August 2014 print edition
Transcription
August 2014 print edition
The news publishing technology magazine gxpress.net Vol 14/3 August 2014 Asia-Pacific Print Post approved 100015730 namini: Risk that paid off ...thought we could A PANPA gong for Lockley’s little engines ‘running at bloody 100 mph’ inside chat show: How the BBC Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production digital publishing gxpress.net gxpress.net is using messaging services to publish news online page 5 betting on stream: Kodak’s new Prosper 6000 inkjets could change the digital print equation page 20 thought we could: Fairfax Media’s regional sites meet the metro print challenge page 22-25 chapter’s end: After 21 years in Shanghai, Goss is moving to a new home across the river page 30-31 greening india: Print’s environmental impact page 34 our thanks to these Advertisers: CCI Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Digital Media Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Goss International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Harland-Simon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 manroland web systems. . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Müller Martini. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 ppi Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 ProtecMedia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 QuadTech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 technotrans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 WAN-Ifra India Conference . . . . . . . . . . 26 WAN-Ifra World Publishing Expo. . . . . . . . 7 NewsLeaders in this issue EidosMedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 QI Press Controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Fujifilm Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Synchronising cultures at WEF T he World Editors Forum will team with the Online News Association for the Newsroom Summit being held with WPE in Amsterdam in October. Cherilyn Ireton, executive director of the Paris-based WEF – part of World Publishing Expo organiser WAN-Ifra – says the event will focus on synchronising print and digital cultures to ensure growth in audience, engagement and loyalty: “We are delighted that the ONA will be bringing some of the sharpest minds in digital journalism to Amsterdam for core sessions on the second day of the Newsroom Summit,” she says. Dates are October 13-14 during World Publishing Expo 2014. “Traditional newsrooms need to be fast and agile to compete with digital start-ups, while at the same time need a slower, more magazine-like approach in print, to hold on to readership and revenue,” says Ireton. “We are looking forward to great discussions in Amsterdam on how best to manage these two dynamics.” First confirmed speakers include Frank Volmer (managing director of Dutch publisher Telegraaf Media Groep), Robyn Tomlin (Pew Research Center chief digital officer), Alison Gow (digital innovation editor at the UK’s Trinity Mirror Regionals) and Stijn Debrouwere, a Tow Center for Digital Journalism fellow. For the evolving conference programme and registration information, go to http://www. wan-ifra.org/events/13thinternational-newsroom-summit Issues to be covered include: • How to prevent newsroom culture from blocking change; • Push content stategies to grow your audience; • Newsroom metrics that go beyond pageviews; • The ethical conundrums of the digital space; • Myths about mobile; • How to make a story go viral; • Effective digital tools – for free. The International Newsroom Summit is one of several conferences taking place in Amsterdam during the World Publishing Expo, which will run from October 13-15. It is followed immediately by the Tablet and Apps Summit, designed to get publishers and editors thinking mobile in all they do. Full details of all the events can be found at http://www. worldpublishingexpo.com More than 100 speakers and presenters will be featured over the Expo’s three days and organiser WAN-Ifra is calling on news media professionals to nominate great speakers for the events. The organisation is especially interested to hear the stories from users, news media players and inspiring outsiders that could help facilitate the transformation of the news gx publishing industry. n n Video ads get competitive I ndia and more recently Korea are following Australia and Singapore as the region’s programmatic ad hotspots, Cynthia Deng says. The Hong Kong-based Asia Pacific managing director of advertising platform Turn says that while Australia is the region’s most mature programmatic market after Japan – rated second-largest globally – interest is growing fast in other countries. Figures from Turn’s global advertising industry index are matched by similar patterns in Asia and Australasia. Deng says marketers are learning how to data and insights to their advantage: “In Australia, advertising activity accelerates through the second quarter to the end of the year and we expect competition to be high, especially in video.” Data from the platform shows advertisers have spent substantially more on mobile, video, display and social channels in the first four months of this year, compared to 2013. The spend on mobile has more than doubled (109 per cent) with video ads up by two thirds. Mature display budgets and also social are up 20 per cent. Increased competition is translating into higher advertising costs, especially Cynthia Deng – An increase in inventory is making the video ad market more competitive for social, where the effective costper-thousand impressions has risen by 64 per cent globally. An increase in inventory – especially in video, which actually dropped one per cent – affected mobile, up by only eight per cent. “As spend and competition increase in mature markets, brands and agencies are using sophisticated audiencecentric strategies to drive planning for programmatic advertising,” says Deng. The Turn index shows travel and telecom were both 49 per cent more competitive than last year, followed by financial services (38 per cent), arts and entertainment (15 per cent) and home and garden (11 per cent). Sports and recreation, and motors were the two industry verticals leading moves to become less competitive globally, followed by apparel, office products, and health and beauty. Turn says its demand-side platform makes more than 100 billion datadriven advertising decisions a day, analysing more than 1.5 billion gx anonymous customer attributes. n n Newspaper technology Publication production An MPC Media publication Volume 14 Number 3 gxpress.net August 2014 Managing editor Peter Coleman phone: +61 7-5485 0079, mob: +61 407 580 094, email: [email protected] Sales & business development Caitlin Miller, mobile: 0422 272 200, email: [email protected] Editorial, administration, production: PO Box 40, Cooran, Qld 4569, Australia Tel: +61 7-5485 0079 Fax: +61 2-4381 0246 E-mail: [email protected] Administration Maggie Coleman, 07-5485 0079 Printed by Galloping Press, NSW, Australia See us at www.gxpress.net and digital.gxpress.net Published by MPC Media (Pileport Pty Ltd) ABN 30 056 610 363 Subscriptions A$44 pa. (inc GST) within Australia. Other rates on application © Pileport Pty Ltd 2014. No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without prior written permission. The views expressed by contributors to GXpress are not necessarily those of the publisher 2 gxpress.net August 2014 Enhanced analytics for auto app Granasa taking the tablets Agfa Showed key new features of its Ecuadorian media group Granasa is extending its mobile offering with two tablet-focussed products for iOS and Android. Both Expreso and Extra have developed special-subject publications using viewers from Protecmedia Support for advertisers includes an interactive catalogue where gx advertisers can check options. n n automated Eversify tablet platform at the World Newspaper Congress. Publishers are now able to promote multiple titles via a single app, and reader analytics provide more details on behaviour. A new ‘EDC++’ reader feature adds interactivity to gx ‘enhanced digital copy’ editions. n n digital.gxpress.net gxpress.net August 2014 3 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production digital publishing gxpress.net Vizrt has renamed its Viz Media Engine as Viz One following a legal challenge in some markets. Viz One is central to Vizrt’s video management offering, and includes tools that allow video to be ingested, searched, edited, transcoded and then delivered in many formats. “Viz One is a continuation of the idea of the empowered journalist, which has been the foundation of Vizrt,” says chief technology officer Petter Ole Jakobsen. A new version 3.2 of gxpress.net smartphones, laptops and tablets in the 2014 AdReaction Report. According to the study, Australians spend about six and a half hours each day staring at a screen, however 113 minutes of that time is usually spent consuming another screen at the same time, resulting in a typical daily screen time of just under five hours (or 285 minutes). Only 11 per cent of consumers consume screen time which is “meshed” – using a TV and a second screen for related content. Aquafadas Digital Publishing System claims 30 new features and improvements. These include everything from dot-to-dot, spot the difference and hide and seek games to workflow and interface improvements. The software now enables connection between online and static content, has enhanced ‘read aloud’ features and the ability to sublayout from the bottom to top. The ePub export allows region magnification for Amazon and the Apple iBookstore, and a re-engineered smart reading reflow feature. Japanese content specifications include vertical export in fixed layout. Cxense says it has signed A variety of older Famous for its sand plains and ‘leatherstocking’ connections, Rome, New York, wasn’t built in a day. But switch of its 160-yearold Rome Sentinel to a multiplatform-capable editorial system is apparently an overnight success. The Oneida County daily – which has a circulation of 12,500 copies – is one of the country’s oldest family-owned newspapers, with origins in 1821 and has been run by the same family for six generations. A move to Roxen’s Editorial Portal prepares for the transformation of the editorial process with provision for all digital channels. Publisher Stephen B. Waters says the system has been a time and money saver: “It significantly improves staff efficiency creating content for print and online gx n simultaneously. n systems will be replaced by fully integrated Brainworks advertising at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. The system includes classified, display, preprint and digital advertising order entry, accounts receivable, dynamic reporting, sales force automation and CRM tools, along with embedded marketing tools and other components. Access to Brainworks’ private cloud will help streamline operations. Australians spend more time using their smartphones now than watching TV as they dive into the age of multiscreen. A report from research company Millward Brown examined multiscreen use and behaviour across 30 countries and explored consumer receptivity to advertising on TV, 12 new media clients to its Big Data-based solutions and expanded relationships with ten more. The Oslo, Norway, based company says robust growth is rapidly increasing its global reach and broadening utilisation of solutions which help publishers better understand and engage with users and increase online revenues. Among new clients this year is Japan’s Voyage Group, while South Africa’s Times Media Group, Ireland’s Sunday World and Columbian news portal El Colombiano are among those taking on products including Cxense Analytics. 4 gxpress.net August 2014 Marsh takes Newscycle role, Nilan to Engage3 F ormer Atex product management VP Pete Marsh has been named for a new marketing VP role at Newscycle Solutions. He joined the company in a product marketing role last year with its acquisition of Atex Inc. Now he is expanding the role to include corporate communications and branding, client advisory board activities, and management of the company’s global marketing team. Steve Nilan, who spent five year with Newscycle and predecessor DTI, has left to join “early stage” technology company Engage3, which is developing a Big Dataorientated shopping platform (see below). Newscycle chief revenue officer Dan Paulus describes Marsh as an important part of the company’s management team: “We appreciate his talents and industry insights as he leads Peter Marsh: His Deadline Data Systems developed an early systems/desktop interface Newscycle’s marketing efforts,” he says. “He is committed to our customers and their successes. His experience working with a global team in markets worldwide is impressive.” Marsh had been senior vice-president of product management at Atex Group, which he joined from a role as chief executive officer of 5 Fifteen Inc, responsible for north and south American sales. Earlier he had founded Deadline Data Systems to develop one of the industry’s first software applications designed to integrate newspaper editorial and advertising systems with desktop tools such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. Marsh says he is proud to lead an “incredibly talented” team: “Newscycle is fully committed to the long-term success of this industry, where challenges and opportunities abound,” he says. “We proudly play a vital role in providing the enabling technologies that help our customers produce the highest quality content, the most relevant advertising, and the greatest level of audience engagement across all media channels.” Married with a daughter – whose musical talents are to be seen on YouTube – and twin sons, he lives in Topsfield, Massachusetts. He is also chairman of Samaritans, a non-profit organisation in Boston dedicated to preventing gx suicide. n n Patent addresses ‘intent to buy’ An app which uses shopping lists to direct retail and brand marketing has gained a US patent for product selection techniques for developer Engage3. Founder and chief executive Ken Ouimet says the broad ranging patent is one of 20 filed and is the foundation of the company’s ShoppingScout “intent to buy” platform. It covers how advertisers, manufacturers and retailers may recommend products to shoppers based on their preferences. The six-year-old company – which claims have found an “elegant solution” to complex pain points of CPG manufacturers, retailers, publishers and consumers – has been attracting attention recently, and has just recruited former DTI/Newscycle marketing vice president Steve Nilan as B2B marketing senior vice president. Engage3’s founders are credited with inventing ‘retail price optimisation’, a process which was the focus of their Khimetrics company, sold to SAP in 2006 after being named Fortune magazine’s ‘breakout company’ the previous year. Ouimet says ShoppingScout gives consumers the confidence that they are buying the right products at the right price, and could save them as much as $3000 a year. A point of differentiation is that it uses purchaser intentions to help retailers and brands target promotional gx spending better. n n P ilots on WhatsApp, WeChat, BBM and Mxit – including Indian election coverage – have proved the value of instant messaging platforms for BBC News. Popularity of breaking news alerts and instant analysis have prompted the UK national broadcaster to look at ways of extending the service, says assistant editor of the UGC and social media hub Trushar Barot. In a BBC Academy blog, he outlines results from projects including WhatsApp and WeChat for the Indian elections, on BBM for the BBC Hausa service in Nigeria, and Mxit during the South Africa elections. “We were the first major news organisation to try out editorial content on these platforms, so we were very much venturing into unchartered waters,” he says.“Rather than setting targets for subscribers or audience reach, we used these pilots as proof-ofconcepts to see if there was an appetite for these editorial products from users on these platforms.” Using WhatsApp for the Indian elections, BBC News set up an account and invited users to add a mobile number to their WhatsApp contacts and send a message to it to subscribe to the service. Users were then put on to a ‘broadcast list’ where they would receive a maximum of three updates a day, in both Hindi and English. “We posted a variety of items, including audio and video clips and daily text headline bulletins,” Barot says. He says that while emoticons are really popular on social media – particularly on instant-messaging platforms – they needed to find out whether they work in the context of a news story, trying it on the story about the EU’s Indian mango ban: “There are certainly valid editorial arguments about whether BBC News should really be treating news stories in this way, and whether this was the right story to test out emoticons on,” he says.“However, subscribers really seemed to like the item – it had by far the biggest engagement, in terms of responses, of any item we posted on WhatsApp, with hundreds of people sending back their emoticon faces. We also published ‘infographics’ of the electoral map of India, ‘fact-a-day’ images and bespoke text, picture and video entries from our correspondents across the country.” Come election results day, the frequency of posts was increased to a live breaking and analysis service, with more than 20 items posted on the day. Content on the day included breaking news alerts and instant Voters with mobile celebrate the Indian elections bbc’s indian chat show analysis from correspondents in the Delhi bureau. “We took advantage of the status update functionality by regularly changing it with the latest seat count, so users could stay across the latest numbers in between posts by just looking at the account’s status message,” Barot says. Cartoons and humorous viral videos seemed to be particularly popular among India users of WhatsApp, so – in another BBC News first – they posted a ‘cartoon news alert’ to represent the story of the day once the results had come through. In addition to WhatsApp, a BBC News India channel had been set up on WeChat. This was limited to one update a day, where users would get a bundled set of headlines and stories that they could click through to, eventually taking them back to our News website if they wanted to read about the story in more depth. BBC News’ pilots of publishing using various messaging services were mostly positive, Trushar Barot (above) says In addition, WeChat subscribers could go into the app to read the latest stories from different news indexes such as technology, world news and business news, which were powered by RSS feeds from our news website. Away from the Indian elections, an ongoing pilot has been running with the BBC Hausa service on Blackberry’s BBM platform. A BBC Hausa account on the platform’s new ‘channels’ tab posts news stories to subscribers. The content is deliberately simpler in format, with a sentence of text and a link to the full story, to take into account the limited data allowance that many Nigerians have. Also in Africa, a two-week pilot on the popular South African app Mxit – primarily used by young South Africans – required mostly text-heavy content. Barot says the response for all of the services tried was “very positive” with many saying it felt more like a personalised experience. “They also liked the immediacy of having the content pop straight up on their phone, but wanted more ability to choose what content they received,” he says. “In most cases we were able to incorporate the extra content activity within existing social media team workflows. WeChat, BBM and Mxit all have desktop versions and admin tools to make it easy to post content and manage responses, plus some basic statistics.” The exception was WhatsApp, which doesn’t have a desktop version or much stats, meaning all editorial activity had to be via a mobile phone handset.