Newspapers Pursue Production Plant Projects

By: Jim Rosenberg Recession or no, newspapers nationwide are pursuing production-plant projects -- including plans to put a new plant in a new planned city, as well as a fresh start for a recently divorced joint-operating-agreement partner.

As the economy was slumping into recession, the New York Post's new river-view plant went into production, and it's been a busy year ever since. Alabama alone had at least four projects in progress, ranging from planning to near completion. By early fall, The St. Augustine (Fla.) Record's entire staff had moved into new quarters; the Johnson Newspaper Corp. was nearing completion of a 17,000-square-foot plant in Massena, N.Y., where a 12-unit Dauphin Graphic Machines model 440 will take over from two other sites now printing three dailies (and two weeklies) other than the publisher's flagship Watertown Daily Times; construction continued at Advance Publications' Syracuse (N.Y.) Newspapers and at the King County (Wash.) Journal Newspapers; companies in the early stages of projects included suburban-Chicago's Paddock Publications Inc. and Pennsylvania's Calkins Newspapers; and Advance's Booth Newspapers Inc. in Michigan was seeing a spurt of projects resulting from production modernization.

The day after Thanksgiving, The Roanoke (Va.) Times broke ground for its $31.6-million, 52,000-square-foot plant. To be linked by a skywalk to the paper's current building, the production facility's press hall will rise 70 feet over six towers of the country's first Heidelberg Mainstream press -- to be visible through a glass-and-brick front wall. Roanoke was an early computer-to-plate (CTP) site, and project director Chip Harris earlier cited savings from the one-plate-around, four-page-wide Mainstream's "significant" savings on plate and processing chemistry costs. Harris also credited Heidelberg's engineers with "working closely with our architects and contractors in planning the design of our new press facility."

Another so-called 1-by-4 or straight-only press, a Regioman from MAN Roland, was selected for a project announced early this year, after the Hawaii Newspaper Agency ended with the purchase and separate operation of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Toward its 2004 operating target, "everything seems to be going as planned," said Marty Black, The Honolulu Advertiser's production director since April, after being lured from his job as The Seattle Times' prepress manager by Advertiser Production Vice President Bill Bogert, who is focusing attention on the new-plant project.

The 152,098-circulation Gannett Co. Inc. daily will erect a 150,000-square-foot building close to Oahu's east-west highway, on 11.6 acres in Kapolei -- a master-planned second city about 20 miles west of Honolulu, across Pearl Harbor in Honolulu County. Created by the Campbell Estate, a trust that must divest its holdings by 2007, Kapolei is designed for self-sufficiency and global business, with industrial, commercial/retail, residential, agricultural, resort, and recreation areas, plus schools, government buildings, and its own harbor.

"It was just about the only place on the island where we could get the space we needed and build there, too," said Black, "There's not that much space left on the island."

The Advertiser retained MAN-affiliate Eurografica, whose architects and engineers will work with local design firm AM Partners. Gannett is spending an estimated $81 million to build and equip the plant, where fewer than 300 will work, mostly in platemaking, printing, and packaging. "We don't know how many people we're really going to need in the new mailroom," Black said, noting that the number depends on inserting needs and how part timers are counted.

The building also will house a few administrative and circulation staffers, an ad-sales office, and a small news bureau. The main offices and newsroom will remain at the site they've occupied for 72 years.

Black explained that unusual storage needs probably account for the plant being larger than what Gannett ordinarily would build for a paper the size of the Advertiser. Owing to its distance from mills and reliance on shipping, rather than truck or rail, the paper wanted space to store 14 weeks' worth of newsprint. Headroom in a 30,000-square-foot warehouse will fit six-high stacks of full rolls.

The move to a new plant will leave behind the letterpress -- Goss Mark II and Hoe Colormatic equipment. Thanks to a single-wide, two-around Goss Urbanite that prints commercial jobs and the paper's "TGIF" and real-estate sections, however, operators are familiar with offset.

In properly aligning its plates, said Black, "the two-around press is a little bit problematic in color register." He said he hopes "that register is going to be a lot tighter" on straight runs on the one-around Regioman.

A quality boost also may come from CTP imaging, when Honolulu sends Kapolei RIP'd bitmap files for direct output to platesetters. And here, the high-speed one-around will offer savings by halving the number of premium-priced laser-imaged plates that are needed.

Decisions have not been made on platemaking, but, should the plant become a USA Today print site, CTP output would be used for the national daily and platesetting of pages for the local daily also could be expected, especially given the economies possible with the 1-by-4 press. Gannett Production Vice President Mark S. Mikolajczyk did not return calls for comment on production plans for Honolulu.

Similarly, neither systems nor vendors have been selected to equip the mailroom, where, in addition to the 35,000 square feet allocated for post-press processing, 9,000 square feet will be reserved for preprint storage.

As for the press, the 12 in-line, four-high, eight-couple (four-color on both sides) Regioman towers, two folders with three-high formers, and 14 reelstands will allow simultaneous printing of two newspapers of up to 56 pages, with 40 in full color by running two black-only webs (spot color is possible but unlikely) through each of the fifth and 11th towers, or one 64-page all-color paper by running eight webs through eight towers ("the USA Today option" of four 16-page sections).

Running two black-only webs through the two "split" towers, said Black, is thought to be "the best way to give us more page capacity when necessary," without having to install additional floor units or cope with the color-placement complications of four-color-over-black (five-couple) towers. Black did not disclose details about press auxiliaries or controls.