Newspaper publishers large and small alike are under enormous pressure to compete side-by-side with new media. Internet advertising sales continue to climb and naturally, print publishers are seeing that trend affecting their own bottom lines. Now, more than ever, it’s essential for newspaper publishers — particularly small- to mid-sized publications — to demonstrate that they can compete with other media channels and provide exemplary customer service to their advertising clients.

Special challenge for small papers

In many cases, publications with national reach and large circulations boast relationships with advertisers and their agencies that ensure the standardized exchange of ad content. The advertisers are equipped with the resources to supply their digital ad files and proofs in good form, meaning PDF/X-1a files optimized for print reproduction via services like AdSend.

The smaller, regional publication doesn’t always have such luxury. Most receive ads via removable media, FTP transmissions or even e-mail; and content can arrive in any number of formats from PDF files to native application files, such as QuarkXPress documents. The files aren’t usually prepared by advertising agencies with access to the latest solutions for creating standardized, prepress-ready content. And ads are largely supplied in some ill-prepared manner — missing embedded fonts, resolution or color-space discrepancies, and so on.

The result for publishers is lost time and money. While the workflow brakes are applied, the file is pulled from the workflow and either fixed by the publisher’s production team, or bounced back to the client for repair and resubmission.

Kinks to smooth out

Yes, the digital workflow is far from perfect, as most newspaper publishers will confirm. There are still kinks to smooth out.

In fact, according to printing consultant Stephen Shinnick, vice president of sales for Woburn, Mass.-based All Systems Integration, up to 60 percent of digital files being exchanged by advertisers, publishers and printers are poorly prepared.

While that may seem like an extraordinarily high figure — especially after more than a decade of digital workflow under the publishing industry’s belt — Shinnick said that it still reflects some progress.

“The number is down from 90 percent to 60 percent in the past five years,” he said. “So things are changing, slowly.”

Unfortunately, many smaller advertisers — regionally based, mom-and-pop establishments — still lack either the expertise or the creative tools to consistently prepare flawless files. While the advent of standardized file formats like PDF promised to eliminate flaws, it remains an elusive goal.

“Everyone can make a PDF file on the computer simply by selecting the print-to-PDF option,” Shinnick sad. “It does not mean that it is a production-quality PDF.”

And, Shinnick notes, PDFs are far from being the de facto standard in the world of print.

App files choke traffic

“Application files still represent a very significant portion of the digital files coming into newspaper publishers,” he said.

Publishers remain in the position of having to provide a line of defense, where incoming files can be scrutinized and quickly given the red or green light to move forward. There are several preflighting applications that enable publishers to do just that.

An inexpensive tool like a desktop preflighting application may be used to adjudicate the integrity and print readiness of individual files as they are electronically submitted to the publisher.

That’s one way to handle preflight, according to Shinnick. But there may be a better, faster, more cost-efficient way, he suggests — automated preflighting.

Shinnick suggests apps such as Markkzware Software’s FlightCheck Online. It enables publishers to host an online preflighting portal where ad clients can drop digital files — virtually any file type, not just PDFs. Preflight is automatically initiated, and the advertiser receives a detailed report back regarding their file’s integrity.

Automating the process

If the file passes the test, it is automatically uploaded to the publisher’s production system. If it fails, the advertiser can make the fix and resubmit it through the same process.

Automating preflight not only puts the responsibility of quality file creation where it makes the most sense — at content creation — it enables the publisher to streamline operations and ensure that the paper gets to press on time.