“This took a lot more time, although it also seemed to be the platform that offered the most direct engagement with the audience,” he says. “From what we’ve done so far, there seems to be potential for news content within these services, as long as the content is interesting, gx relevant and matches user expectations.” n n gxpress.net August 2014 5 Newspaper technology Publication production systems & online gxpress.net WoodWing adds progress reports WoodWing has announced a new cloud-based reporting product for its Enterprise publishing system. The Analytics feature provides up-todate information about the progress of production processes, with multiple visual reports about stories and related objects, accessible via devices including tablets. A first version includes a progress report – showing which stories are finished and which being worked on – and an object status report with an overview of all objects related to a story. Chief executive Roel-Jan Mouw says modern multi-channel publishing processes can be quite complex and involve so many different types of media that it becomes difficult to see the full picture of the status of production at any moment. “With our new, we address that challenge,” he says. Also announced at the Xperience user event in Lisbon in June was an upgrade to Elvis DAM 5 to enable management of up gx to a billion assets. n n Guardian Australia doubles audience G uardian Australia has almost doubled its base audience and is on track to turn a profit, UK trade magazine Press Gazette has reported. Traffic was up to 5.55 million unique browsers in May, against three million when the local site launched. Guardian Media Group is partnered in Australia by entrepreneur Graham Wood, who chief executive Andrew Miller says will have his loan repaid unless the venture is abandoned. It may take “many years” before that and the USA operation – which is “well ahead of target and growing revenue nicely” – come into profit. GMG statistics attribute about six per cent of its 100 million global audience gx to Australasia and a third to the Americas. n n 6 gxpress.net August 2014 T rends “across the pond” in North America were a special interest for delegates to this year’s fourteenth ppimedia Open Days in Hamburg. Among speakers were Nancy Lane, president of the US Local Media Association, and Markus Feldenkirchen who heads ppi Media’s US operation. Feldenkirchen encouraged publishing companies in Europe and elsewhere to expand their range of products, seeing themselves as “marketing organisations” in the future. Nancy Lane’s message was also very clear: Through transparency and teamwork, we have to embrace innovation and overcome scepticism towards new platforms and the social media. “It’s exactly these channels that are suitable for a more visual communication and for collecting and analysing data that is very lucrative for publishers,” she says. Elsewhere, speakers canvassed the question of print or digital emphasis… or whether all products should go hand in hand. Some 140 industry experts at the Hamburg event in June agreed that while the industry was becoming increasingly digital, print still played a significant role. The agenda covered topics such as big data and cross-channel publishing, as well as process optimisation in publishing and printing. Using a small cupcake shop in Hamburg as an example, ppi product manager Christian Veith demonstrated how social media can be used in local markets for a diversified marketing strategy. Here, the cupcake shop is only one element of the brand positioning, which is complemented by another seven touchpoints, such as company profiles in social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. In the USA, this marketing approach is well-established, and offers great potential in other markets. “Social media provides a new business segment which regional media companies can use to reach and interact with digital natives in particular, and to get to know them better in terms of personalised marketing,” he says. OWL-Online chief executive Ute Becker Newspaper technology Publication production atlantic crossing Sacred ground: An evening event included a tour of Hamburg’s St Pauli district and the Millerntor Stadium. Cupcakes, channels (and soccer’s World Cup) featured at ppi’s Hamburg event gxpress.net gave an insight into the business model that she and her team are currently developing to establish itself as a brand for younger target groups. The company was relaunching its website and is revising its range of products so that readers no longer associate the name OWL with a newspaper only, but also with an independent range of digital products. “Unless we rethink, this won’t work,” he says. Ute Becker’s phrase “to rethink” became the catchword of the entire event. Although print remains the core business of newspapers, digital products, social media marketing, mobile apps and cross-channel publishing must become a fixed part of the publishing industry, according to experts. Just how important it is to tailor content to each individual reader’s needs was illustrated by Manuel Scheyda, ppi Media vice president for product management, in a presentation on big data. Know-how on users, proximity to customers and a back channel – as provided by Web 2.0 – are indispensable for addressing individual target groups, in particular digital natives. With this in mind, ppi Media is enhancing its range of products to include streamlined workflow solutions for web, broadcast and mobile, and these were demonstrated by managing directors Norbert Ohl and Jan Kasten. Individual portals for industrial customers and tools for publishing medianeutral content, software solutions for content management systems, as well as hybrid apps, are the main new elements in a new range of products. Next year’s event has been set for June 22-23 in Luebeck. gx Reports: Julia Gohde ppi Media n n Leveraging print’s credibility online Does the trend towards online mean that no-one wants to read a newspaper anymore? The answer to this from ppi Open Days delegates Michael Kuth and Christian Wagner at Bremer Tageszeitungen was a clear “no”. “It would be fatal to stop print altogether,” Kuth says. “There’s no competition between print and digital, so we need to cover both by creating media-neutral content.” The Bremen-based publishing company is optimising its print infrastructure by standardising workflows and systems and coordinating its organisational processes by integrating the online channels. The high level of credibility that daily newspapers enjoy should not be underestimated, they say, and this needs to be transferred to the digital world. As part of the project, Bremer Tageszeitungen is implementing augmented reality in the editorial and ad departments of the WeserKurier. Russmedia, on the other hand, takes a different approach: In order to grow in both the local and international markets and to be successful outside the original area of circulation, the company is active in several fields. Although it continues to focus on the printed newspaper, it also pursues a twobrand strategy for print and digital. Russmedia has optimised its online marketing strategy and currently has about 100 online portals. In so doing, the company creates proximity and provides citizens’ forums, for example. As a result, Russmedia has succeeded in increasing its mobile traffic. Markus Raith, chief executive of Russmedia GmbH, described the special innovation strategy pursued by the Austrian media company and explained why it operates more and gx more in niche markets. n n Publishing on all channels! www.worldpublishingexpo.com gxpress.net August 2014 7 Newspaper technology Publication production comment gxpress.net A merry go round Get off or throw up? John Juliano considers the options with CXM johnjuliano T he American comedian Bill Cosby, in his early 1960s comedy album, ‘Wonderfulness’, talks about a child’s playground merrygo-round that the children push round and around and around until someone gets dizzy and throws up. With each additional conversation on the subject of customer experience management (CXM), I feel as if someone has just spun the merry-go-round that much faster. I was in the UK last month attending presentations on coming products and directions for customer experience management, which is really the new hot phrase for targetted advertising and targetted content. The UK has the highest number of surveillance cameras per capita in the world. While on the one hand, it allows the retrospective review of the actions of terrorists before bombing the underground, and on the other, according to an introductory talk, it could be used to recognise the licence plate number on the car, tie that to a consumer and understand where they shop. Think of the power of targetted advertising! The speaker led me, as all good salespeople can, to believe that this was an actual, prototype target-marketing product. This is a type of selling which is often called ‘imagine!’ We eventually got down to what is being constructed, met with a vendor, and talked about a realistic product for our industry. What I was shown was a unified approach to intelligence gathering to provide both targetted advertising and targetted content. It is either Big Brother or Big Data, depending on whether 1984 is the title of a book or the year you were born. Because it is all so common in news reports, we will all treat Big Data as very ho-hum, but an approach like this doesn’t involve telling Google, or anyone else about our customers. The approach is rather simple, track everything your users do on your website, the website of your sister newspapers, and if you are feeling expansive, share data with other newspapers and news sites to gather more comprehensive data. Get your user to log in using their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn credentials and then mine their data and that of their 8 gxpress.net June 2014 friends to build a profile for the user. This will improve the user’s experience by presenting ads that reflect their interests, and news that reinforces their opinions. Easy, the software does it all. I mentioned this to an acquaintance in the US military who is studying ‘Network Science’. His response was, that yeah, he was doing the same thing: Looking at social media as part of a project to evaluate security risks. His real point of confusion was that we don’t really care who the actual person is, we care about their profile so that we can get a higher rate for presenting more targetted ads, and keep them looking at our website longer. His statistics were interesting: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account for 46 per cent of the world’s social media. Meaning the rest of the sites are just not worth the effort. His approach is the same as ours, but for DoD (US Department of Defense) personnel: look at what they post, look at what their friends post, do sentiment analysis and scoring. Where in our world, we then take that profile and figure out what ads and stories to display, he sends information about people with bad scores to a security officer to potentially have their clearance yanked. He tells me his goal is to prevent another Fort Hood – where 17 people were killed in two separate incidents by individuals who were entitled to be on base. There is one wrinkle in his search: He can’t look at anyone who is not DoD. US laws prevent that. And despite what we might think, at least in the US Army, they take the laws quite seriously. Or, so he tells me. The riddle of how to tell who is DoD, is an interesting one. LinkedIn, which is considered trustworthy, is used to ID a person and establish that they are DoD employee. More than 600,000 DoD employees list this fact in LinkedIn. Then, use LinkedIn as a gateway over to Facebook. But how do you tell whether those friends are DoD employees, if you can’t link them back through LinkedIn? One novel idea is to encourage DoD employees to join a Facebook group that only DoD employees can join. There is no American law that says DoD employees can be subject to this scrutiny, but their employment contracts say they can. I called the person who introduced me to the term Big Data several years ago. He told me not worry about any of this, because in two months everything will be upside down. Only 34 per cent of the ads posted on the web are ever even seen, he said. And, until now there was no way to verify whether an ad was ever seen. Yes, we can tell whether it was placed on a page, and whether that page was displayed, but there was no way to tell if that user ever scrolled down to see the ad. In two months (November 2014), there will be a push to pay for ad views rather than page views. This will change our entire industry, the digital pricing model and revenue. Will it? Perhaps this will become part of the services we’ll provide: Access to users that read to the end of the story. Or we’ll only provide stories that fit on a single screen. Some websites place the share button, with a pre-written subject above the story, because most readers don’t scroll down. But, according to Ethan Zuckerman, writing in The Atlantic, American newspapers generate four times more money per reader than Facebook. Small comfort, Mark Zuckerberg has a billion customers. I recently wrote about Digital First Media as a victim of its own success. Company executives that I spoke with lamented that they were too successful to see their plans come to fruition. Of the two executives mentioned, one is abruptly gone from DFM, the second tells me he’ll be gone within a month. The buyers for DFM? Nowhere to be seen. The CEO of a newspaper software company that was purchased in the last few years, told me in an email recently that he was now in the healthcare industry. It’s like the old days in newspapers, he wrote, with money flowing in the door and double digit profits. The merry-go-round seems to be going faster and faster. The centrifugal force flings some of us off, but we’re not gx always unhappy about where we land. n n Facebook to establish sales office in China It may be blocked in China, but Facebook is preparing to step up its presence in the country, opening of a sales office to work with advertisers. Classified Intelligence Report’s Don Gasper says that while admitting to past mistakes in its strategy, it is now investing heavily in mobile technology. Vice president Vaughan Smith told the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing that although Facebook penetration in China was low – the service has been blocked by authorities since 2009 –this had not prevented it from developing other strands of its business. No announcement has been made of when the China office will open, but it is understood it could be within a year. Gasper says Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met Cai Mingzhao, head of China’s state council information office – responsible for regulating the internet – last September. The meeting followed an unofficial visit by cofounder and chief gx n executive Mark Zuckerberg. n Virtual partners L ayar’s augmented reality product offering will continue following the company’s acquisition by rival Blippar. The deal announced this week delivers a total client base of more than 5000 brands and publishers and 100,000 self-publishing partners in more than 175 countries. Founded in 2009, Layar introduced one of the first mobile AR browsers – with an app which has now been downloaded 38 million times – its open development platform attracting the attention of developers worldwide. A self-service print creation tool introduced in 2012 is used by more than 80,000 publishers and editors. With offices in Amsterdam, New York and Toronto, it had been funded by Intel Capital, Sunstone Capital and Prime Ventures. Blippar co-founder and chief executive Ambarish Mitra recalls his own company’s 33-month success story, “from building prototypes in the living room of my flat to connecting millions of consumers to thousands of brands around the world, and making the verb ‘to blipp’ synonymous with AR experiences. “To me, Layar has always demonstrated that it shares this vision of an augmented world. Now Layar... ‘shares this vision of an augmented world’, Blippar co-founder Ambarish Mitra says working together as one team, we will further define what consumer augmented reality needs to be, and what will be required to deliver it on a global scale as an intuitive daily behaviour.” Newspaper technology Publication production gxpress.net Layar chief executive Quintin Schevernels says the two companies had a shared vision and ambition: “Both companies have been exploring the market very successfully over the past years,” he says. “Since they are extremely complementary, joining forces creates the undisputed global market leader in its industry.” He says the new combination will “further fuel ambitions” and has the potential to change the way people interact with the physical world forever. Research and development capabilities of the two businesses will be combined, but Mitra says they will maintain the relative target market positions of each. Blippar’s core strength had been high-end and large brands and publishers, whereas Layar’s platform, white label technology and self-publishing tool had targeted the long tail of the market with lower budgets. Blippar recently announced image-recognition capabilities for Google Glass, as well as AR gaming gx technology for the platform. n n Content-X: Publishing in a New Dimension Accelerate your processes with ppi Media’s software solutions. We specialize in automation, integration and cross-channel publishing, and offer ideal solutions for your workflow that are both economical and efficient. Content-X is a system for all channels. This editorial system ensures that your content remains medianeutral until it can be placed in print, online, mobile or broadcast. Discover the advantages! Meet us at WAN-IFRA India in New Delhi on 17-18 September 2014 Contact: Gerhard Raab Email: [email protected] • Newspaper systems industry veteran John Juliano writes regularly for GXpress Magazine. He is North American vice president of business development at Miles 33. Contact him at [email protected] Meet us at World Publishing Expo in Amsterdam, the Netherlands 13-15 October 2014 Booth 9.410 We Believe in Publishing. gxpress.net August 2014 9 www.ppimedia.com Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production Generic gxpress.net gxpress.net Seamless video opens the door at Telegraaf DIGITAL MEDIA ASIA 18-21 NOVEMBER 2014 · SINGAPORE Dutch flagship daily De Telegraaf plans better, newsier content following installation of a new multimedia editorial system. The country’s largest publisher aims to give subscribers more quality content and reduce time to market on digital publications with the unified workflow of the CCI NewsGate system. Editor and NewsGate project manager Lenno van Dekken says Amsterdambased Telegraaf Media Group “wants to innovate” and make new ideas come to life: “Our organisation has the willingness to change and with NewsGate we’re getting the technology to support that change and to innovate,” he says. “We have so much great content, but we can only publish limited amounts in the newspaper. We want to give our subscribers more quality content on tablets and smartphones. “We spread our content to all platforms and let the reader decide where, when and how to read.” The CCI system will be the central tool for production and planning across the group’s wide array of publications and business units including national daily De Telegraaf, regional dailies, daily freesheets including Metro, weeklies and magazines. A factor has been the close ties to CCI-owned Escenic, which Telegraaf wants use to boost online business. Telegraaf Media Group operates more than 100 websites and facilitates video production as “the most complete media house” in the gx Netherlands. n n Artwork and video delivery service Adstream has opened an office in Shenzhen to service the Chinese market, “in response to increased interest in the Chinese market and client demands”. In Australia, Adstream has named former Sensis sales general manager Geoff Hoffmann as commercial director. In 21 years with the Australian directory publisher – owned by Telstra, which owned Adstream until three years ago – Hoffmann was gx responsible for digital sales as well as Yellow Pages products. n n Beachhead established, News mulls app attack A fter trialling it on Sydney’s northern beaches, News Corp is rolling out its LocalShoppa offers app to 130 more areas. Head of digital Elizabeth McDonald says the locationbased smartphone app – which shows discount offers and on-the-spot deals within 25 kilometres – gives advertisers easy control. News Corp Australia trialled the app in the geographical footprint of its Manly Daily community newspaper to test the product before rolling it out to the other 21 newspaper mastheads in New South Wales. “The app is hyperlocal with a default 25-kilometre ring fence, which can be shortened or lengthened,” she says. “As users travel around with their phones, ring fences change to the area of the phone’s location.” Users can also sort by category or retailer and mark ‘favourites’ to receive push notifications for when a new deal goes live. For advertisers, a self-service portal enables them to upload, manage and change local deals in real time. “If a coffee shop owner is having a slow lunch period, the owner can instantly push out a one-hour only offer such as ‘buy one sandwich, get one free’,” she says. “Unlike most deal apps that take a percentage of the client’s product or service, Local Shoppa advertisers pay a flat rate of A$220 a month for access to the platform. They can have five deals running at any one time.” News licenses the Local Shoppa app – which uses GPS technology, favourites and category push notifications – and platform from a third party. McDonald says that in addition to the 130-centre rollout, there is “potential to move into territories not currently serviced by News gx Corp”. n n App attack: News may take its LocalShoppa app to 'non-News’ areas TOI’s customer-centric app leads on pricing D RIVIN G I NNO VATI O N S IN NEW S M EDI A www.wan-ifra.org/dma14 10 gxpress.net August 2014 T BCCL president Arunabh Das Sharma Nirmalya Sen looks at TOI’s Pricewise programme and striving for innovation he Times of India, the flagship newspaper of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL), wants to evolve its Pricewise programme from a dynamic pricing tool to a consultative one, incorporating modules for analysing price volume elasticity and cross sell and upsell combinations, among other things. In an interview with GXpress magazine, Arunabh Das Sharma, president of BCCL, based in New Delhi, India says the company is pushing hard to use its scientific pricing engine to maximise challenged advertising margins. Edited excerpts: What technology applications does TOI’s ‘Pricewise’ programme involve? Pricewise is a custom application developed using Java from ease of use and 24x7 accessibility perspectives. It provides instantaneous price quotes and authorisation that seamlessly flow into SAP for order booking. The databases used are Mongo and Oracle. You have said newspaper media organisations have traditionally viewed pricing from a tactical lens, giving little focus to it in the overall scheme of things. What do you feel the impact of this view has been for newspapers? Tactical view on pricing has resulted in unchecked discounting that resulted in pricing table going down over the years. This has led to erosion of yield in multiple markets. Also, tactical approach on pricing has not allowed pricing to become one of the strategic pillars on which organisations can plan revenue growth and higher profitability. How has TOI’s ‘pricing excellence’ transformation programme worked so far? Pricing excellence transformation has helped: increase realisation defined as revenue per metric tonne, allow for more accurate bookings and projections on a daily basis and changed sales force focus from volume-driven growth to profitable growth. What advanced yield management techniques have driven yield growth for TOI? Techniques used to drive yield growth at TOI include: control on pagination basis the ad edit matrices for publications, calibrated price increases factoring the variable cost increase, volume control on loss-making transactions and evaluation on business parameters to ensure alignment with business objectives. How were pricing algorithms established and what supporting technology backbone was used for TOI? Pricing algorithms were established using regression techniques that measure impact of more than 25 parameters on pricing. The algorithms were supported by business logic incorporating external factors such as readership, CPT (cost per thousand), circulation and market shares. Statistical packages were used to establish the relationships between various parameters and gx their impact on pricing. n n gxpress.net August 2014 11 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production digital business Adstream will team gxpress.net Video exchange SpotXchange becomes RTL’s new idol E uropean entertainment giant RTL has bought a majority share in programmatic video advertising company SpotXchange. The $8 billion group with more than 10,000 employees has interests in 54 TV channels and owns production company FremantleMedia. SpotXchange chief executive Mike Shehan points out that it is the first time a major broadcaster has invested in programmatic video advertising: “SpotXchange has never been afraid to take the road less travelled, and challenge the norms in the ad tech industry. “Instead of selling to a major US technology company, we’ve taken a route that will allow us to operate independently while becoming a core part of RTL’s global business and strategy,” he says. RTL Group will acquire 65 per cent of the Denver-based video advertising monetisation company for an initial US$144 million plus an ‘earn-out component’ based on future performance. RTL also an option to acquire the remaining shares. Founded in 2007, SpotXchange was the first online advertising marketplace with an exclusive focus on video, and now provides its platform to hundreds of publishers around the globe including The Atlantic, Hearst Corporation and Mail Online. It claims more than a billion auctions for video advertising impressions are transacted through its platform daily, with ads delivered to 335 million people. Growth in programmatic video advertising is estimated to increase from US$2.7 billion in 2013 to US$15.4 billion in gx 2018 worldwide. n n + CCI EUROPE with Comcast’s AdDelivery to offer a single global ad delivery platform. The partnership will extend Adstream’s current distribution offering – which covers Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australasia – to North American destinations. Comcast currently provides ad distribution for over 10,000 national, regional and local advertisers using a 100G-fibre backbone across the USA and parts of Canada. Its footprint encompasses most US broadcast and cable networks, local broadcast stations, cable and other multichannel video distributors, radio stations, and online video web publishers. He cofounded advertising technology firms Amobee – sold to SingTel in 2012 for $321 million – and RingRing Media, now Harry Dewhirst has turned his talents to BlisMedia. His new role as president, chief commercial officer and board director of the Singapore-based location data and consumer targeting firm – in which he has been an investor for the past three years – was announced last week. And already there’s talk of new markets and partnerships across the AsiaPacific region and beyond. Having run ad tech businesses in Europe, USA and locally, Dewhirst was named Media Week’s Rising Star in 2009 and was among Mobile Entertainment magazine’s top 50 mobile executives. Established in the UK in 2004, BlisMedia has launched hubs in Singapore and Sydney andplans more offices globally in the next year. Dewhirst says with advertisers globally seeking new ways to reach relevant audiences, the moves come at a crucial time for Blis, with “best in market” platforms and solutions: “We are uniquely placed to help brands reach the people that matter, at the right place and gx time,” he says. n n + ESCENIC AWT SYSTEM GLOBAL STRENGTH + LOCAL KNOWLEDGE A partnership combining local expertise with world class editorial, online and advertising systems 12 gxpress.net August 2014 SYSTEMS gxpress.net ➤ A new addition to EidosMedia’s Méthode publishing platform gives news organisations the tools to maximise the effectiveness of their social media operations. How are news organisations making social media work for them? A recent survey* conducted by Csion across 11 countries revealed that, while most journalists use social media to some extent, there are wide variations across the sample in both skills and attitudes, with a striking 50 per cent of journalists regarding social media as having a negative or very negative effect upon their profession. It seems clear that, in spite of the genuine opportunities offered by this new public space both as a news-gathering source and as a venue for engaging readers, news providers are often slow to realise its potential benefits. “For one thing, it’s too noisy,” said Marco Cetola, EidosMedia Product Manager. “The idea you’re looking for to drive your story, the authoritative comment you need, may well be in there somewhere, but not every journalist has the search skills needed to sort out the wheat from the chaff among the millions of items posted every day.” The other grey area concerns the management of the news provider’s own posts: “Most organisations have accounts on the major social networks where they post some of their content,” he said. “But few of them have a coordinated strategy driven by a clear view of who’s posting what and what response it’s getting. These are just two of the considerations that prompted us to develop Méthode Social.” Méthode Social is part of EidosMedia’s Méthode digital publishing platform. It gives users a set of tools that maximise the efficiency of sourcing news from social networks, while providing an overview of the performance of its own social media operations. “All of the social functions can be used without leaving the editorial workspace,” said Marco Cetola. “Journalists manage all searching and posting operations in a side panel next to the editing window. Results are then imported into the workflow using simple click and drag operations.” Using a number of powerful filters and algorithms, journalists can Newspaper technology Publication production gxpress.net www.ccieurope.com news leaders news leaders Making social media work progressively refine their searches across multiple social networks to strip away irrelevant or lowgrade results and zero in on the most authoritative and media-rich contributions. “A feature like this can make every journalist into a social search expert,” he said. When it comes to the organisation’s own social media posts, Méthode Social allows stories to be published across a slate of social media with a single click. Templates automatically select and optimise the format of the story content for each social network, ensuring that the organisation presents a coordinated graphic identity across the different networks. The performance of the organisation’s posts is displayed and analysed in two other panels: one shows overall numbers of ‘likes’, shares and comments over a given time interval; the other lists published items, together with statistics and trend data, so that the changing performance of individual posts in real time can be seen at a glance. “We’ve designed these tools to bring greater efficiency, productivity and, above all, visibility to the way news providers make social media work for them,” said Marco. “They’re intended to provide the basis for a truly effective social media strategy.” *http://www.cision.com/us/2013/12/ how-journalists-view-pr-and-socialmedia/ EidosMedia Pty Ltd Centennial Plaza, Tower B 280 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000 Phone: +61 (02) 9112 3000 [email protected] www.eidosmedia.com GXP NL 1408 13 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production future forum gxpress.net gxpress.net Digital dimes turn to dollars N o doubt that digital publishing was front and centre at the 2014 Future Forum in Sydney this month, albeit with a nod here and there to print, which for many continues to deliver the dollars. With no-one game to guess for how long that might be, the focus was on building the ‘digital dimes’ on which the future must rest. If the “watershed” is the point at which circulation revenue – both print and digital – exceeds that from advertising, the New York Times is already there, and an optimistic chief consumer officer Yasmin Namini (opposite) could tell delegates how the publisher was going back for more than the 54 per cent it already takes. From Germany, Pit Gottschalk told how Hamburger Abendblatt – the hen that had laid Axel Springer’s golden eggs – had been sold last year to fund digital growth and acquisition. No matter that print earners remain the influential Die Welt and popular Bild. At a ‘print production masterclass’ the previous day, it seemed almost that News Corp Australia’s group editorial director Leavers were losers, as some delegates grabbed a free lunch and left Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull with Campbell Reid, Lodovico de Briganti and Yasmin Namini: “You need to be nimble, able to twist and turn,” he told delegates after talking tactics with former Italian footballer de Briganti 14 gxpress.net August 2014 Campbell Reid had found his way into the wrong room, contrasting the “stature” of print with the immediacy of digital publishing. If print distribution and production were as quick as digital, he argued, “we’d print more editions”. And if it were as cheap, perhaps. Among speakers at The Newspaper Works event in fact, it was left to SPH strategic marketing head Geoff Tan to deliver a dynamic rap for the dominant Singapore publisher’s print products. Critically however, the industry had moved from the gloom of previous years to pragmatic optimism about its future. Apart from its highlight plenaries and Newspaper of the Year presentation dinner, the two-day programme also included workshop sessions for journalism, advertising and marketing, as well as the 2014 Advertising and Marketing Awards. In what is effectively a ‘gift’ to the Australian industry, registration for all except the evening awards events was free. The strangest aspect therefore, was that – with a strong afternoon session including Storyful founder Mark Little, designer Joe Ziff and Twitter’s Danny Keens, more than half of delegates seemed to have simply grabbed a free lunch and left. Publishers had one of their own on hand in the passionate and well-informed Australian communications minister Malcolm Turnbull. Apart from the reassurance that “our democracy depends on a free press” and that the change of government had brought a ministry which believed in working “with the industry not against it”, there was the constant reminder that Turnbull – who had worked on Kerry Packer’s plans to re-enter the Sydney newspaper market and been a pioneer of the internet industry – knew and cared what he (and we) were talking about. There was no hoped-for news of media deregulation, other than that it was still on C onfident of a digital model that will fund great journalism for years to come, the New York Times is looking for new ways to expand revenue. Circulation has been the news publisher’s biggest source of income for the last two years, with 831 digital subscribers adding an extra $150 million a year ($82 million in the last six months) to the dollars received from sales of the print edition. A ‘risky’ decision to introduce a paywall in 2011 has been vindicated and chief consumer officer Yasmin Namini – who is also a keen sea angler – is looking for “new fish to catch”. On a visit for The Newspaper Works’ Future Forum – her sixth to Australia on business and pleasure – she also had plans for bait-casting at Freshwater Cove. And she likened the “risk and innovation” in prospecting for barramundi and mangrove jack on the Kimberley Coast to that needed to catch new digital subscribers. An early 2000s move into paywalls had been controversial, but then, so had the introduction of colour to front pages in 1997… and it is the same conservative loyalists who objected that the NYT is now tapping with a new Times Premier digital product. These top-end subscribers are now paying an extra $10 – on top of the $35 they pay every four weeks for full digital access – for “behind the story” coverage, crosswords, topic books and events, extra access for family members and the ability to gift three-month subs to friends. Goal of the enhanced tier is to build a