Agfa: Wilmington closure will not affect newspaper segment

Agfa today told Newspapers & Technology that its decision to cease computer-to-plate product manufacturing in Wilmington, Mass., will have no impact on the newspaper segment.

“There were no newspaper products being made at that facility,” said Marketing Director Susan Wittner. “We have printing plate plants around the world and in another month we will be upgrading our Branchburg, N.J., plant — where we currently manufacture newspaper plates and chemistries in the U.S. — for additional capabilities and capacity, including future plates such as violet chem-free and next-generation violet photopolymer.”

Agfa last week announced plans to halt CTP platesetter manufacturing at the Mass. plant, which currently produces some of its Avalon platesetters for the commercial printing segment. The production of Avalon will now be shifted to one of Agfa’s existing OEM partners, Wittner said, adding that Agfa will give more details on that at its pre-drupa press conference in March. Agfa did confirm that 150 manufacturing jobs will be lost at the Wilmington plant.

Agfa has not manufactured newspaper platesetters in the U.S. since the vendor outsourced production of that segment to Punch Graphix several years ago.

“This Wilmington change did not affect anything in the newspaper portfolio,” Wittner said. “Every product that was made for newspapers and coldset will be made in the same places they were before.”

In addition to commercial printing manufacturing, Wilmington houses offices for service and other support operations, which will remain unaffected, Agfa said.

 

Belo updates spin off plans

Belo Corp. provided an update on its plan to spin off its newspaper businesses and related assets into a separate publicly traded company.

A. H. Belo will own and operate The Dallas Morning News, the Providence (R.I.) Journal, the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., and various Web sites associated with these properties, the company said.

The company will also publish specialty publications targeting young adults and the fast-growing Hispanic market, including Quick and Al Dia in Dallas/Fort Worth and La Prensa in Riverside, Belo said.

Robert W. Decherd will be chairman, president and chief executive officer of A. H. Belo Corp., while Matthew B. Bieri was named as chief information officer.

Polkadots notches sales

Polkdatos Software announced Newsflo sales to several North American newspapers.

Papers to recently install Newsflo workflow products include the Republican-American in Waterbury, Conn., the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., the weekly community Dauphin (Manitoba) Herald and Transcontinental Qualimax in Gastineau, Quebec, which produces the daily Le Droit d’Ottawa, and a dozen weekly newspapers.

Cannon gets contracts

Cannon Equipment said The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., installed two press belt stream delivery systems and a dock distribution system including truck loaders.

The Indianapolis Star, meantime, is upgrading its Cannon bundle distribution system to accommodate new inserting capabilities. The upgrade will mesh the system with mailroom management software from Burt Technologies Inc., Enternet and MMSI.

Finally, the Plattsburgh (N.Y.) Press Republican purchased a Comet stacker while the Daily News-Sun in Sun City, Ariz., tapped Cannon to install a label conveyor as an accessory to its existing press delivery system.

Atex launches DNA platform

Atex announced DNA, the company’s integrated Digital News and Advertising platform. DNA builds upon the common database architectures of Atex advertising, content management and circulation software, coupled with Web services and open interface standards, to deliver a unified portal framework supporting all print, online, video and mobile media channels, Atex said.

“Atex has spent the past 18 months listening intently to our media customers, and we consistently hear that newsrooms and advertising departments need to break down the borders between print and digital media,” said Chief Executive Officer John Hawkins. “Our primary objective is to provide the tools and services that form a framework for Atex DNA customers to create new revenue sources, build digital communities, engage younger audiences, increase the value of news and advertising content for all media channels, and reduce the total cost of technology ownership.”

In addition to the integration components, the Atex DNA suite includes several new software products, which can be implemented locally or run under a managed Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Products include the Atex Advertising Marketplace ad portal.

Charlotte picks Affinity for outsourcing pact

The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer said it is outsourcing ad production jobs to Affinity Express, following the lead of sister McClatchy Co. papers The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., The State in Columbia, S.C., and The Telegraph in Macon, Ga.

The newspaper said the move will cost 25 of 41 ad design jobs and be completed by May 31.

The paper quoted Observer Publisher Ann Caulkins saying the shift will save the paper between 35 percent and 40 percent on labor costs.

Affinity, based in suburban Chicago, operates facilities in India and The Philippines. Last year it teamed up with Mediaspectrum to use its ad production tracking software to underpin its service.

