Production: A Modern World

By: Nu Yang

It was a long time coming when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made the announcement in March 2013 that it was moving its production to a new building 15 miles outside of its current downtown location.

According to director of operations Lisa Hurm, parent company Block Communications, Inc. had been looking into the process for about 20 years. The company had looked at every option and partnership, and even considered outsourcing its printing project, but Hurm said they were never able to find a “good source locally.”

“Pittsburgh has a strong readership market,” she said. “We wanted to make sure we maintained a quality newspaper and kept our deadlines, which is important in such a huge sports town.”

After the paper got the go-ahead that spring, the hunt was on for a new location. They found it in a 245,000 square foot building in Clinton, Pa.—a former solar panel manufacturing facility equipped to house new presses, along with printing and production, paper storage, offices and distribution. Previously, all operations were spread out between four different facilities throughout the Pittsburgh area. Now, everything could operate under one roof.

Hurm declined to comment on financial terms, but said the total cost of the project was a tenth of the cost that was projected in 2000.

Renovations started in January 2014. By April, all of the equipment was installed. Goss International Corp. in Durham, N.H. built the new Uniliner presses, replacing the original letterpress/flexo press equipment that dated back to the 1950s. According to the Post-Gazette, the new presses can now produce up to 48 pages in full-color at three times the speed of the letterpress/flexo units, and can turn out 90,000 newspapers per hour. Additional equipment included a new Harland Simon control system and desk, Ferag HPS stackers, Puzzleflow prepress automatic and optimization software, Krause CTP lines and Bluefin processors, Nela plate punch/bend and bin sortation system, and a QI color registration system.

The facility came to life in stages: first with insertions in mid-April, then in early September, the first print edition of the Post-Gazette rolled off the presses at its new location. Hurm said the first night was “nerve-wrecking,” but she soon let out a sigh of relief as the “first run was picture perfect.” Since then, the paper has never missed an edition.

To undergo this kind of process didn’t come lightly for Hurm. There was a reduction in staff—138 employees were let go from the operations side. The team members who were moving to the new facility spent several months training, learning the new digital equipment.

“Our biggest challenge was that we were still running the downtown facility at the same time as the new one,” Hurm said.

There was also a complete restructuring when it came to distribution, single copy routes and trucking, she added.

The paper also reduced in size decreasing from a 12-inch broadsheet into an 11-inch-by-21-inch newspaper.

Over the course of a few months, Hurm said they were able to make a “massive leap” with their printing equipment and technology. Due to that improved efficiency, products, such the weekly TV magazine, special sections, comics and advertising jackets, can now be done in-house as opposed to being outsourced.

Moving forward, Hurm said the paper will look into printing commercial work for outside customers. She also expects the new facility to expand by the first quarter next year in order to house more departments.  

“Our goals are to increase the quality of our work, improve our off time, and find commercial accounts,” she said.

Hurm said there were many lessons learned during the process, and she advises any newspaper who may be in the same boat to maintain good relationships with vendors and to invest in employee training.

According to the most recent Alliance for Audited Media report, total print average circulation for the Post-Gazette is 116,365 with a Sunday circulation of 188,363.