deeper relationship, Namini says. A Times Insider component also includes the opportunity to quiz reporters and learn about stories and risk and reward happenings to look out for. A favourite video spills on the two hours (and numerous staffers) needed to prep a brief Obama interview. “It’s a more dynamic and immersive experience, and takes people from spectator to feeling they are a participant.” The next-stage products are being fine-tuned, but retention stats are “really encouraging”. And a far cry from when the original paywall was introduced. “People said we were crazy, delusional and dumb, and only in retrospect is it possible to see the risks we took were smart and necessary,” Namini says. But even if the landscapes continue to change, some are unchanging: “I believe in great journalism, the kind we publish at NYT and you all do,” she told delegates. “It’s more important than ever and worth paying for.” The last five years have seen circulation revenue rise, first through increases in cover prices, and then the paywall – which currently allows ten free stories a month – and subscription models. Since 2012, it has been the largest revenue source – a “watershed” partly driven by declining advertising – and since January, has accounted for 54 per cent. “Basically, we asked digital readers to pay for our journalism, just as just as print readers had for more than a century and a half,” she says. Encouragingly, they have found a “large and growing” number of people willing to do so. Even with the digital growth slowing, the last quarter’s 32,000 new subscribers was a 19 per cent increase. Subscribers pay $15, $25 or $35 every four weeks for different levels of access, amounting to between $195-$455 a year. “Advertising remains very important but growing the number of subscription relationships and revenue are a key to reinventing our future business model,” Namini says. “If we can continue to expand the base of digital subscribers, we think we shall have a foundation for a new business model, one that can deliver sustainable profits and continue to fund our great journalism for many years to come.” A lot of research, assessment of demand levels, and “optimising profitability for the overall business” preceded pricing decisions. “What we had to do was consider the impact on our print pricing, and minimise the amount of cannibalisation,” she says. The original meter model of 20 free articles a month before subscription is required – to maintain high traffic levels – has now been reduced to ten, but Namini says, “you have to make assumptions and build a flexible model which enables changes. Print subscribers – who “already pay premium prices” – were given alldigital access free, and this has helped slow a decline. Four fifths of the “more than a million” print subscribers have linked to the website and apps. Now the publisher is looking at new opportunities, especially from the morethan-half of its digital subscribers using mobiles. It is also looking at those at the Selling up the demand curve is the next priority for the NYT, writes Peter Coleman New York Times’ Crossword and Opinion apps and (below) Cooking beta site Main picture: Yasmin Namini extremes of its demand curve. In addition to the heavy-duty Times Premier users, those who value the content but won’t pay $15 for it are being targetted, an opportunity, Namini says, to capture a new audience. Two new products are already up: NYT Now – an $8 per four weeks curated news app has a mostly under-35 audience, most of whom have not subscribed before – and the $6 NYT Opinion app delivers access to all opinion content. Of NYT Now, Namini says “you know you’re reaching a younger demographic when Buzzfeed has you at number six on its list of apps that will help you in your 20s”. Paradoxically, it is placed between two drinking apps. A new free NYT Cooking app is in beta, to launch this northern autumn and will draw on feature content such as the Times’ database of 15,000 recipes, adding tools and community. “We want to build up as large and engaged an audience as possible before we start charging for it,” she says. The first new product tied to a feature section, it will bring together chefs, users, friends and family. Namini says the rollout of the new apps is very different to first paywall model, for which there was a large target audience: “These have to reach new audiences and stand out on their own,” she says. “So far, we’re pretty pleased with reaction, but it’s still early. “The success of our subscription strategy and those of others, shows people will pay for comment, and readers’ engagement can be turned into growing revenues and content.” gxpress.net August 2014 15 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production future forum gxpress.net Newspaper of the Year and advertising awards R obust journalism was in fashion at the Newspaper of the Year awards, with Brisbane’s Courier-Mail taking the top national/metro category. Judges said the newspaper “brilliantly articulated” a strategy it identified as “aiming to surprise” readers every day. In a top class field, it edged the rest through its “lively and original approach to journalism”. Publishers in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan were among winners as awards went for best newspapers, web sites, apps and digital innovation, photography and technical excellence. Awards for advertising and marketing were presented the previous night. Newspaper of the Year awards: NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR Daily newspaper, national/metro– The Courier-Mail; regional– Newcastle Herald; community– The Gympie Times. Weekend newspaper– The Weekend Australian. Non-daily: regional– The Land; community– St George & Sutherland Shire Leader. Technical excellence: Print centre of the year– Fairfax Media Print & Distribution, North Richmond, NSW. Single-width: national/metro– Apple Daily Printing (Hong Kong); regional– The Geraldton Guardian; community– Bairnsdale Advertiser. Double-width: national/metro– The West Australian; regional– Sunshine Coast Daily; community– New Zealand Chinese Herald. Preprint or supplement: Northern Daily Leader for Tamworth Regional Council. Environment: News Corp Australia 1 Degree’s FY2014 Environmental Awareness Campaign. Photography: Portrait: national/metro– Matt Turner (The Advertiser, Adelaide); regional– Addison Hamilton (Daily Advertiser); community– Matt Bedford (Armidale Express). Features and lifestyle: national/metro– Jason Edwards (Sunday Herald Sun); regional– Brendan Radke (Gold Coast Bulletin); community– Justin Brierty (The Centralian Advocate). Sport: national/metro– Wayne Ludbey (The Courier-Mail); regional– Jon Gellweiler (South Western Times) and Jim Aldersey (Bendigo Advertiser); community– Jon Hewson (Mandurah Coastal Times). News: national/metro– Brendan Esposito (The Sydney Morning Herald); regional– Phil Hearne (Newcastle Herald); community– Geoff Jones (Hawkesbury Gazette). Fairfax Media teams won both the top sales team and top marketing team awards 16 gxpress.net August 2014 A serve from Julia Australia’s newspapers and news sites copped a serve from awards host Julia Zemiro at the PANPA Newspaper of the Year presentations. Between the handing out of gongs, the feisty star of RocKwiz and SBS’ coverage of the Eurovision song contest used her platform to take issue with a journalist’s suggestion that she was drunk while reporting on this year’s songfest. Having a go at the ‘have a go’ journalist she named only as ‘Nick’, she told her side of the story – involving giant stairways and a beaker of soft drink – to those who were celebrating the successes of the publications concerned. You can Google the report and its author online. There was also a parting shot from Zemiro, quoting a line from Broadcast News about the Devil “lowering standards, a bit at a time”. Digital: Best mobile site: mX app for smartphones. Best niche/speciality app or microsite: The Canberra Times for The Silent War. Digital innovation of the year: The Straits Times for Singapore Communities Platform. News site of the year: national/metro– Apple Daily, Taiwan (appledaily.com.tw) and The Advertiser, Adelaide (advertiser.com.au); regional– Newcastle Herald (theherald.com.au). HEGARTY INDUSTRY SCHOLARSHIP Mark Baker, Launceston Examiner, Fairfax Media ADVERTISING & MARKETING AWARDS Print awards: Best single advertisement for a client: national/metro– Sunday News; regional– The Cairns Post; community– Noosa News. Best print campaign for client: national/ metro– News Corp Australia for Touring Tasmania; regional– Geelong Advertiser for Geelong Travel Expo; community– Coffs Coast Advocate for Parkbeach Plaza Shop for Coffs Coast Schools. Best feature/supplement/native advertising environment: national/metro– The Daily & Sunday Telegraph/Herald Sun/Courier-Mail + 82 community publications for Shop Small, American Express; regional– Newcastle Herald for DisabilityCare Australia; community– The Courier, Narrabri for Centenary Edition. Best print idea or innovation: national/metro– Sunday News for Turbo; regional– Manning Great Lakes Extra for The Tradies Toolbox; community– Leader Community Newspapers for Hoyts Ribbon. Digital advertising: Best single advertisement: national/metro– The Sydney Morning Herald for South Australian Tourism Commission; regional– Illawarra Mercury for Three Chimneys. Best digital campaign: national/metro– New Zealand Herald for Silver Fern Farms; regional– The Examiner, Launceston for Tasmanian Turf Club. Best digital idea or innovation: The Sydney Morning Herald for Lego Blockbuster. Best microsite/native advertising: New Zealand Herald for Tourism Australia. Transmedia best integrated campaign: news.com.au/ Herald Sun/Daily Telegraph/Courier-Mail/The Advertiser, Adelaide for NAB Traveller Card Campaign. Craft: Best copywriting: The Australian Magazine, The Weekend Australian for ANZ Campaign. gxpress.net Marketing awards winners: Trade campaign of the year: national/metro– Fairfax Media for Weekend Compact Launch; regional– Sunshine Coast Daily for Town Proud; community– Community Newspaper Group for Food for Thought. Consumer campaign of the year: national/metro– The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age for Clique Photographers’ Association; regional– Bendigo Advertiser for News Now; community– Leader Community Newspapers for Leader Local Grants. Best cause-related campaign or community service: national/metro– The Daily Telegraph & The Sunday Telegraph for We’re For The Bush; regional– The Land for Glove Box Guide to Mental Health; community– Community Newspaper Group for HBF Junior Sports Hero Awards. Sponsorship of the year: national/metro– stuff.co.nz for Round the Bays; regional– Post-Courier, Papua New Guinea for Sponsorship of United Bougainville Training Institute, and The Courier for Run Ballarat Sponsorship; community– Hutt News/Upper Hutt Leader for Great Toyota Giveaway. Best young reader programme: The Fiji Times. Sue Foster of the Noosa News collects her newspaper’s best print ad (community) award from Nisin Sunito, managing director of awards sponsor Oceanic Paper Executive excellence winners: Team collaboration/team player: News Corp Australia for Melbourne Now Campaign. Creative services team: APN News & Media, New Zealand. Sales person of the year: Edwina Sahhar, Fairfax Media. Sales team: National Agency Sales Team, Fairfax Media. Designer/creative services professional: Melanie Yun (News Corp Australia) and Clare Catt (News Corp Australia). Sales manager: Chris Gallichio (Herald & Weekly Times/ Leader Community Newspapers). Marketing team of the year: National Trade Marketing Team, Fairfax Media. Marketer of the year: Johnson Goh, Swee Gim (Singapore Press Holdings). For Apple Daily Printing, Hong Kong, production director Anthony Chan Mei Sang collects the singlewidth award from Jason Kent of sponsor DIC the agenda if a hard-to-achieve consensus could be found. Later the conflicting interests were made apparent in the chief executives forum. Nothing new: “I first represented a media company on a media regulation inquiry in 1977,” Turnbull said, “so I have seen this film before and I know that consensus ends where self-interest kicks in.” However, “focussed discussions” with the industry may produce something. Change “is still on the agenda but needs to carefully balance two competing concerns – the need for diversity in our media industry and to ensure that we have enough economically viable media businesses to make that diversity possible,” he said. Turnbull set the scene for upcoming presentations, even borrowing from Namini’s stats. Nearer to home, he pointed to the 140,000 digital-only subscribers Fairfax Media has for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and the 200,000 News Corp has across its Australian titles. “Compared to their international peers, Australian publishers have done well,” he said, comparing the $24 million taken from digital subscriptions last year (about nine per cent of digital revenues from its metro titles) with the US$41 million of the New York Times Company last quarter (slightly less than 11 per cent of total revenue). Citing PWC forecasts that industrywide digital subscription revenue will grow tenfold until 2018, he added, “In other words, if you can collect enough digital dimes you may well end up with close to a dollar after all.” But with ‘all you can eat’ subscription models giving way to smaller products, “you need to be nimble”. Having chatted with EidosMedia’s Lodovico de Briganti beforehand, he cited the latter’s experience as an Italian rugby player adding, “like that… able to twist and turn”. We’ve told before the story of how Axel Springer boss Mathias Doofer placed – literally – a team of top executives in the digital hotbed of Silicon Valley (GXpress June 2014). Managing director Pit Gottschalk brought the change of mindset home to Future Forum delegates, holding up a copy of the daily Hamburger Abendblatt – on which the Springer empire had been built – which the company sold with other regionals and magazines to Funke Media last year for 920 million Euros ($1.22 billion). With digitalisation “one of the big things we had to do”, the German group now has a lot of cash to invest and is “in a rush to be Break the rules the leading media group”. He urged publishers to “do what you’re best of class at” and grow both organically and by acquisition. Joe Zeff was between jobs: The former principal of app designer Joe Zeff Design had signed off for a new role next month with ScrollMotion where he will take his skills to large corporates. “It’s hard to argue that tablet editions are better than what you can do with HTML,” he admitted. A former presentation editor with the New York Times (its first), he had focussed on magazine covers until moving to mobile apps, and is now leaving the publishing space. But not without some advice for us: About obstacles, product redundancies and new entrants – such as Buzzfeed, Vox and Yahoo News Digest – that “change the rules”. And competition from brands. Advertisers “telling their own stories” like the Coca Cola site “with no soda bottles in sight”. “Mum and dad were right… it is bad for you, especially if you’re a publisher,” he said, urging delegates to reclaim storytelling. Products should be useful – leveraging inventory and technologies such as Apple’s iBeacon – and content modular: Take risks, don’t be afraid to fail,” he urged. Channelling Steve Jobs – who had “changed everything” – SPH’s Geoff Tan urged thinking “outside in”: “Don’t just think outside it, burn the box”. Citing the Singapore publisher’s experience, he urged slimmer, flattened organisation, and the selling of solutions rather than advertising. And he still had plenty of ideas to reinvigorate print promotion. Hegarty scholarship winner and former The Land editor Sally White visited magazine publisher Monocle, learning of its success from “breaking all the rules”: print first, it was more expensive to subscribe to and had no social media, appealing to “thinkers and doers”. And the Quartz website (qz.com) which developed its own data journalism tools and now had five million uniques, and Agmedia’s informative Modern Farmer for which subs could be as much as $1200 a month. “People will pay for value,” she said. Had to go: Pit Gottschalk with the paper sold to fund digitalisation A second panel session contrasted advertising agency attitudes from the ground up. UM chief executive Mat Baxter (New Balance sneakers) told delegates there was no room for complacency: “Every day is your first day”. Asked how newspapers engaged creative agencies Jules Hall of The Hallway (leather brogues) said simply, “You don’t”. And on research, “the conversation needs to get away from audience and focus on outcomes”. Irish former journalist and founder of Storyful, Mark Little was just off the plane to tell delegates not to get too obsessed with distribution. Having lost the monopoly on telling stories,“we need to focus on content,” he said. When his publisher employer had been unable to send him to report on an incident in Teheran, he looked at alternative sources,“what a news agency would look like if it didn’t create any original content”. The result is a business which “sources and validates” information from social media, and was bought last December by News Corp for 18 million Euros (US$25 million). Little sees “more integration of professional and amateur storytelling” and urges publishers to challenge ideas about content packaging. “Today’s principles are to manage (not own), discover (not search), and for authenticity over authority. As people “learn to live with perpetual motion (quoting Emily Bell), the next generation will laugh at concepts such as the nine news and printed papers,“but they will want someone to trust, to be a gatekeeper,” he said. Introducing Twitter media partnerships director Danny Keens, The Newspaper Works chief executive Mark Hollands told how Twitter, FaceBook and Google had “pitched us”, and urged publishers to make use of them: “They have audiences for us to come and get,” he said. In that context, Keens referenced his platform’s 500 million Tweets a day – including real-time dialogues from outer space – and urged publishers to work with it through products such as Twitter Amplify: “Bring your content and we’ll monetise it together,” he said. Welcome to the new world. Peter Coleman gxpress.net August 2014 17 Newspaper technology Publication production digital newspaper printing gxpress.net Star performer T KS’s JetLeader digital press and its variable cutoff folder are a rare newspaper-oriented offering among the 2014 InterTech technology award winners. The lucite stars made famous by Printing Industries of America’s predecessor GATF since 1978 are mostly handed out this year for packaging print innovations. Among them is the V-Pak packaging press Goss International evolved from its heatset commercial technology. Others include real-time 3D packaging software from Creative Edge, the