As media consumers and communicators become more and more selfish with their time and space, the tailored newspaper may be moving from dream to reality.

Case in point: At last month’s IfraExpo in Leipzig, Germany, delegates from all over the world were able to obtain their local newspaper from home, at the time that it was produced at home.

Printed locally on OcŽ’s latest Web-fed local digital printing press, each copy included a section devoted to the show that contained a range of content of professional and social interest to the delegates.

The purpose is to demonstrate the integration of on-time international presence and local relevance, tailored to the needs of a special interest group. No doubt NewspaperDirect, which has offered digitally printed newspapers through hotels, and Satellite Newspapers (previously PEPC Worldwide), which provides digital printing “kiosks” in hotels and airports, will have promoted their wares. The notion of digital printing is beginning to emerge. Within two years it will have arrived.

Factors coming together

But, I hear you say, digital printing has been two years away for the last 15 years. What is so different now? In fact a number of factors are coming together that will accelerate not only the availability of appropriate technology, but also its adoption by publishers and readers.

First, manufacturers are reaching a point of viable production, where full-color newspapers can be produced at acceptable speed and cost, on technologies akin to those used within computer printers and photocopiers.

Costs per copy are falling as equipment prices, in particular ink and toner, continue to fall to earth.

The second is the realization by publishers that an alternative business model exists, driven by the specialist needs of readers and advertisers.

Until now, all parties have accepted the notion of the newspaper as a compendium of minority interests, where much if not most of the content appealed to different minorities among the readership. In this model, everyone was happy, because there was something for everyone.

More relevance

Readers and advertisers are demanding more relevance and less wastage.

Readers increasingly only have time for things that interest them. In Scotland, where I live, a reader typically only reads a quarter of his newspaper’s content. Fewer than 25 percent ever read the business pages and less than a third ever read the real estate section. About 35 percent read the help-wanted ads. What’s more, average issue readership of these issues is far lower.

As a result, advertisers are turning to direct marketing methods as a means of reaching more of their target audience at less cost.

Consider the following: A typical U.S. daily newspaper generates $830 in advertising revenue per copy sold, per year, or $2.70 a day.

But given that not everyone reads every section, and that readership of supplements or sections containing many of the key advertising categories is a only a small proportion of the readership, I would estimate that advertising revenue in one read copy of a real estate supplement is probably well in excess of $10, in a read copy of a recruitment section as high as $15.

The economics of read advertising as opposed to distributed advertising are very different. The value of tailored copy would seem to justify some increase in the cost of production. And then there is the issue of the amount of money saved in unread, undistributed newsprint.

Opens the door

More interestingly, this approach opens the door to expanding the readership of those people interested in real estate but not so interested in subscribing to the newspaper.

In the United Kingdom (where 87 percent of newspapers sales are single-copy), most publishers have little knowledge of who their readers are, relying on retailers to sell single copies or in some cases take on their own home deliveries.

Profiling readers’ needs is difficult and the means to distribute a copy tailored to those needs is, in most cases, impossible. But this is not the case in the United States, where 76 percent of newspapers are delivered to named individuals.

Yet another factor in the march toward the tailored newspaper is the role that XML is increasingly playing in newspaper production.

I was looking at a system recently that automatically selected, and placed, stories according to the reader’s needs and priorities on a formatted page. Using XML, newspapers can tag articles according to subject and priority of position. That means it is now possible to produce a copy of a newspaper that contains only those stories of interest to a reader.

With this strategy in place, an editor could decide to provide key news stories plus only the additional material that the reader has selected and paid for -  giving birth to the a la carte newspaper.

Targeted ads

Similarly, advertising could be selected and placed according to the readers’ interests or advertisers’ targeting. The digital printing machine would then produce and label that copy to that specification.

Digital printing has applications in less adventurous, but potentially interesting ways.

In Finland, one newspaper is experimenting with a digital printer to produce 200 copies for a town at the edge of its circulation area, which is difficult to reach in winter.

Such an application can be used to greatly reduce the costs and times of distribution. Another option is to produce highly localized supplements for one neighborhood, or even to insert pages of a newspaper from another country in order to appeal to an ethnic minority group living in a neighborhood of another.

Jim Chisholm is strategy advisor to the World Association of Newspapers and director of the association’s Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, which looks at new developments in the newspaper industry. He can be reached via e-mail at jim.chishold@futureofthenewspaper.com. More information about the project is available at www.futureofthenewspaper.com.