Papers embrace 48-inch webs; is 46 next?

Nov.
2006

Papers embrace 48-inch webs;
is 46 next?

By Chuck Moozakis
Editor-In-Chief

For the automobile industry, hybrids are the new V-8, in fashion, black is the new white, and for newspapers’ page widths, 48 inches is the new 50.

Just last month, two other papers, the Tulsa (Okla.) World and the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, hopped on the 48-inch web-width conversion bandwagon, adding their banners to the dozens of other papers that have already switched, or will migrate, to the narrower format in the next year.

How low will papers go?

Forty-six? That barrier was broken last year when The Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune introduced the format in concert with its new press. Although many papers are reportedly examining 11.5-inch wide pages, The Tribune remains the only 46-inch paper so far.

Crews from Masthead International work on Dow Jones' web-width reduction project earlier this year.
Photo: Masthead International

How about thinner than that? It’s possible, observers say, although 11-inch-wide pages, or 44-inch webs, are as narrow as publishers would ever want to go, especially for papers with cutoffs in excess of 21.5 inches.

Fueling the thin-is-in migration: ever-escalating newsprint costs, which are topping $700 per metric ton. Although a 21-inch cutoff newspaper can only expect a rather modest 4 percent savings by converting from 50 inches to 48 inches, those papers with longer cutoffs and wider pages can expect much more.

Case in point: The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., which hopes to knock off more than 15 percent from its annual newsprint bill as it shrinks from 54 inches to 48 inches wide and to 21 inches tall when it goes on-edition with a new MAN Roland GeoMAN press this month.

Dow Jones payback

Dow Jones, meantime, expects to lop $18 million off its newsprint bill once it wraps up its 15-month project to retrofit its 19 presses’ web widths from 60 inches to 48 inches, said Larry Hoffman, vice president of production.

The slimmed-down Wall Street Journal will make its debut Jan. 2, he said (see sidebar, page 12).

Then there’s The New York Times, which is trimming all its presses from 54 inches to 48 inches as part of a plant consolidation project aimed at helping the publisher save more than $40 million annually in newsprint and production costs.

How quickly the industry has moved to 48 inches - the first paper to introduce the format was The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., in 2004 - is even more striking considering the speed with which it abandoned the 50-inch benchmark it formerly embraced.

In some cities, presses originally engineered as 50 inches were reduced to 48 inches just before being commissioned, as was the case on the Koenig & Bauer AG Commander presslines at The Kansas City (Mo.) Star. Detroit Newspaper Partnership wound up converting its brand-new 50-inch-wide MAN Roland GeoMAN presses used to produce the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press to 48 inches less than a year after they went on-edition in 2005.

“We did it to save money on newsprint,” said Tom Letto, DNP’s operations project manager, adding that the presses were designed to handle the conversion with minimal disruption.

In Indiana, Fort Wayne Newspapers told TKS (USA) to re-engineer the ColorTop 7000CDH press it purchased last year to 48 inches, with a provision to produce some 46-inch commercial work, before it was delivered as part of its production upgrade.

Market churning

“The (reduction) market is booming. It’s crazy,” said Steve Stone, general manager of Masthead International, which has orchestrated scores of web reductions over the past several years, including the massive Dow Jones project.

Stone said Masthead and lockup partner Nela will have picked up almost a dozen 48-inch retrofit contracts by year-end, including projects at the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram and the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald.

In many of Masthead’s contracts, re-engineering the presses from 50 inches to 48 inches won’t be a major challenge, Stone said, “since many of these papers made provisions to go to 48 inches when they swung to 50 inches.”

But taking that next step, to 46 inches or below, will take some major machining, especially for older folders and ancillary equipment, Stone said. And publishers will have to tread carefully if they go too narrow, in the process eliminating the versatility they now have to print tabs and commercial products.

Sub-48-inch webs also pose operational and production issues, such as insert performance and plate processing.

“We have had some insert issues,” said Ron Garcia, production manager at The Bismarck Tribune, attributing most of them to vintage equipment that isn’t as accommodating of the smaller jackets as necessary.

“We managed to deal with the inserts; with the shorter jackets we’ll do some quarter-folding, or else insert a 50-pound jacket and place that into the paper (to hold the inserts).”

Web breaks down

Garcia said The Tribune, which adopted a 46-inch web in April 2005 when it commissioned a MAN Roland Uniset press, hasn’t had any press-related problems using the skinnier sheets. “Our web breaks are down sharply and our waste is below 600 for our newspaper,” he said.

“We’ve had no problem maintaining the press; we just make sure that blankets and nips are where they need to be,” he said, adding that the 3-by-2 Uniset is designed to run multiple web widths, from 23 inches to 27.5 inches.