ICE toner that enables Xeikon digital label presses, HP’s Indigo 20000 flexible packaging press, a Hinterkopf digital printer for shaped packaging and Esko’s flexo platemaking and extended gamut technology for packaging print. Heidelberg’s Stahlfolder PFX feeder technology, Just Normlicht’s handy Sopectis 1.0 light meter – which tackles sources such as LED – and iQuote, developed by EFI after ten years of management information systems acquisitions are also honoured among the 11 winners. The JetLeader 1500 inkjet web has been a star performer for pioneer NewsWeb in Chicago, which has two and recently changed its name to Topweb. PIA technology and research vice president Mark Bohan says judges were impressed by several aspects of the TKS press including the company’s open source ink policy and new variable-cutoff folder. They also credited it for well thought-out engineering, robust construction and product flexibility. TKS president Ryutaro Shibasays receiving the recognition in the North American market is “very important because there are so many business opportunities to incorporate the press and its flexibility into a business model”. Apart from the two presses at Topweb, TKS has a third at gx Hawaii Hochi in Honolulu. n n Pictured: One of the two TKS inkjet webs at Topweb Triple-former book system German book printer CPI is to link manroland’s inline finishing system to a new HP digital web press. The company’s FormerLine book block solution is being teamed with a new Rima lift-collator at the Clausen & Bosse print site in Leck. manroland web systems sales manager Mathias Klaus says that with open interfaces, his company’s finishing solutions are “comfortable” within a workflow involving different press makers. CPI managing director Guenter Pecher says the system offers fast job changes within a highly automated finishing workflow, excellent efficiency and optimised paper usage. The FormerLine can process catalogues and advertising flyers as well as books. It has a web speed of up to 300 metres/minute, with cutoff variable between 145-457 mm and a maximum web width of 1067 mm. At CPI, the web will run over three formers, gx producing up to 8000 glued book blocks an hour. n n 18 gxpress.net August 2014 future orientated More than 200 visitors toured digital print pioneer Hucais Group in Dongguan, China, during a manroland-organised customer event. An HP inkjet web at the site is teamed with the German maker’s first FormerLine book finishing system, currently offline. Second and third lines have also been installed, with more to follow in the next couple of years. Festivities included a kung-fu drum performance and the “lucky” ritual of a Chinese lion dance. Speakers included Hucais chief executive Chen Chengwen, manroland web digital printing head of sales and business development Alwin Stadler, and Gido van Praag and Cathy Xu from HP Indigo. Visitors to the industrial book production section saw two web presses with preprinted reels finished to glued book blocks by the FormerLine. Chengwen says that while the number Newspaper technology Publication production gxpress.net News’ ‘preferred’ partners of titles is constantly increasing, runs of single editions are getting smaller. Digitallyprinted books can be produced and delivered flexibly and are ready for dispatch in two days, with web-based order systems supporting a print-on-demand concept. Already successful as a packaging printer, Hucais has established digital printing during the last years: “We constantly develop our business and invest in futureoriented solutions,” Chengwen says. The cost-effectiveness of production will help convince further potential customers. At Hucais, the FormerLine handles cutoffs from 145-420 mm and – teamed with a Rima RS34 lift collator – produces stitched signatures or up to 8000 glued and stitched book blocks an hour. Webs run over two or three formers, providing the option of 4-8 page or 8-16 page signatures. N ews Corp Australia has chosen digital print partners Kodak and manroland web as its preferred supplier. But reports that an order has been placed for a system to be installed in Brisbane are premature. Production and logistics national director Geoff Booth told GXpress negotiations are continuing following a tender process. “I don’t expect an outcome for some weeks,” he says. “We have more work to do on the business case.” News wants to print copies – which are currently airlifted – of the Melbourne Herald-Sun for the Queensland and northern New South Wales market and a wide variety of other work on a pilot system to be installed at the Murarrie print site. Trade press reports have teamed Kodak’s 200 metres-per-minute Prosper 5000 inkjet web with manroland’s 300 metres-per-minute Foldline digital finishing system. GXpress Hucais chief executive Chen Chengwen (right) and partners in the Dongguan project understands an installation would initially be offline, with plans to link the two systems later. Kodak – which had worked with manroland on on-press inkjet imprinting systems – launched a fundamentally redesigned 300 metres-per-minute Prosper 6000 (see opposite) last month. Originally working with Océ (now part of Canon) manroland has developed two systems for finishing the product of inkjet webs, one for newspapers – with an array of options and add-ons – and another for books, currently in use at Hucais in China. A system for News would include one former, a quarterfold to make it capable of processing both tabloid and broadsheet products, plus glueing and stitching. Kodak is understood to be ready to install an inkjet press before the end of the year, with manroland following with the Foldline in the New Year; all they need gx is an order. n n Canon pitches primer-free digital on coated stocks Canon has joined the multi-substrate digital print fray with its first inkjet web capable of printing on coated stocks. The wide (762 mm) web Océ ImageStream 3500 will print on standard coated offset papers without the use of bonding agents or primers. Australian professional print sales director Tim Saleeba says the new press – launched at an open day in Poing, Germany – will strengthen Canon’s position in publishing and commercial printing. Whether it is fast enough for newspapers at up to 160 metres/minute at the “performance mode” 1200 x 600 dpi will depend on application and whether users can leverage the extra width; it also has “quality mode” 1200 x 1200 dpi at of 80 metres/minute. Saleeba says it will usher in a new era, enabling customers to take technology from transactional printing into applications such as brochures, catalogues and short-run magazines, The press uses a newly-developed Kyocera 1200 dpi printhead and aqueous pigment ink which allows very small droplet sizes. The combination enables printing on a wider range of standard gloss offset stocks, as well as lightweight papers, delivering higher edge sharpness, increased optical density and vibrant colours. “The perceived colour gamut on low cost standard offset papers is higher on pigment inks than with dye inks,” he says. It boasts what is being claimed as the “most compact” footprint in its class and is offered with a scalable Océ SRA MP controller with embedded Adobe APPE engine. Saleeba says the ImageStream 3500 will be on display at its Océ printing summit in Germany in September and available thereafter. Pictured: Analysts pause for a selfie with the new press another time. another print. Print is always on the move. In dynamic, changing markets, printing companies always need to adapt to new conditions. This is manroland web systems’ focus: You, your business, and your future. You can expect us to show new perspectives and integrated solutions having the entire value chain in mind. Our Digital Finishing Solutions: The variable pin-type folder – FoldLine manroland Australasia Pty Ltd, contact us on +61 2 96 45 79 00. www.manroland-web.com gxpress.net August 2014 19 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production digital newspaper printing Agfa has added a gxpress.net S tream, the inkjet technology on which Kodak bet – and nearly lost – the company, and the Prosper 6000 product designation are finally coming together. After having teased the market two years ago with an upgraded 5000 series model shown at DRUPA, Kodak has now announced that two new Prosper 6000 presses will be available this year. And there’s little comparison: What Kodak has now launched is a new platform designed to fulfill the promise first made for Stream when it was announced four years ago, including costs that come close to offset. This is what it was all about when Kodak trumpeted a proprietary technology somewhere between drop-on-demand and continuous inkjet – it uses a heated ceramic nozzle to modify surface tension and therefore drop size – which would change printing forever. What has changed,of course,is Kodak.A messy lurch into bankruptcy which left everyone wondering how a brand which was so central to imaging itself could get into that state,provided a new definition to the expression“a Kodak moment”.And a new Kodak with new stakeholders and rather fewer patents in its war chest. Stream is the survivor, and the Prosper 6000 its prodigal child. Two new models address commercial printing and publishing markets. The Prosper 6000C – designed for higher-density commercial printing – is to be available this (northern) summer, with the 6000P, specifically for book and newspaper applications, following in the autumn. Both are rated to print on uncoated papers – including standard newsprint – at 300 metres/ minute, with 200 metres/minute quoted for the 6000C on heavyweight glossy and silk stocks. These are of the same order as the speeds quoted for the 6000XL shown at DRUPA 2012, but according to Kodak, up to two-and-a-half times as fast as the Prosper 5000Xli. Print resolutions at “approaching 200 lpi” are significantly better than the 133 lpi quoted for the faster production speeds in 2012 and 175 lpi when running slower. So a couple of years after the DRUPA showing – and four since it first spruiked Stream – what’s changed for newspaper users? Importantly, there’s been some improvement in postpress offerings: manroland web – after a “Kodak moment” of its own – has scored first installations of Foldline and Formerline finishing systems, which are still faster than the new Kodak kit.And while the new Prosper 6000P is shown in reel-to-reel configurations – with the option of a splicer – a spokesperson told GXpress that an open architecture Type 1 interface will allow for integration with “a wide range of inline finishing equipment”. This is also a new platform, fundamentally different from the Prosper 1000 and 5000 models. In fact it’s surprising how much the 28 metres- 20 gxpress.net August 2014 betting on stream long giant looks like a multicolour sheetfed perfecting press, with its group of towers, turnerbar to flip the web, and second tower group. The bar stack also creates the opportunity to configure L-shaped or U-shaped presses, where space is limited. Some applications (including newspapers in some circumstances) require a complex web lead which travels back and forward under the towers and takes an estimated ten minutes to rethread in the event of a break. You can imagine that once established, the maker will be able to increase both web speed and width, creating productivity currently unachievable (or imaginable for a digital press). The rival HP 410 currently has the advantage with a 1066 mm web width, albeit with slower speeds. Everyone’s waiting (as the song goes) for cost-per-copy to come down in order that inkjet can compete against offset for more than just ultrashort print runs. In prelaunch presentations this week, Kodak has been talking about a running cost of US$0.005 per A4 page, which includes “all of the variable costs that Kodak is responsible (for)” (ie click, ink and service charges but not equipment, paper and what it calls “operational overhead”). In response to queries, Kodak told us that in a newspaper application this would equate to oneand-a-half cents US per tabloid newspaper page, assuming 25 per cent ink coverage and when running at 304 metres/minute,“assuming labour, equipment, power, ink, click, service, and paper in the cost per page”. The spokesperson told us the presses “would enable significant savings in logistics How Kodak’s new Prosper 6000 models might change the print equation Pictured: The Prosper 6000P in an optional U-shaped configuration and (below) its complicated web lead for heavy inking and coated stocks and transportation costs for runs of up to 1,500 newspaper copies by delivering close to 3,000 newspapers every hour (based on a 48-page tabloid format)… sufficiently high productivity for a medium-sized market of 15,000-20,000 newspapers”, for which the Prosper 6000 models “have the right throughput”. (We make that only 246 metres/minute with a 580 mm web). Will that change everything? The answer – as with all digital newspaper printing scenarios – will depend on circumstances, but it’s an impressive starting point. My view is that while the newspaper industry continues to face up to reduced print circulations, digital printing has to contribute something extra to the equation. That might be mixed lots of different titles in a “remote” location, or personalised editions in a more conventional urban one, with a requirement being that the distribution issue was sorted out. Is Kodak in time for the digital newspaper print party (if there is to be one)? That’s the question: Publishers in Australia, for example, see value in print despite circulations falling in line with those elsewhere in the developed world and a potential opportunity for digital presses. And it’s not simply a question of how does digitally printing a few thousand copies of the Herald-Sun compare with flying them up from Melbourne; it’s how it compares with printing them on a suitable offset press; and what else you could do with the inkjet web. One thing is for certain. The arithmetic has changed yet again, and if there was ever a business case to be made, now’s the time. gx Peter Coleman n n new star to its externaldrum thermal platesetter range. The Avalon N16-80 XT is a fully configurable top-end solution for highvolume publishing and packaging applications. CTP segment marketing product manager Bruno Lepage says both its quality and speed will be “extremely attractive” to large commercial printers. The Avalon N16 is a range of thermal VLF platesetters, using an external-drum engine equipped with GLV – grating light valve, 512 or 1024 channel – imaging technology and integrated automation. Key benefits include exceptional registration accuracy and consistent high-quality imaging. Kodak has announced a three-year direct plate supply agreement with Blue Star, the Australian printing and direct mail business. The move follows Heidelberg Australia’s switch from being exclusive distributorship of Kodak plates to a globally-led relationship with Fujifilm. Kodak’s ANZ managing director Steve Venn says the company has worked with Blue Star for more than 15 years, helping it improve prepress operations and print quality. Under the new agreement, Kodak will continue to supply its Trillian SP and Electra XD thermal plates. “We are very pleased to continue our strong relationship with Blue Star,” he says. “Their commitment to deliver high quality print and innovative solutions aligns well with Kodak’s approach to business.” Blue Star’s Mike Shannon says strong performance of the plates and Kodak’s solutions approach was an important factor in the decision: “Our mission is to delight our CTP & workflow customers and we look forward to continuing this relationship,” he says. Instrument company X-Rite has scored a very substantial fillip with its selection by WAN-Ifra for use in Color Quality Club measurement. The Swiss company’s technology – incorporating the latest industry standards and technical advances – is being used for the 2014 competition. Deputy chief executive and executive director of the organisation’s newspaper production and special projects competence centre Manfred Werfel says there will be no fundamental changes to how the results are obtained and evaluated, but some evaluation processes have been revised to stay current with the latest standards. Among them was the introduction of the new measuring technique. Two handheld X-Rite eXact spectrophotometers gx n will be used. n gxpress.net Thousands count as Kodak celebrates Creo innovation A week after announcing the one-thousandth user for its Sonora plates, Kodak had a bigger number to celebrate: 20,000 thermal imaging heads. The Squarespot thermal CT technology was a key plank of the portfolio gained with the acquisition of Creo in 2005, and has proved “one of our most durable technologies”, according to worldwide graphics marketing general manager Rich Rindo. Michigan, USA, book printer Edwards Brothers Malloy has taken delivery of the milestone Magnus VLF platesetter. Introduced by Canadian pioneer Creo almost 20 years ago, the technology was a first viable alternative to visible light plate imaging CTP systems using it help reduce chemistry usage, plate waste, remakes and make-ready times, Rindo says. The 1,000th customer for Sonora ‘process free’ plates, Ohiobased Reynolds and Reynolds, is also in the USA. A new plate manufacturing line has been added at Kodak’s Columbus, Georgia, facility in addition to those in Osterode, Germany and gx Xiamen, China. n n MEDIA SUPER EASY ADMIN | MEMBER SUPPORT | LOW COST | GREAT INSURANCE COVER Choose the fund that’s been supporting the print and journalism industries for over 25 years. Call 1800 640 886 or visit mediasuper.com.au Print. Media. Entertainment. Arts. Low fees. Strong long-term performance. Run only to benefit members. gxpress.net August 2014 21 This advertisement contains general information and does not take into consideration your personal objectives, situation or needs. Before making any financial decisions you should first determine whether the information is appropriate for you by reading the Product Disclosure Statement and/or by consulting a qualified financial adviser. Issued July 2014 by Media Super Limited (ABN 30 059 502 948, AFSL 230254) as Trustee of Media Super MSUP 36289 (ABN 42 574 421 650, USI 42574421650001). Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production cover story gxpress.net Two years ago, we channeled a popular children’s story in an analysis of Fairfax Media’s production plans headed The little engines that might. With the project complete, ‘You should do a new cartoon with the steam train going along at 100 bloody miles an hour,’ Bob Lockley (below) tells Peter Coleman 22 gxpress.net gxpress.net ...thought we could! M ist is lying below, but atop a hilly paddock in semirural New South Wales, there’s a low hum from a newly-extended industrial building. It’s late evening and we’re about 60 kilometres from the centre of Sydney – an hour when traffic’s light – and the hum is the sound of success… of Fairfax Media quietly getting on with the business of printing one of its flagship dailies at one of its regional print centres. A similar exercise is underway in Ballarat, 110 km out of Melbourne, in line with the Australian group’s ‘Fairfax of the Future’ programme… and with what we wrote – under the headline The little engines that might – just two years ago. It’s been an exciting two years, starting with the Australian media group’s plan to cut the production costs of its flagship dailies by shutting down the showpiece steel-and-concrete factories so proudly established in a more optimistic era a couple of decades before. And tonight in North Richmond as in Ballarat, with the Australian Financial Review already being trucked into town and copies of the Sydney Morning Herald coming off two folders, the fulfilment of that plan is emphatically on schedule: “It’s very unusual to say this, but we’re on budget, on deadline and will achieve the savings we proposed,” says Bob Lockley, the group’s chief executive for print and distribution. “And with a payback of under a year.” Facing diminishing print circulations, Fairfax has spent to save: A capital expenditure of $42 million August 2014 set to deliver savings in excess of $40 million in the first year, plus the proceeds of the real estate freed up in Chullora (Sydney) and Tullamarine (Melbourne). “So it’s a pretty attractive deal, and as Greg (Hywood, Fairfax’s chief executive) will tell everybody, we’re in newspapers until they’re not profitable, and while they’re profitable we’ll keep printing them. “What we are doing here is testament to that.” Sale of the former Age Print Centre building – with its symbolic ‘rolled newspaper’ of glass and concrete alongside Melbourne’s Tullamarine Freeway – is about to go through, with vacant possession by Christmas. But not before its halls – close enough to the city’s airport to have required special design work to avoid interfering with radar – have been stripped of the press and mailroom equipment which, with the building itself, had accounted for most of a $220 million investment when it was opened by state premier Steve Bracks in July 2003. Half of the 18 double-width manroland Geoman press towers, all of the folders and Ferag mailroom equipment have been redeployed at the two key regional sites or earmarked for projects in New Zealand and elsewhere. The remainder (including another nine towers) have been cannibalised for parts or scrapped. A worse fate awaits the larger plant at Chullora in Sydney’s inner west: Virtually the whole of the 22-tower, five-folder Colorman pressline, and most of the seven Muller Martini Newsliner inserting lines and mailroom system – part of a $340 million original investment – is being scrapped. “It’s shocking, but nobody wants them,” says Lockley, “and that’s in the world”. Indeed in Europe and elsewhere, the secondhand market is awash with newer equipment as publishers either cut back or opt for the latest automation to reduce production costs. That said, it’s still hard not to become emotional over what is happening: “You walk in there now and it’s morbid, terrible,” he says, “but I have to say that both sites performed well right to the end. “The transition has been very successful. We’ve done quite well to achieve what we’ve done.” What Fairfax, Lockley and a team of handpicked managers and staff “have done” is in fact, little short of amazing. A network of regional printing plants already in pretty good shape following successive upgrades adds strength one to the next, providing contingency back-up as well as routine preprint capacity. But it was geographic reality that dictated that North Richmond in NSW and Ballarat in Victoria would take on the heavy lifting of the SMH and The Age. At both centres, new building to accommodate press and mailroom extensions and the relocation and installation of equipment has taken place without disrupting production. At North Richmond, staff and suppliers negotiated mud to access works and a Bunnings portable carport served as a loading dock fed from one conveyor. There, a standalone threetower Geoman plus a further tower – re-engineered to match the width and plate lock-up of the existing Uniset Quiet achiever: (clockwise from top left) • the standalone Geoman press and (nearer) converted ‘Geoset’ tower; • insert feeders and rum inserting equipment relocated from Tullamarine; • night shift production manager Bob Lauder with printer Tristan Lupton; • a bundle is diverted to the loading bay; • robot-palletised and shrink-wrapped, bulk bundles are moved to a delivery truck; • QI Press Controls camera heads scan the web for register and density control; • all quiet at the entrance to the site in North Richmond’s Bells Line of Road gxpress.net August 2014 23 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production cover story gxpress.net gxpress.net – were relocated from Tullamarine, together with a complete Ferag drum inserting line, to which new RollStream collators have been added. Leveraging some of what has been learned since the Geoman was installed in 2002 – and in what is understood to be a world first – a doublewidth web from the modified tower is slit, turned and combined with single-width webs in a Uniset folder. Other new elements include QI Press Controls’ closed-loop IDS colour density system – which has been given its head following calibration and training – and “pretty fantastic” Segbert automated palletising. The outcome is ultimate flexibility: The single line can simultaneously print two 96-page tabloid newspapers, a glued-and-trimmed 32-page heatset magazine, and a stitched-and-trimmed hybrid UV-cured square tabloid. An eight-week transition process saw first 25,000 copies, then 50,000, then the whole of the weekday run of the Herald moved to North Richmond a week ahead of the June schedule. On my evening visit to North Richmond – somewhat poetically after a day helping judge PANPA technical excellence entries and the new ‘print centre of the year’ category – Tuesday’s smaller products and 140,000 print order were being taken easily in their stride. Later in the week, Saturday’s fatter book and 200,000-plus print order, and the Sunday SunHerald are also shared by Beresfield – where a six-tower Uniset prints the Newcastle Herald and other work – and the Canberra Times site in Fyshwick, ACT. In an emergency, the Goss Uniliner 70 at Ormiston in suburban Brisbane – which prints Queensland and northern NSW copies – could deliver papers for “further down the coast”. Lockley says the transition here and at Ballarat four weeks earlier has been “very good”, marred only by a few commissioning problems with ex-Chullora publishing gear at the Victorian site. And he paid special tribute to the engineering work of the local manroland team: “The Geoman is going wonderfully, really pumping it out, and the integration of doublewidth into single has been pretty good,” he says. On the mailroom side, I had seen the new Ferag collators lined up on a visit to the factory in Switzerland last September, but at North Richmond it was hard to pick the new from that relocated from Tullamarine. “It’s good stuff, and was all in good shape,” Lockley says. Another transition of the last couple of years is the move to bring previously-outsourced heatset supplements and magazines inhouse. North Richmond’s Uniset press – which includes two lines of i-type units with “commercial-style” horizontal web leads – has taken over more 24 gxpress.net August 2014 group work previously handled by heatset print contractor IPMG. Two vertical towers have also been equipped with Baldwin’s watercooled QuadCure UV – based on technology the maker acquired from Nordson (and UK-based Spectral/Wallace Knight) – providing capacity for another 32 pages. The $750,000 world-first order signed in 2011 also equipped two towers of the doublewidth Geoman in Canberra, delivering further 64 UV pages. And in Ballarat, a heatset printing based from a double-width tower from Tullamarine and a new dryer is just coming on stream. Like North Richmond, the focus is on flexibility, with the line configured for two 96-page coldset products or two 80-pagers and 32 heatset, with flexibility on web widths and the ability to mix heatset and coldset. Lockley admits that bedding in UV has been a hard road, but says it “does a good job for what it is”. Most of the Sun-Herald’s (and Sunday Age’s) Sunday Life magazine is printed UV on uncoated stock, a production statistic which has apparently made Fairfax’s two sites the world’s biggest consumer of UV ink. The UV towers can also be used for coldset, typically without a washup: “It’s not worth taking the ink out,” Lockley says. With the glossy Good Weekend printed heatset, all the Sydney Morning Herald publications have now been brought inhouse at North Richmond and Canberra, taking the range of stocks used from 36 gsm (for customer Guardian Weekly) to 115 gsm. Finishing is typically on two inline trimmers and two offline trimmers, with offline facilities also including two saddlestitching lines, one with log feeders. Fairfax tackles the daily logistics by palletising and shrink wrapping bulk bundles, which are trucked to Sydney Distribution Centre in Chullora (soon to be relocated to Eastern Creek) where bundles are switched to smaller vehicles for drivers to make up newsagent deliveries. Magazines and independently-published newspapers handled by Fairfax’s IPS distribution business are delivered with them. Most of which happens while the rest of us sleep: With up to 700 tonnes of paper going into and out of the site weekly you’d also think the locals would notice, but with most activity between 10 pm and 2 am that does not seem to be the case. A $1 million investment in a circular roadway and car parking keeps heavy traffic flowing. Attention to compressor and pump noise and reversing beeps has ensured that there have been no complaints, an achievement even allowing that Fairfax owns 20 hectares of neighbouring land. With the growth of the print centre to 128 full-timers and 40 casual staff has come the influx of new skills of heatset and sheetfed printers and bindery operators who Lockley says, “have brought a wealth of knowledge to make this commercial plant even stronger”. In fact, the print centre growth is only part of the story, with the simultaneous move of group accounts, finance and IT staff to newly-converted offices, where they join those for rural newspaper The Land to bring total numbers in North Richmond to 350. Most positions have moved from the Pyrmont head office, where a freed floor has been sublet to Google. Lockley will tell you otherwise – that he’s equally proud of all the Fairfax sites; that the credit goes to a team of “company-grown” managers including Mick Gee (now general manager of the North Richmond, Launceston and Beaudesert sites and heavily involved in national sales) and print centre manager Sean Tait – but it’s hard to ignore the intense (and justifiable) pride he has in what has been achieved at North Richmond. He joined Rural Press’s Hawkesbury Gazette in 1984 with the current site development just underway, after taking his career at Rupert Murdoch’s Cumberland Newspapers from compositor in 1966 to production manager… and has been there ever since, looking for a competitive edge and scoring a succession of “firsts” in the process. “I thought there was more opportunity way back then with the Rural Press group and I was 34, and have gone on looking for the ‘better solution’ ever since,” he says. That quest has gone from tweaking the output of Goss Urbanite and hybrid Community presses at Richmond, to leading, upgrading (and sometimes rationalising) all of the Rural sites prior to the 2007 merger with Fairfax Media, and as group production and distribution chief executive, those of the whole group since. He will have been with the company 30 years in September. Two years ago, I looked at the challenges facing Fairfax’s plan, expressing them in The little engines that might (GXpress August 2012), illustrating it with images of Lockley and Hywood aboard a cartoon train. Against our positive view that the programme could be achieved with measures which have mostly been taken, we presented the doubts expressed to us by some. And were later quizzed at great length by author Ben Hills, who presumably did not get the message he was seeking for his Stop the presses! book. The passage of time has added the wisdom of hindsight, and it’s good to be able to paraphrase those ‘little engines’ puffing out a blast of steam and exulting, “I thought I could…” Lockley remembers the piece and has another image: “You should do a new one with steam train going along at 100 bloody miles an hour,” he gx says. n n The single line can simultaneously print two 96-page tabloid newspapers, a glued-and-trimmed 32-page heatset magazine, and a stitched-and-trimmed hybrid UV-cured square tabloid. Flexible friend: (clockwise from top left) • North Richmond print centre manager Sean Tait receives the PANPA award from Jason Kent; • the extended pressline, from horizontal heatset units (far distance) through UV and coldset Uniset towers, to the Geoman extension; • the new Uniset folder delivers a 96-page newspaper from single-width and slit double-width webs; • Ferag mailroom capacity has been doubled with a second line relocated from Tullamarine; • new Krause platesetters and two Nela optical punchbenders are part of a three-year $30 million plate supply contract with Fujifilm (pictured is trade assistant Nina Sciberras) gxpress.net August 2014 25 Newspaper technology Publication production Global deal teams Peretta with QI Generic gxpress.net CONFERENCE 17 - 18 September 2014, New Delhi WAN-IFRAIndia2014 22nd Annual Conference Co-sponsored by The Indian Newspaper Society Conference NewsroomSummit PrintingSummit CrossmediaAdvertisingSummit Workshops PlantVisit FoyerInfo-tables www.wan-ifra.org/india2014 26 gxpress.net Newspaper technology Publication production August 2014 QI Press Controls and US remote ink specialist Perretta Graphics are to team in a new global partnership. The move – which follows QI’s acquisition of EAE in April – will see the Dutch colour registration and control systems developer offering the whole of Perretta’s remote ink and register control, ink preset systems and register motorisation offering. Frank Perretta – credited with inventing the segmented fountain blade, now a standard in its industry, in the late 1970s – went on to help establish the eponymous company now located in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1981. QI joint chairman Menno Jansen says the partnership will enable them to offer customers an even more comprehensive solution: “Efficiency improvement will be one of the many advantages of offering such a broad portfolio. Saving time, paper at five print sites T amil-language newspaper Daily Thanthi has expanded available presstime following a five-site upgrade including automatic colour registration. QuadTech’s MultiCam technology has been installed on presses in Cuddalore, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu in southern India, following four years’ experience of two systems at the headquarters in Chennai. With the gear in place, the company is claiming a 20 per cent reduction in time to register and ten per cent waste saving. Oh, and improved print quality is contributing to increased circulation and readership. Director S. Balasubramanian Adityan says previously colour and colour register were measured manually: “The biggest challenge came when the number of colour pages increased,” he says. “It was very difficult for operators to control register on our highspeed, double width and double circumference presses.” Benefits have included shorter makeready times, reduced startup waste, consistent colour, and optimised labour and press usage. Adityan says the company “used to face a challenge” with register variation after each autopasting cycle, but this has been eliminated. The colour register and ribbon control systems are operated from QuadTech’s ICON platform, which integrates with downstream equipment such as UV coaters, perforators and rotary cutters. Established in 1942 with a mission to educate and create awareness among all sections of the Tamil community, Daily Thanthi is now an all-colour broadsheet printed in 16 locations and with a circulation gx of more than 1.5 million. n n Pictured at a press inauguration are (from left) Vinodhkumar Balakrishnan QuadTech regional sales manager), R. Chandrasekaran (Daily Thanthi chief general manager), S. Balasubramanian Adityan, Sabarish Subrmanian (QuadTech service engineer) and D. Ranganathan (assistant general manager, production & IT) gxpress.net “Not only because of the joint understanding and management of this greater part of the production process but also as customers can rely on one partner to coordinate that complete process,” he says. Perretta offers four products for register control, the key market segment on which QI Press Controls has built its business. These include remote colour register, automatic closed loop colour register, print to cut register and register motorisation packages. Its product range also includes the P3000 Digital Preset Center – a bridge between ink control and prepress and P3000 series remote ink control system, decribed as “the most advanced open fountain gx solution on the market today”. n n Two more lines for Borneo sites G oss Community fan United Borneo Press has ordered two more presses totalling nine towers for its Kuching and Kota Kinabalu sites. The order for 36 single-width press units is the fourth in as many years for the Malaysian newspaper printer. UBP Printing will install the four and five-tower presses – each with an N40 folder – this summer, bringing the company’s total to 84 Community SSC 84 units in four lines. Managing director Sim Yong Liang says customers “want the most” in terms of cost efficiency: “We’ve returned to what works well for us,” he says. UBP Printing is part of Unity Media Malaysia and now employs more than 150 people across four sites throughout eastern Malaysia. Four Malaysian, two Chinese and two English-language dailies make up the majority of the production workload. Sim Yong Liang says UBP achieves better cost structures by striving and repeatedly investing to maintain a programme of continuous process improvement: “Keeping up with the latest in product development is essential for us to stay at the forefront of our market and gx retain our competitive edge,” he says. n n A new two-colour unit which bridges two existing units is providing extra colour options for Manugraph’s single-width users. Configured above two of the company’s Y-type Newsline and Highline YR units, the option adds two more colours to the 4/2 product of the existing units. Trade magazine IPP reports that several newspaper users in south and west India have found the 2C an economical way of enhancing their Y-type lines, good for speeds up to 40,000 cph. Mounted between two units, the unit delivers extra colour with a relatively short web lead and minimal fan-out. Shaftless and shafted versions are available, the latter using an intermediate vertical drive. Features include a nine-roller gx ink train, brush dampening and a motorised duct roller. n n Wifag rebrands, shows its digital expertise N ewspaper printing and coating technologies are combined with the rebranding of Wifag Maschinenfabrik as Wifag-Polytype Technologies. Chief executive Jörgen Karlsson says a new company name which expressed “our integration in the corporate group, our intensive development activities and the breadth of technologies for machines, processes and materials”. He says newspaper and book production systems – still under the century-old Wifag name – will continue to be an integral part of the group’s portfolio with subsidiaries in Germany, China and the US unchanged. Digital printing is among additional areas of expertise where it is hoping to make its mark, with work on a water-based inkjet technology for printing on substrates including paper, plastics and aluminum. A pilot version of a new Techma-4 digital press has been shown at an open house at the company’s headquarters in Fribourg, gx Switzerland. n n gxpress.net August 2014 27 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production Generic press hall gxpress.net time for rebuilding J apanese publisher Iwate Nippo has made a commitment to the country’s earthquake-ravaged east with an order for two new newspaper presses. