By Tara McMeekin
Editor

Nearly one year ago, North Jersey Media Group implemented Pape + Partner Media’s workflow system at its daily newspaper production plant in Hackensack, N.J.

Today, the newspaper publisher is ready to flip the switch on another ppi system to anchor its commercial newspaper production plant in Rockaway, N.J.

North Jersey Media has been using ppi’s workflow in Hackensack to print The Record (serving Hackensack and Bergen County) and The Herald News (serving State County). The publisher also uses the facility to print one commercial account, an edition of Investor’s Business Daily. 

Rich Duran (seated), information technology and prepress technology manager, and Charlie Havel, assistant prepress manager and digital coordinator, test the new application slated for North Jersey Media Group's commercial printing operation located in Rockaway, N.J.
Photo courtesy of North Jersey Media Group

For the Rockaway deployment, ppi Media has tweaked its software to create an automatic page impositioning feature to handle the facility’s workload, which includes commercial newspaper jobs.

North Jersey Media Group decided a couple of years ago that it was time to revamp systems used to support the newspaper printing side of its operation.

“We were non-paginated and we decided that we were going to paginate the paper, and replace our output management system and our legacy ad-entry billing system all at the same time,” said Mike Colonna, prepress technology manager for North Jersey Media.

“My job with prepress was to handle the output management part of that.”

Upper management had specific criteria in mind for the new systems. For example, Rick Ruffino, vice president of technology, wanted page tracking implemented to track final pages throughout the system.

After some searching, North Jersey decided on ppi’s workflow system.

“The reason we went with Pape + Partner wasn’t just their tracking, it was that Rick Ruffino and a lot of other people made a decision that we wanted to separate what we call ‘church from state.’ We wanted to separate advertising from editorial,” Colonna explained.

With ppi, North Jersey Media has been able to assemble ads and editorial on-the-fly, merge the two together, send them through the output management system and track everything. That was the kicker for the daily products, according to Colonna.

With the ppi system, North Jersey Media can assemble ads and editorial, produce PostScript files, perform any color conversions, produce PostScripts of those files and then send them back through the group’s Autologic/Agfa Output Manager system.

“Then we just pretty much image it to any plant that we need to for that particular time,” Colonna said.

‘A different animal’

The Rockaway commercial facility, Colonna said, is a different animal from the daily plant in Hackensack.

For the Rockaway facility, ppi designed a system very similar to the one in use at the Hackensack facility “with a few tweaks,” Colonna said. Pape + Partner designed the automatic impositioning plug-in specifically for Rockaway.

“Basically what they did, in a nutshell, was design an interface that allows us to do commercial page impositioning for jobs that would include 8-up, 4-up, tabs and flexibooks, which can be run on our Mitsubishi or our MAN Roland presses,” Colonna said. “They designed a page layout system to help facilitate automatic page impositioning for our commercial division, which didn’t previously exist.”

For Rockaway, ppi modified the system to read an XML file. XML is an emerging standard that provides companies with a method to define how disparate computer software applications should perform a specific function.

The Rockaway facility performs complete page impositioning and when the final file is generated everything is in place.

Files are sent over an FTP site and are then automatically preflighted using Asura servers from OneVision. North Jersey Media has two Asura servers in Hackensack and two in Rockaway. Pages are cropped and sized and sent to the OMan (Output Manager) system. Pages are then sent automatically to the ppi system and ppi lays out the plan. Pages are assembled as they come in.


“In other words, if it has a sister page and all the elements are there, it will build a form,” Colonna explained. “It will automatically assemble it and send it back to OMan assembled. We RIP them and then we output them automatically.”

Colonna said Rockaway was slated to go live by the end of February.

All of North Jersey Media’s commercial newspaper jobs are printed in Rockaway except for Investor’s Business Daily. That publication, although printed in Hackensack, does not got through the ppi system.

North Jersey Media’s commercial clients include an edition of USA Today and an edition of American Banker. The additional 30 to 40 monthly and weekly publications that North Jersey Media prints get split between the two locations, depending on the workflow.

A feasibility study in pagination

Beyond workflow, ppi is also examining how North Jersey Media might streamline its page layout and classified pagination.

North Jersey Media wants to change its current operation, Colonna said.

“One of our big goals is to tie their PlanPag production database into our existing (Honeywell) press control system that’s here in Hackensack,” Colonna said.

The merging of the system, Colonna said, will depend upon cooperation from Honeywell.

If North Jersey Media chooses to go with the ppi layout and classified pagination systems, those would be implemented in Hackensack first.

“Everything’s done here in Hackensack, first because that’s where the flagship dailies are printed so it has priority,” Colonna said. “If it works here we then implement it out in Rockaway.”

The newspaper currently uses a classified pagination system from Pongrass Newspaper Systems. If the newspaper group decides to implement a new ppi-fueled pagination system, it will go live later this year.

COPS help with disaster recovery plan

In concert with the ppi deployment, North Jersey Media has written an internal workflow, called COPS, for commercial optimized prepress system. The strategy will allow North Jersey Media managers to switch between prepress systems located at either the Hackensack or Rockaway sites, thus giving them tools to control priority jobs throughout its system, Colonna said.



Billy Salgado (left) and Jon Markey Jr. from the IT department install a new server in North Jersey Media Group's vast server room.
Photo courtesy of North Jersey Media Group

“We’re doing a huge disaster recovery plan where we’re going to have a whole prepress system out at Rockaway, which will be totally redundant to the one here in Hackensack,” Colonna explained. “What we’re looking to do is (design the system so that) Rockaway’s personnel will be able to switch between the disaster recovery sites.”

COPS allows users to choose which ppi system they want to go to, what RIP setup they want and what priorities they want to use for the Asura servers.

“We did all this custom writing and we tied it into OMan because OMan gives us É what I call extensions,” Colonna said. “It has these queues that let you write your own scripts or applications and that’s what we do.”

North Jersey Media took advantage of the queues to write COPS, which is all database driven using MySQL.

“It’s all Web-based and it’s very sophisticated,” Colonna said.

Colonna said with the exception of the usual install problems, North Jersey Media did not encounter any major obstacles stemming from the ppi workflow system. The problems that did come up with ppi, he said, were resolved within 24 to 48 hours.

“That’ s one reason we’d really like to stay with that vendor, so we have everything under one roof,” Colonna said. “It would be a lot easier to support.”

Currently, North Jersey Media has most of its output management and prepress systems down to three vendors - ppi, Autologic and OneVision.

That strategy does not include, however, computer-to-plate suppliers. What CTP units North Jersey Media now operates are owned by commercial printing clients: Investor’s Business Daily uses Esko-Graphics devices in Hackensack and USA Today is printed on Agfa Polaris units owned by that newspaper’s parent, Gannett Co. Inc.

For its own dailies and other commercial products, North Jersey uses Autologic’s APS 3850 Narrow and Wide film imagesetters. Although implementing its own CTP is always under discussion, Colonna said the price of consumables is still too high.

“Every time they lower the plate prices the film guys lower their prices, so it’s making it tough to switch,” he said.