The past year was a highly eventful one for the newspaper industry, especially because of the many company consolidations affecting both suppliers and newspapers.

The situation was somewhat calmer in relation to technological innovations, with suppliers doing their utmost to offer newspapers products to help them automate and control their operations as well as technologies to allow them develop new products and lower their costs.

Consider the rise in mailroom control software, semi-commercial printing and outsourcing newsroom software management to the vendors themselves.

Editorial systems

Any investment in an editorial system should be preceded by an important step: a critical examination of the existing corporate culture.

If the actual decision to invest is taken but the publishing house has only finite financial resources, various suppliers offer interesting possibilities for limiting the financial outlay, namely “managed services.”

Taking this approach enables publishing houses to concentrate their own IT team on a small number of key people and always have the latest technology at their disposal. In this way, publishers can react flexibly to constantly changing challenges.

Managed services are a good solution when publishers launch new products on to the market, which is happening everywhere in the current climate. In such a situation, an in-house team quickly reaches its limitations.

Up until recently, publishing houses have had a tendency to resist separating their editorial software from their users. But with the rise of managed services, that skepticism is waning.

That said, it is nevertheless important that newspapers should only consider working with a partner that has many years’ experience of cooperating with media operations that must work around the clock, every day.

Circulation management

A recent trend regarding circulation and marketing-related software shows more newspaper group wide orders for these kinds of systems in order to enable up-to-the-minute information throughout the entire newspaper group.

Freedom Communications, for example, said it would roll out circ software from Publishing Business Systems throughout its 28 daily papers to oversee its marketing.

Likewise, Atex is completing a group wide installation of its Matrix management software for Johnston Press, the fourth largest publisher of local and regional titles in the United Kingdom. Matrix will be used to manage the distribution of approximately 4 million free weekly newspapers and 4 million paid titles.

Along these lines, in the ever-expanding ways to promote publications, newspaper marketing products are also increasingly being sold to whole groups. Canada’s CanWest Global Communications Corp. recently launched all 11 of its metropolitan daily newspapers as digital ePapers using Smart-Edition technology from Vancouver-based NewspaperDirect.

Each printed newspaper is replicated online to give readers digital content in a familiar printed format, but with many extra features as well, such as the use of text-to-speech technology that will read stories aloud to users through NewspaperDirect’s Newspaper Radio service.

Teams for semi-commercial printing

If they were told that they had one wish, what would production managers want for their printing operation? Today, there are a wide range of innovations aimed at improving quality, lowering costs, reducing waste, increasing efficiency and production flexibility as well as producing added value. Semi-commercial, also known as hybrid printing, is the magic formula.

Semi-commercial printing - especially in Europe and in the countries of the Near and Middle East - has become a clear trend. It gives newspaper printing plants an opportunity to become active in a new market segment.

Technical managers in Europe and in North America want the means to engage in semi-commercial printing, either as a retrofit for existing installations or included in specifications for new presses: dryers, stitching aggregates and inline trimmers.

For newspaper companies planning a new printing plant, the new compact presses, of which there are now three models (Koenig & Bauer AG’s Cortina and Commander CT; and Goss International Corp.’s FPS) are attracting growing interest.

Higher-level automation, such as automated ink density control, direct plate imaging in the press and even computer-integrated manufacturing, are also moving forward.

Tracking and microzoning systems

In the mailroom, the recommendations are clear: increase income and lower costs. And the suppliers have risen to the challenge.

These systems offer the possibility to make changes in the order process in real time and optimize the process in accordance with new conditions in the press and distribution areas.

Microzoning remains a hot topic as well.

With these systems, local shops could afford to buy an insert that covered just the district they would like to reach within a big city.s

This article was compiled by newspaper technique writers Charlotte Janischewski, Mari Pascual, Klaus von Prummer and Brian Veseling and by Ifra correspondent Steve Shipside.

This article was first published in newspaper techniques, the monthly magazine of Ifra. If you have any comments or questions about these articles, please send them to ntreader@ifra.com.