'Shreveport Times' To Go Berliner With Wifag Press

By: E&P Staff Another Gannett Co. is adopting the Berliner format.

The Times in Shreveport, La., said it will move to the format when its new $15 million press and production plant come on line in 2010.

With the installation of the reconditioned Wifag offset press, no Gannett newspaper will print on a letterpress press. The Times' current press, a Goss Headliner, was installed in 1961.

Gannett is getting the press under a contract with Graphic Web Systems B.V. of The Netherlands. The press is currently in use in Switzerland, and is to be dismantled in 2008, according to a report in Graphic Repro, the South African trade publication.

The Wifag 0F790, built in 1991, has 4x4-color printing towers, two folders, and six reelstands.

Graphic Web Systems will modify the pres to accommodate the narrower Berliner format.

In making the announcement, Times Publisher Pete Zanmiller said the press will allow more color and crisper printing in a new format.

"We believe print is here to stay even though the Internet is a bigger part of what we do," Zanmiller said in a Times story by Diane Haag. "This press will allow us to give a modern-day paper to the city."

Gannett's Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind., was the first U.S. daily to adopt the Berliner format.