Production All-Stars, Post-Press: Frederick J. Stanton III

By: Not Diversifying," He Says. When it decided the time had come to trim its tabloid's height, The Times Herald-Record, not surprisingly, had no shortage of vendors willing to handle the press and mailroom cutdowns ? at prices that ranged well beyond $1 million.

The problem was, the Ottaway Newspapers daily already had tapped out its capital budget on badly needed press controls and computer-to-plate conversion ? not to mention a digital inking system that saved so much ink that the return on investment was even better than the Times Herald-Record had hoped.

So, Production Director Frederick J. Stanton III took the cutdown in-house.

"The planning, the scheduling, the execution ? we already had the skill set," Stanton says of his production team. Reducing the tab from 16 to 14 inches on the two Goss Metroliner presses cost the Middletown, N.Y., daily just $100,000. The shorter tab debuted last New Year's Day.

Taking the DIY approach to the cutdown exemplified two of Stanton's philosophies. First, inculcate a "shared vision" within production ? with all on board to reach whatever goal is needed, such as hitting deadlines or reducing waste percentages.

The second philosophy is never miss a chance to reduce expenses, in good times and in bad. "Newspapers that survive in the future are the ones constantly looking to reduce expenses now," he says. "Whether through technology, materials, methods, and management of people, there are always efficiency gains. At the same time, you have to also look at improving and maintaining quality standards ? both print quality and customer service."

But then, doing it yourself is something Stanton learned at his very first newspaper job. Fresh off a two-year printing course at school in 1975, he was hired by the Port Jervis (N.Y.) Union-Gazette, then Ottaway's smallest daily and now a weekly. He worked in literally every department, writing sports stories and taking photos, composing pages, shooting negatives and burning plates, and even operating the press. "That experience," Stanton says, "kind of evolved into a love of the newspaper industry itself."

Stanton's career took him to much bigger papers. In 1981 he transferred to Ottaway's largest, the Times Herald-Record, as pressroom supervisor. After five years he moved to Hackensack, N.J., where as The Record pressroom chief, he jokes, "you didn't even know where the composing room was."

Gannett Co. hired him in 1989 to oversee a change from letterpress to offset with press maker MAN Roland's first Mediaman towers at its Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal, and later to Michigan to convert the Lansing State Journal to offset.

After Stanton returned to the Times Herald-Record as pressroom manager in 1999, he was promoted to production director and asked to build a commercial printing operation virtually from scratch.

Stanton had learned from Gannett's Poughkeepsie Journal how essential it is to calculate profit and loss on every piece of work. He learned for himself how important employee attitude is in the success of commercial work. "Employees have to look at commercial the same way they look at the core product," he says. "They can't look at it as auxiliary work or extra work."

Publishers, too, must approach commercial jobs with the proper attitude, he adds. "There's a difference between publishing a paper, and printing a paper," he says. Printing someone else's newspaper or commercial job will not return the big margins publishers expect of their own paper, and waste is likely to be higher because "there's a difference between a saleable [newspaper] copy and what a commercial printer will accept." And never hire extra staff for commercial, he warns ? make more profitable use of the people you have already.

But commercial printing is the best kind of business diversity for newspapers to embrace, Stanton argues, because they tap brand-new revenue streams rather than create products that too often compete for the same ad pool.

Career Highlights
Jack of all trades, wrote sports stories, composed pages, shot negatives, and ran press at Port Jervis (N.Y.) Union-Gazette, 1975

Pressroom supervisor, The Record, Hackensack, N.J., as it converted to mornings

Oversaw Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal conversion to offset on MAN Roland towers

Commissioned mothballed TKS tower in Lansing (Mich.) State Journal offset project

Relaunched commercial work, reduced prepress workforce and managed major budget savings as production director at Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.