affordable plates and processors.

Three kinds of UV exposure (frequency-multiplied diode laser, lamp with micromirror, gas laser) are going into use. Before the year is out, a fourth may appear -- a redesigned, nonlaser imager. Successful UV platesetting could capture many newspapers now resisting high CTP plate prices.

AlfaQuest Technologies Inc.'s new UV platesetter has been ordered by three midsize dailies. BasysPrint is putting its machines in papers large and small. "It's working well here," reports Mark Grunlund of two units at the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance. Two more shipped to Advance Publications' Union-News, Springfield, Mass., and the Median Supply Co. Inc. vice president and general manager says as many as four of Advance's Michigan dailies may install them. Other BasysPrint sites include the Newspaper Agency Corp., business arm of Salt Lake City's two dailies. With a litho plate imager at a commercial newspaper printer, PerkinElmer is testing, with MacDermid Printing Solutions, a model that exposes photopolymer flexo plates at American Color Graphics.

While The Courier-Journal moves to offset in Louisville, Ky., the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will preserve flexo printing despite a "desire to go with offset" during a feasibility study two years ago. To each of its six presses, "we will be adding, potentially, one more tower," says Production Director K. Michael Tomasieski.

Unless a U.S. paper jumps to six-wide printing, most attention will focus on the first four-page-wide, one-page-around (straight-only) presses to go into service. Presses from MAN Roland with a two-around blanket will run at The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, the Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, Ill., and the Union-News, Springfield. Heidelberg's gapless-blanket model already prints some big British dailies.

Springfield illustrates the incremental, evolutionary changes: digital exposure (no laser) of ordinary plates for fast offset printing (neither keyless nor waterless) using fewer plates than most doublewides.