“There’s lots of interest in what we’re doing. With newsprint costs rising, the color and the commercial printing capacity we have on this press gives us additional revenue possibilities,” Garcia said.

For other papers, at least for now, 48 inches is where they believe they’ll stay.

“Forty-eight is as far as we want to go,” said Steve Barlow, director of operations at the Tulsa World, which is embarking on a $4 million project to cut its web width from 52 inches to 48 inches, move to computer-to-plate and make other software improvements.

The World made the 52-inch decision in 2000, when it commissioned its two WIFAG OF370 presses. “We picked that because 50 inches still wasn’t the norm, and we liked the look of 52. Now it’s time to take the next step, but 48 inches is about as skinny as we want to get.”

WIFAG will modify the press; the remodeled World will debut in the second half of 2007.

The Columbus Dispatch hopes to have its conversion wrapped up by spring, said Bill Kohl, director of operations. TKS will retrofit the paper’s four M-70 presses under a fast-track schedule, he said. The paper moved to 50 inches just three years ago.

“This will require a bit more folder work; the outside pin has to be moved in and the cam redrilled,” Kohl said of the project, “and we’ll ask them to take some steps to prepare to 46 inches.

“We’ll replace the lockups and will also see about changing our inserters to handle 48- and 46-inch products,” Kohl said, adding that The Dispatch wants to have the flexibility to print on a narrower web if needed.

At Gannett Co. Inc., Vice President of Production Austin Ryan said the company is close to wrapping up a project to convert all its properties to 48 inches.

Taking next step?

“We’re not looking at 46 at the moment, but we did lay the groundwork (where possible) if and when we decide to go in that direction, but we are not actively seeing that yet.”

Gannett, of course, is also examining other ways to trim newsprint use, the most radical of which is the Berliner format. The Journal & Courier in Lafayette, Ind., North America’s first Berliner paper, hopes to save more than 15 percent in newsprint and operational costs, officials say.

Frank Wolfe, E.W. Scripps’ director of newspaper operations, agrees that slimming down is the way to go, but only to a point.

“We’re looking at 48 and not 46,” he said. So far, only two of the group’s papers have made the switch: the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press and The Gleaner in Henderson, Ky. Next year, The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel will follow, as will the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News, published by the Denver Newspaper Agency that also prints The Denver Post. Treasure Coast Newspapers in Florida will switch to the narrower format in 2008, Wolfe said.

Those properties have relatively new presses, or in the case of the Rocky Mountain News, brand new machines, making conversion easier. Scripps’ other properties with older presses will take additional time to evaluate, Wolfe said.

Vendors see strong uptick in web cutdowns as newspapers scramble to control operating expenses

Wall Street might be down on newspaper earnings, but newspaper industry vendors are upbeat about web-width reduction projects.

“The conversion to 48 inches is happening faster than the 50-inch conversion years ago,” said Jim Gore, vice president and general manager of Pressline Services, adding that many of his customers want the vendor to lay the groundwork for 46-inch production.

The company is finishing up a rebuild of a 19-unit Goss Urbanite press at The News-Star in Monroe, La., that features a 6-inch web reduction, to 48 inches.

The paper should be able to save more than 15 percent on its newsprint bill as a result of the switch.

Britton Installation Services is also seeing increased interest among papers wanting to narrow their webs, said Chuck Britton, president. “It’s a hot topic; the payback at 48 is interesting to publishers as far as newsprint savings is concerned. Going to 50 was easy, so going to 48 is not that big of a deal.” Still, he said, each project needs a careful assessment to determine if the press and the folder can easily be retrofitted at a cost that makes sense.

Mining the market

The major press vendors, meantime, are also mining the market. MAN Roland Inc., for example, listed web reduction as one of the core services it expects to deliver now that more U.S. newspapers sport the vendor’s machines.

“We think it’s a growing business, and it’s been successful,” said Bill Reiser, MAN Roland’s manager of support solutions.

MAN Roland completed the first web-width reduction project this spring, on The Indianapolis Star’s GeoMAN presses. Since then, Reiser said MAN Roland converted other GeoMAN presses at the Detroit Newspaper Partnership, the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., and Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader, among others.

Lancaster (Pa.) Newspapers Inc., which prints the Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster News Era and The Sunday News, had its FlexoMAN press converted as well, with its new Glunz & Jensen K&F Inc. lockups able to accommodate widths ranging from 50 inches to 46 inches.

“We’re writing up a lot of proposals and we expect to have other papers lined up as well,” Reiser said of the service, which is aimed only at MAN Roland users.

Goss International Corp., which engineered the 12-inch web-width reduction of Dow Jones’ Goss Metro and Metroliner presses, “has been busy, and it’s been a good thing,” said Tom Bernth, the vendor’s after-market service manager.

