By Tara McMeekin
Associate Editor

Making several newspapers available from different corners of the world is no easy task, but a seemingly necessary one when considering the diversity in demand for newspapers at this year’s Olympic Games.

Being timely with those newspapers presents a whole new dilemma, especially when the task is trying to get newspapers to Salt Lake City — a place that isn’t a direct flight from anywhere outside of the United States (and from only a handful of locations within the United States). That’s where technology comes into play. New York-based print-on-demand technology company NewspaperDirect was up to the challenge and made a slew of international newspapers available to participants and attendees at the Winter Olympics last month.

James Woloszyn, system engineer for NewspaperDirect, stands with six laser printers, which were the initial setup in the lunch room of the Salt Lake Newspaper Agency for printing international newspapers at the Winter Olympics. In all, a total of 16 Xerox and Hewlett Packard printers were set up at the SLNA to handle printing of the newspapers.

 

Newspaper titles from around the world were available at the Olympic Games for the first time this year at seven W.H. Smith locations at the Salt Lake airport and at retail locations and gas stations throughout Salt Lake City — and that’s just the beginning.

NewspaperDirect printed and sold more than 50 newspaper titles at the Winter Olympics last month.

NewspaperDirect set up camp in the lunchroom of the Salt Lake Newspaper Agency — the joint operating agreement for the Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune — to print the newspapers on Xerox and Hewlett Packard laser printers.

Ten newspapers paid a fee for special distribution in Salt Lake City: the International Herald Tribune, Neue Zurcher Zeitung of Switzerland, Aftenposten of Norway, The Daily Telegraph of the United Kingdom, Algemeen Dagblad of the Netherlands, La Stampa and Il Giornale, both of Italy, Suddeutsche Zeitung of Germany, Dong-A Ilbo of South Korea and The Washington Post. Additional newspaper titles were available at retail. For example, the hotel where the Dutch Olympic Committee stayed during the Olympics ordered 14 copies of the Netherlands’ largest daily, De Telegraaf, each day at a U.S. price of $3 each. NewspaperDirect paid a royalty for newspapers sold at retail and those were counted as paid, audited circulation.

NewspaperDirect provided a form for visitors to order in advance for certain other publications, which were delivered to specific locations on delivery trucks provided by the SLNA. After the orders were complete with NewspaperDirect, PDFs were sent and the papers were printed. It generally took seven to eight hours for all of the PDFs to come in. Because of the wide geographical area the newspapers span, PDFs came in at very different hours during the day and night.

Before making agreements with NewspaperDirect, several of the newspapers had planned on flying papers into Salt Lake City from thousands of miles away, meaning they may have been at least a day late.

The scores are in, and the numbers are impressive

Just one week into the Winter Olympics, NewspaperDirect reported that 4,000 copies of out-of-market newspapers were being printed and sold every day. Several of the newspapers being sold at retail had sold well over 500 copies before the end of week one. Aujourd’hui en France of Paris sold 637 copies by the fifth day of the Games. The National Post of Toronto sold 705 copies by the fifth day and The Globe and Mail had sold 661. Other tallies as of Feb. 13 were as follows: Mainichi Shimbun of Tokyo had sold 424 copies, Sport-Express of Moscow had sold 612 copies, Le Temps of Geneva had sold 618 copies and Gazeta Wyborcza of Warsaw, Poland had sold 105 copies.

There were also a handful of American dailies, including The Boston Globe, the New York Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, which sold into the low triple digits by week two.

As of Feb. 15, The Times of London had sold 631 copies and Vedomosti of Russia had sold 459 copies.

By the end of the Olympic Winter Games, NewspaperDirect had printed nearly 80,000 newspapers and 2 million pages — all digitally.

“This shows the total scope of our efforts and the total quantities are more impressive than just the individual newspaper single-copy sales,” said Steven Townsley, vice president of publishing at NewspaperDirect.

A safe place to be

Salt Lake City was no doubt the safest place to be in the United States between Feb. 8 and Feb. 24. While this made visitors and participants feel more secure, it put a bit of a hitch in newspaper get along, so to speak.

“The big issue was the ability/nonability of delivery trucks from the Newspaper Agency to get through security,” Townsley said. “There were a couple of bomb threats and road blockages that delayed delivery.”

Townsley said that all things considered, the project was extremely successful.

“In some cases, we were able to print tomorrow’s newspaper and deliver it the afternoon of the day before,” he said.

NewspaperDirect will also be handling the out of market printing and delivery during the World Cup soccer tournament in Japan and South Korea this June. The World Cup is a month-long international sporting event that will take place throughout 20 locations in those countries.

“What we are showing at both competitions is that digital delivery works,” Townsley said. “It extends the market of the newspaper and performs a wonderful reader service for those readers who travel or are out of market. This is the future of newspaper distribution.”

There will be 32 countries represented, and NewspaperDirect hopes to be able to offer at least one newspaper from every country.