The Houston Chronicle last month deployed ProImage’s browser-based NewsWay digital workflow app in an effort to mesh disparate production systems and support its migration to computer-to-plate.

The app will integrate ad layout, editorial, plate sorting, punch bending and press controls, and allow users to track and visually check pages throughout the workflow process.

“NewsWay is highly configurable,” said Mike Mayo, vice president of production. “It also integrates multiple systems.”

Photo: ProImage
West Newsom, plateroom manager at the Houston Chronicle,
checks a soft proof in NewsWay.
 

A NewsWay transmission hub at the Chronicle’s downtown editorial facility will manage automatic file transmission over a secure network to the paper’s print site 14 miles away.

NewsWay receives pages at the plant, burns text and furniture onto the plates and provides automatic page pairing for 1-up, 2-up or 4-up page configurations. The app also burns barcodes on the page image to permit plate tracking.

The Chronicle (daily, 503,114; Sunday, 677,425) will use NewsWay as part of its deployment of four Agfa Polaris 250 violet CTP units and four Nela punch benders.

“NewsWay maximizes productivity by load balancing the output devices and automatically diverts files to another device when the first is busy,” said Michael Daniel, the Chronicle’s director of printing. “It also proofs color pages as they are approved, and importantly, automatically locks color pages to the device to which it was originally sent, ensuring consistent color quality.”

Gannett papers live on NewsWay

Meantime, The Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat went live with ProImage’s browser-based NewsWay app in April in an effort to streamline its prepress workflow.

For the Gannett daily, the decision to go with NewsWay hinged largely on the ease of use of the NewsWay interface, according to IT manager Randy Fingeroot.

“Apples to apples they probably all do the same thing, but we just really felt that was the big difference — NewsWay looked like it was going to be easier for the users,” he said.

NewsWay replaced an aging Agfa Oman system for the Democrat (daily, 50,392; Sunday, 62,804) and the app’s deployment came almost three months after the newspaper transitioned from film to two Kodak Trendsetter News 100 thermal computer-to-plate units.

The Democrat will also soon take the wraps off a Burgess Industries Inc. plate elevator system that will transport plates downstairs to the pressroom. Fingeroot said he also liked the ease with which NewsWay can put barcodes on the plates.

The daily is currently the only job running through NewsWay, but Fingeroot said the newspaper intends to transition its commercial jobs — which include weekly and high school newspapers — to the workflow by the beginning of July.

Manages two presses

“We have two different presses, a Goss Metro and a Goss Urbanite, and the barcode system in NewsWay is actually going to direct the (Burgess) elevator system as to which bin to put the plates in,” Fingeroot said. “It will be important for all of the commercial jobs to go through NewsWay.”

When a page is sent to a NewsWay job folder, the app reads it and determines the file size — whether it’s a page for the Metro or the Urbanite —the page is then RIPped and sent to an approval queue where it’s soft proofed.

“Now that we’re direct to plate, we catch a lot of things on negatives by checking everything electronically,” Fingeroot said. “Pages go through the approval queue and prepress approves them and they get directed to the appropriate CTP machine — whichever one has the correct plates in it — and from there it comes out quick and easy.”

RIP times have increased substantially since that function is no longer tied to the Democrat’s output devices.

“We used to go directly from the RIP into our filmsetters, and now all the RIPs have to do is RIP pages, so they go a lot faster and the CTP devices are obviously faster than our old filmsetters,” Fingeroot said.

The Democrat completely eliminated its filmsetters — one Linotype 530 machine dedicated to commercial jobs, and two Agfa Sierra machines — upon go live of the CTP units. The two units will absorb the workload of the three film units.

“Having three (filmsetters) was a luxury,” Fingeroot said. “Each of the CTP devices will pump out 100 plates an hour, so we’re capable of doing 200 an hour with those machines going full blast and that’s a good number for us.”

The Democrat outputs roughly 8,000 Anocoil plates per month.

Limitless number of users

Because it is browser-based, there is no limit to the number of users that access NewsWay and although it most used by the daily’s prepress staff of four to five people on a weekly basis, Fingeroot said the paper plans to expand NewsWay to the newsroom in the future.

“We want to give the newsroom the ability to soft proof and also to allow our editor to soft proof from home, which will be a lot easier than sending a PDF by e-mail,” he said. “He’ll just access the system and actually be able to track the progress.”

NewsWay has also eased the pains associated with resending pages, lending to a smoother process regardless of how many users access the workflow.

“It’s quick and easy and you don’t have to go through the entire process again in order to resend something,” Fingeroot said.

Gannett’s News-Star in Monroe, La., meantime has reported increased production time and reduced plate waste since its recent transition to NewsWay, according to Production Director Doug Nobles.

“Since soft proofing uses RIPped data, we have had fewer mistakes, and therefore less plate waste.”

The News-Star’s app accepts files from Advanced Publishing Technology editorial and classified apps, and from external software, and automates page pairing and imposition to load balance two Harlequin RIPs and manage output to its two Kodak Trendsetter News CTP devices and several hard-copy proofers.