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Printing & Packaging Machinery will supply two new 4x1 DiamondSpirit presses for a new printing centre due to start up in 2016. Headquartered in Morioka City – in one of the areas most devastated by the earthquake on March 11, 2011 – Iwate Nippo will celebrate its 140th anniversary with launch of the new centre, on which MHI-PPM acts as a consultant. The newspaper has been a leader in planning and support of social needs in the prefecture – where the 210,000-circulation daily is market-leader – publishing a report analysing earthquake preparations and focussing on restoration of residents’ livelihoods, industries and societies. The new 80,000 cph presses will each be able to print 40-page newspaper with 24 pages in colour, an increase in colour content from the present 16 pages. Each will have three four-colour towers, two mono units, five reelstands and a 2:2 double rotary folder, with a 1626 mm web width and rail-type web threading which will take two ribbons through turner bars and bay windows to the RTF. Mitsubishi press controls include ink presetting, gx automatic colour register control. n n Pictured: Iwate Nippo chairman Hiroshi Miura (centre right) and executive director Katsuhiro Yamazoe (right), with MHI-PPM president Masami Shimizu (centre left) and general manager of sales headquarters Yasuyuki Okurano (left) Colour grows on News’ PNG readers L ife in the PNG capital of Port Moresby just got more colourful following the installation of an extra press tower at the daily Post-Courier. Installation by Adelaidebased National Printing Equipment of a third Tensor four-high tower in the Goss Community line increases all-colour capacity by 50 per cent to 24 pages of a 40-page tabloid product. And while there are hopes of a fourth tower for fiveday (Monday-Friday) daily, which is owned by News Corp Australia, production manager Mal Harvey says there’s a limit on potential upgrades: “We’re slowly replacing the old mono units with the colour towers, but there’s no space in the pressroom for more,” he says. The line currently includes two mono units and Goss SC and 1500 folders, handling the 35,000-42,000 copy print run with integrated preprinted sections inserted by hand. An electrical upgrade is expected to increase production speed to 25,000 cph, but this will still be substantially below the rated capability of the new towers. Despite a 15 per cent fall in sales, KBA would have been in profit had it not been for its Fit@All reorganisation programme. The German press maker says with this and a 9.3 per cent fall in orders, operating profit reached 24.5 million Euros before special items. Financial statements for 2013 show an expected lower order intake in the post-DRUPA year of 2013. Positive earnings strained by one-off impairments and high provisions for special expenses from the Fit@All August 2014 realignment programme. Chief executive and president Claus Bolza-Schünemann says financial repercussions of the project will continue into 2014, but he expects a “notable turnaround” in 2015 earnings and a return to sustained profitability by 2016 at the latest. The company quotes VDMA statistics which show orders and sales of printing equipment produced in Germany fell by up to ten per cent as a result of economic impacts of the sovereign debt crisis in parts of Europe, slower economic growth in the BRIC countries, negative currency effects in emerging markets, changes in media consumption and ongoing consolidation in the printing industry in industrialised countries. Despite a decline in group sales of nearly 200 million Euros and associated lower contribution margins, KBA posted an operating profit before special items of 24.5 million Euros. Savings in personnel costs from new wage agreements in Würzburg and Radebeul were offset by a smaller Kiwis set an example in sharing print F Harvey, who moved to Papua New Guinea from News’ huge Melbourne print site – where a bike is needed to get from one end of the pressroom to the other – is still adjusting: “It’s the most challenging posting I’ve had,” he says. His career with News has included 22 years at the Cairns Post, and spells in Brisbane and Sydney before the five years at Westgate Park, Melbourne. But with the tropical climate and trips home to see his wife in Cairns, where she runs her own business, he reckons he has gx the best of both worlds. n n KBA’s Fit@All costs hit dividend 28 gxpress.net gxpress.net gxpress.net earnings contribution of special presses and poor capacity utilisation levels at the web press plants. Costs of the Fit@All programme and impairments of fixed assets were 155.2 million Euros in 2013, causing an operating loss after special items of 130.7 million Euros, and a loss of 138.1 million Euros. As a result, no dividend is being paid. China remains the company’s largest single market, with the AsiaPacific contributing 27.4 per cent to gx group sales. n n airfax Media NZ has quietly abandoned plans for a greenfield print site in Auckland with the announcement that it will outsource work to rival APN’s Ellerslie plant. Shortly after the two publishers announced a “proposed agreement” – under which the Ellerslie plant in Auckland’s south would print the Waikato Times, Sunday Star-Times, Sunday News and other community papers – the deal was confirmed and being implemented. Fairfax was to have moved a press from the closed Tullamarine (Melbourne) print centre and additional equipment from Sydney to equip a new plant in Auckland (see GXpress report, August 14, 2013). Instead, it will contract work to APN, where the large Goss HT70 press which anchors the Ellerslie site was upgraded as part of a $40 million programme last year. APN has also moved printing of several of its own titles to the site, and has for some time, promoted the concept of capacity sharing in the city. Fairfax work from Auckland and Hamilton is being moved to Ellerslie, and the Hamilton site – where equipment includes a manroland Uniman press and Ferag mailroom including inline inserting – is already up for sale. Chief executive Greg Hywood says the agreement “made absolute sense” for the company and was in line with “fairly common practice” overseas: “In this instance, we boost our print capability in the upper North Island market without the need for significant capital investment and gain significant benefits from the additional scale and efficiencies,” he says. Hywood says Fairfax will continue to invest in print “where it makes sense” as it had at Petone, where the print site is being upgraded with former-Tullamarine equipment. APN chief executive Michael Miller says the arrangement makes use of spare capacity at Ellerslie – where the daily New Zealand Herald is printed – and will enable it to deliver further cost savings. It is “on track” to achieve a further $20 million in cost savings across its publishing businesses in 2014. gx Peter Coleman n n Print & Automation Integration. Automation. Control. The upgrade and retrofit specialists • controls • drives • reelstands Solutions available for all OEM suppliers’ systems NZ SWUG ‘ready to roll’ More than 120 delegates and sponsors were expected for New Zealand SWUG late this month. Chairman Dan Blackbourn says planning is complete for the fourteenth event, to be held in Dunedin from August 27-28. “There are some great presentations lined up, great entertainment and of course great company,” he says. “The conference is an opportunity to be informed, entertained, network and just catch up with people you have not seen for some time and discuss work.” Accommodation was “filling fast” and transfers had been arranged for delegates who took advantage of a cheap flights offer earlier. Blackbourn also reminded member sites to submit entries for the quality awards and nomintate staff for the apprentice of the year competition. “The committee is really looking forward to this conference and if you need any information go to the website: www.swug.co.nz,” he says. “You will find all the information you need to know and if by chance it is not there gx then please contact me or one of the committee.” n n .... +44 1908 276700 [email protected] harlandsimon.com gxpress.net August 2014 29 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production press hall gxpress.net gxpress.net chapter’s end A After 21 years in Shanghai, Goss is moving out to a new home across the river move to new premises later this year marks a chapter in the history of Shanghai-built newspaper presses and the 21-year cooperation with Goss. A relationship which began with a joint venture in 1993 led to the acquisition of US-headquartered Goss International by the state-owned Shanghai Electric through its SPPM division in 2009. It’s been a story of cautious market acceptance: A few Community SSC units first, then more until all production of the ubiquitous single-width press was moved there, and by the time of the Chinese buyout, 6500 press units and 680 folders had been delivered. Currently about 1000 a year are produced there. Press demonstrations in March of the highly automated Magnum Compact – a Community, but with fully automatic plate changing and compact slideapart units, not as you know it – is in many respects a climax of that relationship. The first press will be running in New York’s Staten Island in October. But it’s by no means the end of the story. Production of the Universal 75 press range is currently being introduced to Shanghai, and another new system is under wraps for introduction at the end of the year. The site also builds Magnum and Magnum HPS presses, plus a book press for local markets, a range which makes Goss China (with an 80 per cent share) the country’s largest exporter of printing equipment. My preview of the Magnum Compact earlier this year was a good opportunity to see the partnership of skills and cultures at work. French engineering director Jean Claude Pautrat (left) presides over a AccuCam™ Better control. Better quality. Stronger advantages. Advanced image-based spectral technology that eliminates colorbars and graybars for unequaled color reproduction. Inspection capabilities that reduce waste and advertiser rebates. Setting the standard for print quality, consistency and performance AUSTRALIA-NEW ZEALAND Ferag Australia Pty Ltd. Phone: +61 2 8337 9777 Email: [email protected] CHINA Phone: +86 138 163 309 33 Email: [email protected] quadtechworld.com 30 gxpress.net INDIA Phone: +91 98240 40404 Email: [email protected] August 2014 MultiCam® Quick makereadies, reduced waste, precise cutoff and fold register Unmatched performance across the full range of ribbon-control tasks —cutoff, print-to-cut, print-to-fold and crossover register. MultiCam is the world’s best-selling register camera, with over 10,000 cameras built. Digital Ink System™ Significant savings on ink, paper and maintenance yield a rapid ROI QuadTech’s digital ink technology enables you to offer your customers greater print quality and consistency —and at the same time, reduce your costs. predominantly Chinese team, but with input from Goss’s other sites around the world. Two engineers from Preston, England – one a software specialist – were on hand for the Magnum Compact project, and as the Universal project progressed, I witnessed Pautrat translating drawing detail from French to English, so that a Chinese engineer could translate it again. The site in Shanghai’s Puxi (west side) is vast, but has gradually been eclipsed, first by the growth of retail and residential development – the Marriott hotel and a major shopping centre are close by – and by the government’s desire to get heavy industry out of this massive sprawling city of 26 million people. Although honoured in the past as a ‘Shanghai Civilized Unit’, it no longer has a place so close to the centre of the modern city. The foundry was closed three years back – as part of city measures to reduce air pollution ahead of a major sporting event – and is not likely to be part of the new facility. Parts are outsourced under strict quality control, with only “rough” machining. Inhouse, there is a longstanding tradition of quality which has challenged popular misconceptions. Touring the factory I saw sheetfed press parts from a long-expired license arrangement with KBA, and Pautrat emphasises that Goss has always ensured its own standards of quality are maintained, regardless of where in the world a press is made or assembled. As his name suggests, Jean Claude Pautrat himself is part of the French tradition which is now part of Goss’s history: He joined Marinoni – which some credit with being the pioneer of rotary printing, ahead of Hoe – in Montataire, and saw the company owned by Harris, Heidelberg and then Goss. With retirement now in prospect – for which he will return to France, but not until after a monumental excursion to Antarctica – realisation of the Magnum Compact has been a significant achievement: “It’s simple, but with a lot of technology behind it,” he says. And the technology continues to emerge: While the small press with its M-600 derived plate automation, positions Goss to challenge the economics of inkjet digital printing, an interesting side development is a folder which addresses one of the key challenges facing inkjet webs. With Goss, Pautrat holds a patent enabling a digital folder to ‘store’ the flying sheets which are a feature of broadsheet newspapers. It’s another example of the lively partnership of global knowledge and culture which exploits strengths of its Shanghai Electric parent and ensures the press maker will be able to face the challenges of a continually changing market. gx Peter Coleman n n Manufacturing centre: (clockwise from top left) A folding cylinder is assembled and checked; castings get a prliminary grind before further processing; one of a batch of newspaper folders made at the site; Community/Magnum units are manufactured in quantity; a statue of Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng – who invented movable type made of an amalgam of baked clay and glue between 1041-1048 – will be moving to the new factory; a Magnum II press is ready for factory tests; a first press sideframe is ‘checked over’ by a laser system before production commences – machine tools have been bought in pairs to ease the transfer Opposite page: The Magnum Compact project is a climax in engineering director Jean Claude Pautrat’s career gxpress.net August 2014 31 Newspaper technology Publication production gxpress.net Newspaper technology Publication production news leaders press hall gxpress.net Optimisation of the CMYK colour register, first and second register, unit-to-unit register and likewise the cocking register for the heatset rotation. Optimisation of colours in compliance with ISO 12647-3 and/ or ISO 12647-2 by controlling the ink keys, including water balance optimisation. news leaders In North Richmond, versatile LPN-NV plates imaged on Krause LS-Jet series platesetters, teamed with Nela punch benders, are used for coldset, UV and heatset print applications ➤ Q.I. Press Controls and EAE have joined forces with the all-purpose IDS3D camera. The two specialists in the field of print automation will launch the latest innovation in quality automation at WAN-Ifra’s World Publishing Expo 2014 in Amsterdam. The precursor had already been presented by Q.I. Press Controls at DRUPA 2012 – the orange-coloured, dual-sensor mRC-3D camera system. At the time, the system was cryptically described as ‘offering a diversity of potential benefits’. These have now been embodied in the new IDS-3D camera system. The IDS-3D looks like and is positioned on rotary presses in the same way as the mRC-3D. However, the difference is ‘under the bonnet’ and it can be identified by its blue exterior. EAE’s takeover by the owners of Q.I. Press Controls’ has enabled developers in both companies to combine the best of both worlds and produce one full-colour print quality control and regulation system. Algorithms for the LOOP and IDS, for example, have been implemented in a single new system, known as IDS-3D. All functions are now executed with combined intelligence on full-colour print lines, without the need for any printed bars, strips or markings. IDS-3D also incorporates the same tried-and-tested automatic cleaning system as the mRC-3D. A cassette with a film in front of the lens ensures proper functioning of the system at all times. The camera is able to see whether the film has been smudged and cleans this whenever required. The launch of IDS-3D means that the market now has its own unique ‘all-in-one’ system. The very same dual-sensor IDS-3D camera has built-in process algorithms to ensure simultaneous closed-loop corrections, such as: prepress Web printers reap benefits of merger Immediate recognition and signalling of incorrectly positioned print plates and irregularities and/ or printing errors in relation to the virtual TIFF image and/or approved print. The first orders for this highefficiency, closed-loop, all-in-one quality control system have already been placed. The IDS-3D camera signals the end for previous systems, which used different types of cameras for different functions on rotary presses. As from now there is a single solution for everything: IDS-3D. It’s also an extremely beneficial solution for retrofit upgrades for tasks sometimes carried out manually on rotary presses, such as colour corrections and fountain solution control. Pictured: QI joint