By Mary L. Van Meter
Publisher
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. — This suburb, located
about 20 miles northwest of Chicago, is known for its racetrack, a new
performing arts center and its proximity to shopping and entertainment.
The Daily Herald’s new 165,000-square-foot
printing center will house the first 4-by-1 press installed in the United
States.
Photo by Mary L. Van Meter
It’s also home of the Daily Herald, a feisty and pioneering newspaper that
just happens to be the fifth fastest growing paper in the country. The
newspaper, founded in 1872, has aggressively taken on its much larger Chicago
competitors, offering its readers a local menu of news and opinions.
As a result, the Daily Herald has garnered a
significant share of the area’s advertising and circulation dollars.
Now, the paper (daily, 148,375; Sunday, 149,807)
is ready to blaze some trails through the commercial printing market, thanks to
the forthcoming completion of its $50 million production facility.
Douglas K. Ray (left), president and chief
executive officer of Paddock Publications Inc. and Daniel Baumann, chairman and
publisher of the Daily Herald, check over first-off copies from the RegioMAN
press.
Photo by Mary L. Van Meter
The 165,000-square-foot facility is anchored by two
RegioMAN 4-by-1 shaftless presses from MAN Roland Inc. The Herald is the first
North American newspaper to install a 4-by-1, in which only one plate goes
around a cylinder. The format is growing in popularity, with MAN Roland,
Heidelberg and Goss, among others, manufacturing presses supporting the
configuration.
“We have taken aggressive steps in order to
maintain our position and plan for growth,” said Robert E. Finch, the Daily
Herald’s vice president of process. Beyond buying the press, the paper
redesigned its layout and bolstered zoning to deliver more local coverage.
Bob Finch (left), vice president of process
for the Daily Herald and Dr. Ralf Schaedlich, director of RegioMAN projects for
MAN Roland, are all smiles following the initial press run.
Photo by Mary L. Van Meter
It was the desire to increase zoning — and the
associated plate changes zoning requires — that made it necessary for Finch to
find a press that could accommodate quick changes.
In addition, the Daily Herald wanted to reduce
overall production costs and trim the amount of plates and other waste stemming
from its production runs.
Finch said the RegioMAN — a double-wide,
eight-page press — fit the bill.
“We purchased the press because it was designed
by [a company] that knows newspaper production,” he said.
Jerry Schur, assistant vice president and
director of production project management, Stefanie Anderson, process operations
manger and Bob Finch, vice president of process for the Daily Herald, stand in
front of the new train track built for the newspaper.
Photo by Mary L. Van Meter
“In considering 4-by-1 press technology, one of
the most important factors for the Daily Herald was to reduce technology risk,”
said Vince Lapinski, MAN Roland’s senior vice president of web operations.
Lapinski said the Daily Herald’s concerns were eased because the RegioMAN
shared almost all of the same technologies and components used by other MAN
presses, thus alleviating worries that the paper might be venturing out in
choppy and untested technological waters.
One difference in the RegioMAN is the press’
use of MAN’s Microgap blanket lock-up system, which dovetails with the system’s
steel-backed blanket. According to MAN Roland, the technique enables pressmen to
quickly change blankets and enables the press to run to its 75,000-copy-per-hour
capacity without cylinder bounce.
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The Daily Herald’s RegioMAN presses consist of 12 printing units, 66 printing
couples, two 2:3:3 jaw folders with 80-page capacity, which will allow the
newspaper to run a four-section product straight and 12 reel-tension-pasters.
The press is capable of printing up to 70,000 copies per hour in straight mode,
producing 48 pages with 24 pages of process color.
The presses are controlled by MAN Roland’s
Pecom production management system. That, in turn, will be connected to ppi
Media’s PlanPag production and workflow planning application (see sidebar).
The Daily Herald will use that conduit to manage and integrate its entire
prepress workflow, said Stefanie Anderson, the paper’s process operations
manager. A PlanPag module will also let the paper oversee output and press
planning, she said.
“We needed a production management solution
[that could monitor] from ad layout to the press,” Anderson said.
PlanPag, she added, also enabled the paper to
eliminate manual work steps and printouts.
“Since we have so many zones we are looking to
reduce start-up and white waste,” she said. “We’ll also use the system to
optimize use of color.”
Driving the need for tighter integration is a new
computer-to-plate workflow, which is being enabled by the addition of two 3850
Wide/240 imagesetters manufactured by Agfa Co. unit Autologic.
The imagers are equipped with a green FD-YAG
laser that supports various silver and polymer-based plates.
Quick plate changes are enabled by the units
because the 3850 images one plate as another plate is positioned to move under
the fixed optic head. The devices are managed by Autologic’s Plateroom Manager
application, which tracks each page’s progress through the production
workflow.
