The Cynthiana (Ky.) Democrat at the end of February got a major upgrade when the weekly traded its film workflow for digital.

The newspaper, which also produces 10 community papers, a TMC product and a number of specialty publications, was previously stripping negatives onto plates.

“Our workflow went from circa 2007 to circa 2010 overnight,” said business development manager Joshua Guthrie. “We’ve actually got bored people now — we never had that before.”

The new workflow consists of Presteligence’s browser-based NewsXtreme software, a Screen PlateRite News 2000LE, a Nela bender and Southern Lithoplate thermal newspaper plates. The Democrat made the buy through SLP’s CTP Alliance, of which all those vendors are a part.

Photo: Presteligence
Melinda Moss and Joshua Guthrie of The Cynthiana Democrat work in Presteligence’s NewsXtreme workflow app. The weekly switched from its film negatives and RIP workflow to a digital CTP workflow at the end of February.
 

“We’ve been involved with Southern since we switched over to their plates about five years ago,” Guthrie said of the CTP Alliance, which won a number of deals from Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., the parent company of The Democrat. “What would have been a difficult process of stringing together the individual components of the new workflow was, instead, a one-stop-shopping experience.”

PDF workflow equals increased volume

The ability to transition to PDFs with NewsXtreme has been a highlight of the upgrade for the paper, and the increased volume immediately following the conversion has already garnered much interest from potential clients.

“We’re bidding on a lot (of jobs).”

Because of its location in rural Kentucky, The Democrat still has a couple of its jobs that come in on camera. Guthrie said he’s working to transition those jobs over to some type of electronic pagination.

The consistency of a PDF workflow eliminated the headaches associated with printing from negative apps directly to an imagesetter — such as font problems, dropped graphics and OPI issues.

“Now that we’re totally PDF, I think that our workflow, even in-house, as far as composition, is going to be a lot faster,” Guthrie said.

In fact, The Democrat is currently working to realign its prepress and press schedules to take advantage of all the time it’s saving.

“Eliminating prepress bottlenecks not only means that we can accept more work, it means prepress personnel will have more reasonable hours,” Guthrie said. “Presses don’t make any money when pressmen are waiting for plates — our pressmen don’t wait nearly as long now.”

The Democrat will maintain its filmsetter for the time being.

“This is still new technology for us and we want to keep something tried and tested around just in case we need it.”

N.M. daily goes digital

Meantime, the Gallup (N.M.) Independent also tapped the CTP Alliance to convert its workflow. Like The Democrat, the daily picked Presteligence NewsXtreme, SLP plates and a Screen platesetter.

NewsXtreme will replace the Independent’s existing RIP software and give the daily the flexibility to approve or reject pages or plates through soft proofing. 

“Having the ability to soft proof was an important feature for us as we moved to CTP,” said Mark Vincent, pressroom superintendent, citing the ability to reduce plate waste.

The Independent will also leverage NewsXtreme’s Fan Out capability. The feature adjusts the position of the image on a plate to compensate for paper stretching that occurs during the printing process.