BUTLER, Pa. - With the formal inauguration of its custom-designed press, the Butler Eagle has become the first U.S. newspaper to use a double-wide press that blends heatset, coldset and multiple web widths in a single pressline.

The newspaper’s hybrid Uniliner, purchased from Goss International Corp., anchors the daily’s new 80,000-square-foot Eagle Production Center, expressly built for the newspaper’s press and postpress operations.

Butler Eagle president and publisher Vernon Wise Jr. and his new press. Photo: Richard Lanenga

It’s just the latest technological gamble taken by Eagle President and Publisher Vernon Wise Jr., the patriarch of a family entering its second century of owning the newspaper. If the press performs as expected, it could yield as much as $10 million in new annual commercial revenue for the company.

Goss also has a lot at stake. The vendor, its reputation battered after its bankruptcy reorganization, is showcasing the Eagle and its brand-new Uniliner to prove to the U.S. newspaper industry that Goss is back, its problems behind it.

“This is a major stepping-stone for us,” said David Stamp, Goss’ global director of marketing. The vendor, whose workhorse presses have printed millions of newspaper pages worldwide, “put its stake in the ground” at last year’s Nexpo, using that as a starting point in a bid to educate newspaper publishers that it was ready to do business again.

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Wise and Goss first began talking about designing a hybrid press capable of printing both coldset and heatset more than two years ago. The afternoon Eagle (daily, 28,782; Sunday, 30,566) is a long-time Goss customer; the newspaper’s first Goss press was installed in 1941. The Uniliner replaced a double-wide, 80-page Cosmo press commissioned in 1974.

“They understood what I wanted,” said Wise, adding that rival vendors “did not want to do this.”

“Goss builds big presses like battleships. They make a superior press.”

What Wise wanted was a composite press that could increase the color capacity and print quality of the Eagle as well as a machine that would support Butler Color Press, the family’s commercial operation.

Blends heatset and coldset

In response, Goss concocted a Uniliner that blends 50-inch-wide printing towers for newspaper printing with a wider 66-inch tower for commercial printing. The double-wide 4-by-2 shaftless press has 14 couples and can print up to 48 pages in full color and 16 pages in spot color.

It has three folders, two of which include quarter folders. Megtec Systems supplied the four reelstands.

The Eagle's 80,000-square-foot production center.
Photo: Richard Lanenga

One end of the 220-foot-long press is dedicated to printing the afternoon Eagle; the other, topped by a  horizontal gas-drying unit, is earmarked for commercial work. The cutoff on all towers is 21 inches, matching the four heatset presses installed at Butler Color.

Wise said having a single press capable of printing both newspapers and commercially was a must.

“I couldn’t justify the amount of money a new newspaper press would have required and have it sit there [after the press run was completed]. I did that before.”

Wise said he spent another $2 million to $3 million to modify the Uniliner to accommodate both requirements. Wise declined to disclose the total amount spent on the press and the Eagle Production Center, which formerly housed a supermarket.

“Now I can move jobs around and justify the investment for both newspaper and commercial accounts,” Wise said.

Other designs rejected

Buying a less pricey single-wide press, while considered, was rejected as operationally limited.

“I did not want something with six or eight towers. We needed paging and not speed,” he said. Even so, the Uniliner, with a rated speed of 70,000 copies per hour, more than quadruples the speed of the Cosmo.

It’s not the first time Wise has taken a chance on rolling out a new technology. 

The Eagle's Uniliner has two press consoles.
Photo: Richard Lanenga

Forty years ago, the Eagle combined a letterpress and an offset press in a bid to improve print quality. In 1971, it replaced newsroom typewriters with computer terminals; it also installed one of the industry’s first computer-based typesetters.

“I don’t have to answer to any corporate treasurer,” Wise said, explaining his maverick streak. “I don’t even have a return-on-investment [for this project.]”

But Wise is savvy enough to realize that the new press will allow him to seize some potentially lucrative printing projects that only a newspaper publisher - used to printing large quantities on tight deadlines - can produce.

“There seems to be a market opening where newspapers realize they can sell specialized (advertising) sections” - projects the newspapers in turn job out to another newspaper to print.

 Case in point: a special 650,000-piece, 40-page section the Eagle printed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The newspaper also produced three separate 1 million-copy jobs for the Daily News in New York. Without the Uniliner’s color and print capacity, the Eagle would never have received those types of jobs.

Great flexibility

“It gives us great flexibility to print” multiple jobs, said Raymond Sielsky, the Eagle’s commercial sales director. “We can run a combination of heatset commercial work and run the coldset Sunday funnies at the same time,” he said.

Sielsky said Butler’s proximity to major East Coast cities - Butler is 35 miles north of Pittsburgh - is a compelling advantage the Eagle can offer customers looking for additional print capacity. In addition to the Post-Gazette job, Sielsky said the Eagle has also printed special projects for newspapers in Erie, Pa., and Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.

It has also produced multimillion-piece runs for major retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores, K-B Toys and Filene’s department stores.

“We can reach 5 million households with same-day delivery,” Sielsky said.

In conjunction with the new press, the Eagle upgraded other operations. The press’ computer-based consoles, supplied by Goss and Rockwell Automation, set the stage for a digital workflow and computer-to-plate production, said Tammy Schuey, technology director.

The paper installed a Creo Trendsetter News 50 CTP system, using plates from Southern Lithoplate, in order to move to four-up page production.

Prepress upgrade

On the prepress side, the Eagle rolled out Oris News, a digital workflow application from CGS Publishing Technologies International, to manage how editorial and ad content is prepared for printing.

The software checks pages for errors, imposes pages and gives marching orders to the Eagle’s Xitron Navigator and Global Graphics Harlequin RIP. The completed pages are transmitted from the Eagle’s downtown editorial office to the printing plant, where the plates are produced.

Oris also meshes with applications from Goss and Data Engineering to automatically preset and determine the proper ink coverage on the plates.

Schuey said it took about a year to map out the new workflow. “We knew what we wanted and this software let us make it happen,” she said. “We had to tie in the commercial end of it, to be able to go 16-up, 8-up and four-up and a lot of workflows couldn’t do that.”

With the press now on-edition, Wise’ next project is to substantially upgrade the Eagle’s postpress capabilities, filling the remaining square feet with the equipment necessary to support the multimillion-piece commercial press jobs the company will print.