In addition to the McClatchy papers, Affinity provides ad production for The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.

Several of McClatchy’s California papers, including The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, use outsourcer Express KCS to handle ad production.

Canadian printer taps WPC

McLaren Press Graphics of Bracebridge, Ontario, ordered three Quad-Stack units and associated peripheral equipment through Web Press Corp. McLaren provides publishers and marketers with web and offset printing services.

The Quad-Stack units, equipped with double oscillation, will add two new webs of 4-color, and will replace two, two-high Goss Community presses, which were being used to print one 4-color web. The units will be part of a line that consists of one four-high Community and three DGM 430 four-high units, giving a total of 7 full-color webs.

NYDN offering free downloads

The (New York) Daily News is offering readers free music downloads through a partnership with EMI Music.

The promotion will give Daily News readers the chance to obtain three songs of their choice from EMI’s selection of more than 120,000 tracks, the paper said.

Editions of the Feb. 3 and Feb. 10 Daily News will contain an insert with a unique access code that will allow readers to download music from the paper’s Web site.

Among the tracks available is an unreleased song from Ringo Starr’s new album, the Daily News said.

The Daily News isn’t the first paper to try to woo readers with music. Last summer, British newspaper The Mail on Sunday distributed copies of Prince’s Planet Earth CD in a promotion so successful the paper had to boost its press run by more than 500,000 copies.

In September, The Mail on Sunday took multimedia distribution a step further when it gave readers copies of a movie premiere.

4 papers wrap up AdStar installations

The Star-Ledger, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and St. Louis Post-Dispatch are among the newspapers to recently install Web-based Ad Sales software from AdStar Inc.

The online app automates ad development and placement, allowing customers to create print and online advertisements for vertical classified ad markets, AdStar said.

AdStar's technology is used on Philly.com’s auto; real estate and recruitment classified advertising channels. The recruitment ad channel is also integrated with Monster.com, Philly.com's partner for job postings.

The online edition of The Star Ledger, recently launched its AdStar-powered real estate advertising channel and will be installing AdStar's technology for auto, recruitment and general merchandise advertisements.

AdStar also completed the installation for recruitment advertisements at the Dispatch’s STLtoday.com and is in the process of installing its technology for the newspaper's auto, real estate and general merchandise advertising channels.

PAGE sets meetings

The PAGE Cooperative said it is hosting three member and prospective-member meetings at upcoming industry events.

The first will be held Wednesday, Feb. 21 at the Suburban Newspapers of America spring publishers conference in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

The second is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 26 at the Inland Press Key Executives Conference in Bonita Springs, Fla., and the third is set for Wednesday, March 12 at America East in Hershey, Pa.

PAGE is comprised of independently owned daily and non-daily general interest newspapers.

More information is available at www.pagecooperative.com.

MetaCarta offers GeoTagger

MetaCarta Inc. introduced GeoTagger OnDemand, a hosted service that identifies the places and points of interest mentioned in text documents, Web pages and blogs and relates them to their appropriate latitude and longitude coordinates.

The service allows the points to be automatically displayed on maps, retrieved through a variety of search engines or dynamically displayed with other geographically relevant content.  

GeoTagger OnDemand uses MetaCarta’s proprietary natural language processing and geographic data module technology to identify and disambiguate geographic references and resolve the geographic meaning and location intended, the vendor said.

In Brief:

The McClatchy Co. named George McCanless as president and publisher of The Telegraph in Macon, Ga.

John Kerr was named to the new position of director of multimedia sales development for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. and PE.com.

The Wall Street Journal rolled out SeenThis?, a social networking service that lets wsj.com users see which Journal articles are most popular on Facebook and other social networking sites. The service is based on software from San Francisco-based Loomia Inc.

www.loomia.com

 

Ifra said that IfraExpo will again be held in Vienna, from Oct.12-15, marking the expo’s second visit to the Austrian city. Ifra cited high levels of satisfaction among both visitors and exhibitors with Vienna and the exhibition center last year as well as good cooperation between Ifra and Reed Messe Wien.

www.ifraexpo.com
 

The Irish Times and The Weekly Irish Times will be the first Irish titles to join ProQuest Historical Newspapers, making more than 147 years of coverage from the independent Irish newspapers searchable for the first time.

The archives from both papers, which include more than 17 million pages dating from 1764, will be cross- searchable, ProQuest said.

www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/pq-hist-news.shtml