What was your first job in the newspaper business?

I was a reporter in 1975-77 for the York County Coast Star, a weekly published in Kennebunk, Maine. Ironically, it became part of the Seacoast Media Group in 2001.

What do you like most about your job? Project management?

 I enjoy a lot happening all at once, and the need to see a project not so much as a linear series of events but instead as a 360-degree worldview incorporating a constant series of intersecting events and issues that need attention and resolution.

 

I also enjoy the challenges of creating and maintaining quality against the expense-related pressure of finding work process efficiencies.

What do you like least?

Declining print readership. It’s difficult to watch newspapers slowly erode after spending a professional lifetime devoted to print.

What was Seacoast Media Group’s most recent purchase/installation?

A new 67,000-square-foot office and production facility that opened in February 2007. It is equipped with a Goss Magnum 8 (a new single-wide, two-around press that is the first of its kind in this hemisphere) and the Goss NP642 inserter. The value of a single contract that combined the press with the inserter, plus the quality of the equipment and the company’s devotion to service, made the choice of Goss very easy.

What is the biggest challenge Seacoast Media Group is facing in production?

Our new equipment has been in use since mid-February and addresses the under-capacity issues we had with paging and color. The challenge now is to fill the press schedule with moneymaking products of our own and from commercial print customers.

What trend are you keeping your eye on?

We have to become more entrepreneurial about the products we offer to maintain readers, find new readers and maintain market share. Printing on newsprint and printing online have to co-exist as a seamless work process with one offering content to the other in response to readers’ and advertisers’ needs.


If you know anyone you think should be featured in Short Run, please contact Tara McMeekin at 303.575.9595 or by e-mail at: tmcmeekin@newsandtech.com