Careful engineering

“It took some careful engineering” to complete the project, which required crews to coordinate the retrofits across eight of Dow Jones’ production plants.

Next up: the cutdown of The New York Times’ Goss presses in a project scheduled for completion in 2008.

“We are getting more requests, and doing much more of them than in the past,” Bernth said. “They want to go to 48 and have the provision to go to 46” requiring Goss to evaluate users’ lockups, angle bars and other components such as plate benders.

“We are trying to provide all the parts necessary to let them go to 46” if they want to, he said.

Folders will take additional study, he said. “We are preparing, but folders are where the challenge is. There is a lot of reworking that has to be done, and if you try to shortcut it, you’ll have problems getting sections to align.”

TKS (USA), meantime, already re-engineered the press going to Fort Wayne (Ind.) Newspapers to accommodate both 48- and 46-inch web widths, said Mike Shafer, national sales manager. Next, it will oversee The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch’s web width reduction.

Plate bending and lockup vendors, as expected, are also seeing business increase.

“We’re converting our lockup designs to go as low as 44 inches,” said Tim Scott, vice president of operations at Glunz & Jensen K&F.

Multiple widths

The company’s just-introduced Precision Edge plate bender, has the capacity to support 44-inch-wide production as well, he said. “We’re planning for the future.”

“What we’re seeing is that most newspapers want the equipment to go to 46 inches, even if they don’t think they will go to that level,” said Ron Stephens, GJKF’s research and development manager.

Burgess Industries Inc. just finished modifying the six punch/bend systems and associated hardware and software used at Detroit Newspaper Partnership when it retrofit its presses from 50-inch to 48-inch webs.

The transition occurred without a hitch, requiring about 30 hours of technician time, said Rick Fream, director of sales.

“We’re seeing a lot of papers that want to go to 48 inches as they migrate to computer-to-plate,” said Fream. “Others want the flexibility to switch between 50 and 48, so we engineer the benders to handle that as well.

“There is a lot rolling into a single project, especially when you link inline bunch bending and CTP. We make sure everything is done to accommodate what’s needed.”

-Chuck Moozakis

Trimmed down WSJ to debut Jan. 2 after conclusion
of $43 million project

A thinner Wall Street Journal will make its debut Jan. 2, 2007, as Dow Jones & Co.’s $43 million capital improvement project to reduce the web width of its flagship paper winds up on budget and on schedule.

Over the past 11 months, crews from Masthead International, Goss International Corp., Nela and ABB have retrofit the web widths and upgraded the control software of Dow Jones’ 19 presses, a mix of Goss and TKS (USA) machines, from 60 inches to 48 inches. The presses’ cutoff, 22.75 inches, was unaltered.

The goal: to whack some $20 million off the publisher’s annual newsprint bill.

“We tracked 166 milestones on this project and 99 percent of them are done,” said Jim Pensiero, Dow Jones’ vice president of print projects. “We’re doing well.”

Dow Jones will conduct test press runs of the trimmed down Journal beginning this month and extending through December.

“We are on track,” said Larry Hoffman, Dow Jones’ vice president of production.

Dow Jones divvied up the retrofit between Masthead and Goss, with Masthead converting the TKS presses and Goss handling its machines. The presses are sprinkled across 17 print sites.

Hoffman said Dow Jones’ color expansion project, completed in 2002, helped lay the groundwork for this project.

“We didn’t see any surprises. We knew what we needed to do and we picked good technology partners who pitched in and worked well with us,” he said. “They used a philosophy of knowing what needed to be done, testing it, and then replicating it” across the multiple sites.

Crews had to make the adjustments on the presses’ folders, registration pins and other components during times when daily production runs were finished for the day, Hoffman said.

To run the forthcoming 48-inch tests, crews will have to manually convert the machines from 60 inches to 48, and then revert them back to 60 inches for regular production.

Pensiero said the new Journal will contain 20 percent less newsprint, but that the paper’s news hole will only be trimmed about 10 percent. To make up the difference, the paper is eliminating some of its stat pages. “People buy The Journal for the journalism, not the statistics,” he said.

In addition to trimming the web, Dow Jones is upgrading its Atex Enterprise advertising software to accommodate a conversion from selling advertising by the line to an app that’s based on standard advertising units. “It’s a big job,” Pensiero said. The paper is also increasing its color capacity (see At The Wire, page 3).

Other technology upgrades, such as junking Dow Jones’ film-based production and switching to computer-to-plate, remain under evaluation, Hoffman said.

“We continue to look at CTP, but it’s an economic question. We have film devices that are capable of doing what we need them to do. We’ll make the jump when necessary.”

-Chuck Moozakis