chairmen Erik van Holten and Menno Jansen at the entrance of the QIPC office in Oosterhout The IDS-3D looks like and is positioned in the same way as the mRC-3D. The difference is ‘under the bonnet’ Q.I. Press Controls & EAE Contact Job van Hasselt, Asia Pacific Area Sales Director, email: [email protected] Australia & NZ: Ferrostaal Australia Contact Nigel Alexander, email nigel. [email protected] Ph: +61 2 9338 3900 www.qipc.com www.eae.com Newspaper technology Publication production 32 GXP NL 1408 gxpress.net news leaders Flexibility is key at Fairfax ➤ Behind every great achievement are the contributions of dozens – hundreds, often – of people, products and technologies. And so it is with Fairfax Media’s transformation of its newspaper production facilities, where a “simple” printing plate is delivering remarkable results in a variety of situations. Painstakingly over the past two years, the Australian news media group has restructured production to meet the changing needs of print publishing, decentralising to match capacity requirements and free up costly real estate. The key plants in North Richmond (NSW) and Ballarat (Victoria) – as well as that of the Canberra Times – have each been converted from thermal to Fujifilm’s LPN-NV violet plate, which is flexibly meeting the needs of longrun, tight deadline production not just for coldset newspapers, but also heatset and UV products. In North Richmond, for example, a system based on LPN-NV plates and Krause LS-Jet series platemakers supplies five different types of plate – singles and panoramas, in a variety of sizes to suit the single-width Uniset and double-width Geoman presses, one tower of which has been converted to make it compatible with the Uniset. The same plate that is used routinely for nightly runs of metro Newspaper technology Publication production gxpress.net news leaders flagship the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review and a variety of other newspaper work, is also delivering 2400 dpi imaging resolution for heatset magazines and semicommercial UV-cured products, the latter without the need for baking. There, two further Nela Vision punch-benders have added flexibility and redundancy in a transformation which is seeing production almost double in less than a year. “What we have worked to do is create as much redundancy as possible, while meeting the needs of diversity and flexibility of this amazingly productive site,” says Fujifilm technology plays an important role in Fairfax Media's production transformation Warren Hinder, Fujifilm Australia’s Graphic Systems National Newspaper Specialist. There’s a similar story for Melbourne daily The Age and southern editions of the AFR in Ballarat – where the existing Uniset press has been extended with additional towers, folders and heatset dryers – and Canberra, where UV runs on two towers of the existing Geoman press. In both platerooms, the combination of Fujifilm plates and Krause CTP again delivers the quality and flexibility demanded by the varied workload, with extra Nela benders adding redundancy. In all cases, Fujifilm Australia has taken full project responsibility for the equipment and consumables: “By thoroughly understanding Fairfax Media’s needs, we have been able to supply plates and equipment which truly complement their requirements and support their own achievements,” says Hinder. The Fairfax print sites at Beresfield NSW and Wodonga have been using Fujifilm violet plates for many years, along with Krause CTP and Nela bending equipment. Fujifilm has introduced its thermal newspaper plate to the Mandurah (WA), Tamworth and Dubbo (NSW), Murray Bridge (SA), Launceston (Tasmania) and Ormiston (Queensland) sites. The fully-automatic Krause LS Jet platesetters deliver a choice of performance levels from 120-300 single plates per hour, their single exposure point concept contributing to imaging accuracy. Fujifilm’s (and Hinder’s) relationship with Fairfax Media is a longstanding one, extending back to 2006 when they supported the introduction of computer-to-plate technology to the Sydney Morning Herald. Hinder sold the original bender equipment for the then new Fairfax Chullora site in the 1990s and was responsible for the Napp photopolymer plates used at its Broadway letterpress site in the 1980s introduction of phototypesetting to a then letterpress environment. “This has effectively given me a 30-year relationship with Fairfax,” he says. The current projects are part of a $30 million three-year contract to supply Brillia violet light-sensitive and thermal heat-sensitive plates to all group sites in Australia and New Zealand. Fairfax publishes more than 200 titles including metropolitan and regional titles and magazines in Australia, and more than 70 national, daily and regional titles plus 26 magazines in New Zealand. Fujifilm Australia Graphic Systems Offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Auckland Phone: 1300 650 504 Web: www.fujifilm.com.au India: +91-(0)124-4325500 Malaysia: +603 5569 8388 Singapore: +65 6383 9933 www.fujifilm.com GXP NL 1408 33 Newspaper technology Publication production press room Control upgrade specialist gxpress.net P ublishers and vendors in India are facing up to the challenge of greener production. WAN-Ifra India research engineer Anand Srinivasan says it is an effort for which there is worldwide recognition: “India gave a voluntary commitment at the Copenhagen Accord that it will reduce carbon intensity from 20 to 25 per cent by the year 2020,” he says.“It is a huge commitment by a developing nation. The reduction in carbon intensity is going to be achieved by increasing the efficiency of operations of our industries – less use of raw materials, fuel and electricity. Soon we can expect more environmental regulations and stricter implementation that will affect our operations.” India is currently the fifth largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. However, since the country is home to a sixth of the world’s population, emissions per capita are currently low. Today, the print industry faces several green challenges. People associate print with deforestation and reading in electronic devices is considered greener than print reading. “We can of course argue in favour of print,” Srinivasan says. “Many newsprint mills produce newsprint only from recycled fibres; a lot of virgin pulp comes from the trees of certified forests. One newspaper copy is read by several people and importantly, the used copy can be used for several purposes and recycling is easy compared to electronic devices. “However, there are still several initiatives that printing plants can implement to be more environmentally friendly and win public support.” He says publishing companies must adopt lean production methods, make responsible purchases and buy products that use recycled newsprint, use newsprint that originates from certified forests and use products that has labels like FSC and PEFC. Providing secure 34 gxpress.net August 2014 India turns to green tech The ‘business of green’ is now an integral part of the corporate social responsibility of the publishing industry, writes Nirmalya Sen Arnand Srinivasan lists several environmental impacts of newspaper printing: Usage of raw materials: Newsprint, ink, aluminium and chemicals that leads to depletion of natural resources, deforestation and pollution from the chemicals used Heavy use of water: Newsprint production requires a lot of water -- around 80,000 to 100,000 litres of water are used to produce a tonne of newsprint, which also depletes a natural resource, in India Air pollution: Fuel burned in vehicles for transportation of raw materials and products to customers, diesel generator sets, heatset inks and VOCs used for cleaning Water pollution: Leakages during storage and use, waste water discharge in newsprint plants and CTP effluents in printing plants Use of electricity: One tonne of newsprint manufactured can consume about 1,500 kwh. A middle-class home in India could use that power for six months. Printing plants use a lot of electricity too. A WAN-Ifra graph (below) gives an indication on contributions; figures vary and are not same for all printing plants; Left: Sanat Hazra at SWUG Australia last year. storage and waste management are also areas of importance in ‘going green’. Local manufacturers are also making a contribution, among themMaharashtra-based TechNova Imaging Systems, which makes low-impact inkjet-based CTP systems. General manager Deepak Chawla says India’s rapid development is set to make it a very significant contributor to global carbon footprint. Increased growth means increased manufacturing and related activities, which in turn means an increased level of carbon emissions. In the past ten years, the use of incinerators in the graphic arts industry in India has also gained popularity, and trends indicate this will continue in the future. As people are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibility to the environment, a positive change in attitude is expected. A ban on plastic bags below a certain thickness is very likely, which will result in the rise of new industry segment for ‘paper bags’. Similarly, the paper carton business is likely to see a huge boost and there is likely to be a migration of print jobs from offset to flexo. With its technology partners, TehNova is constantly monitoring industry trends globally, in order to be prepared for demands for lower environment-impact technologies in the Indian markets, Chawla says. Among publishers, BCCL, Hindustan Times, Dainik Bhaskar, The Hindu, Dainik Jagran, Lokmat, RPL, Indian Express and Hind Samachar are just a few newspapers that have taken a lead in opting for green solutions in India, while many others have also shown an equal interest and are in process of ‘going green’. Earlier this year, BCCL technical director Sanat Hazra said one of the Times of India publisher’s future projects would be production monitoring via iPad and urged usage of green technology,“think and act green and you will save money, and think how it is helping the customer”. The company prints the Times of India, dailies the Economic Times (640,000 copies), Mirror (one million), TIMS (1.65 million), Ei Samay & Onno Samay (560,000) and Maharastra Times (820,000) plus supplements and magazines at 12 of its own printing plants – mostly manroland equipped – and 24 contract sites, most of which have Manugraph CityLine and HiLine single-width presses. And, there is a payoff. Times of India’s reduction in water consumption is enough for 6.32 Indian villages; savings in energy is gx sufficient to light 1,923 homes. n n Harland Simon is being kept busy with projects in the USA. Controls and drives have been upgraded on two Goss Magnum presses at Advance Central Services Michigan’s Ann Arbor facility. Harland Simon has replaced GMI ink desks, folder SLC500 PLCs and Allen-Bradley 1395 drive modules, while centralising compensation, ink and damp control. The company has completed similar projects at Advance Central Services Alabama’s production facilities in Huntsville and Birmingham, which also support commercial print. Four P6000 desks are interfaced to existing GMI inkers for ink control, and now serve as the central location for couple trim, damp pan and ink duct roller adjustments. Allen-Bradley CompactLogix PLCs – with its RSlogics 5000 diagnostic software – and Allen-Bradley PlowerFlex drive modules were used, with all the diagnostic software is available at a maintenance PC. Six new 200HP PowerFlex regenerative DC drive modules replaces aging or obsolete 1395s, and obsolete SLC500 master drives PLCs were replaced with CompactLogix PLCs and reconfigured the new drive master PLC to enable master/slave selection and operation. A RIPSet system calculates ink presets and there is also upper-level management, monitoring and calibration of register presets. In addition to its commercial print customers, Advance Central Services Michigan supports MLive Media Group with production, distribution, purchasing, accounting, technology and human resources. The company prints the Grand Rapids Press at its Walker production facility, along with several other titles, including the Kalamazoo Gazette and the Muskegon Chronicle. • New consoles and presets are part of an control upgrade at the Gaston Gazette in North Carolina. Harland Simon says its upgrade of the GMI inkers – including Prima RIPSet preset technology – delivers detailed and couple-specific presets, reducing startup waste and enhancing quality. Halifax Media Group prints a variety of work at its Gaston Gazette site in North Carolina. A growing list of commercial customers includes the New York Times. • In Finland, Harland Simon is replacing Wifag WPOS control systems at Lehtisepät Oy. The printing company of newspaper group43 Keskisuomalainen Oyj has five print locations producing 56 publications. Harland Simon will replace the first and second generation systems on an OF790/470 press at their Jyvaskyla site, using offthe-shelf Rockwell Automation PLCs and drives, ensuring local availability and long production and support lifetimes. Meanwhile, Wifag is updating control, drive and paster systems on a Berliner-sized OF790 press at Gannett’s Shreveport, Louisiana, print site. Four new control consoles are to be installed – along with new drives and control electronics – six autopasters modernised and web threading improved in a project set to significantly reduce waste and setup times. New consoles will include EAE Print production planning. The presses were part of a 1991 installation at Ringier in Switzerland, moved and reconfigured by GWS in 2008 and recommissioned in Shreveport two years later. It was only the third Berliner format press in the US market. The Shreveport plant is one of 43 operated by Gannett Publishing Services and prints The Times, which had a weekday circulation of about 35,000 in 2012, and 50,000 on Sunday. Increase your profit gxpress.net sd.line – the complete solution deltaspray spray dampening systems delta.sd dampening solution preparation delta.f dampening solution crossflow filtration The advantages of the Venturi Cap cleaning concept: And Canadia’s Electronic Design Group is working through the modernisation of 21 reelstands at the Post-Dispatch in St Louis, Missouri. Goss static belt reels on the first 11 pasters are being upgraded to enhance performance, improve reliability and eliminate obsolete components with plans to complete the balance next year. The upgrade – which include RTP control panels with built-in splice control and tension regulation – is well underway and on track for completion by mid August. Newspaper technology Publication production print workflow & ctp • individual "clog free" spray nozzle control • low operating costs – no external power supply, no compressed air The advantages of the deltaspray: • tool less nozzle replacement and interchangeable spray bars • reduced system maintenance • easy installation • notably reduced maintenance • clearly improved machine availability and productivity • less dampening solution usage and waste • higher press availability • higher print efficiency Schibsted Trykk Oslo will reduce waste and increase efficiency at what is Norway’s largest newspaper printing plant, thanks to an upgrade order. Printa press control systems are to be modernised on a ten-tower Goss Colorliner by Honeywell Process Solutions under the order. A phased upgrade will protect existing assets and allow the company to maintain performance into the future. Honeywell will upgrade the Printa press control systems to the latest Profibus technology and update existing controllers for the ten-tower, twofolder press line. Control desks and interfaces will be upgraded to Windows 7 support and the Printa production management system will gx also be upgraded. n n The advantages of the delta.f: • ideal filtration quality • no need for consumables due to ceramic membrane • permeate performance of 80 l/h or 140 l/h allows sufficient back flow for one or two dampening solution circulators • quick and easy installation sd.line – delivers higher profitability! technology and services technotrans technologies pte ltd Unit 7 / 111 Lewis Road Wantirna, Victoria 3152 Australia Phone: +61 3 9887 5049 Fax: +61 3 9801 1945 [email protected] www.technotrans.com gxpress.net August 2014 35 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production mailroom gxpress.net Kerala calling M alayala Manorama is pairing the five Mitsubishi presslines it ordered last October with five Muller Martini packaging lines. The presses and equipment are being installed at three Kerala print sites, in Kozhikode, Kottayam and Kollam. Five identical lines will include NewsGrip conveyors and two NewsStack universal stackers, attached to the compact four-tower DiamondSpirit SA presses. Each will handle 40-page broadsheet newspapers at 75,000 cph. Installations of the presses is due late this and next year. Chief editor Mammen Mathew says the A five-press Mitsubishi order is being matched with Müller Martini packaging investment supports the publisher’s commitment to print: “Printed newspapers continue to be the main source of our company’s revenue and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future,” he says. The daily newspaper with a circulation close to 2.3 million copies is the flagship of an Indian publishing operation responsible for more than 40 periodicals/magazines, plus websites, TV and radio stations. Malayala Manorama began as a four-page weekly newspaper in 1888, and has become one of world’s largest daily newspapers. It is published from 18 printing centres – 11 in Kerala, five in Indian cities outside Kerala, and two located outside of India. Side-gatherer innovates for Bangalore publisher New Delhi based bindery equipment manufacturer Pramod Engineering has developed an unusual gathering system for an Italian publisher in Bangalore. Managing director Divesh Nath says the locally-designed 30-station Glory G-30 side-gathering machine devised for Edis Publishers is designed to pick-up folded bible-paper forms in addition to products in the 60-130 gsm range, producing catalogues, magazines and book blocks at up to 5000 cph. The width of all stations can be set from one position and the machine operated by a team of four people. Postpress upgrade for Postmedia P ostmedia Network has contracted Harland Simon to upgrade postpress controls at its Windsor Star, Ontario site, following projects in Montreal, Saskatoon and Vancouver. To cope with growing inserting business, a 16-station Magnapak 630 is being moved from Ottawa, and controls on two NP630 inserters are being upgraded. ICON controls, legacy drives and obsolete PLCs are being replaced on the NP630 36 gxpress.net August 2014 inserters, the GSN controller, Sunspark interface machine, Heidelberg management systems and inhouse insert controller, and standardised Harland Simons InsertNet and MMS software combined with off-the-shelf Allen-Bradley and standard PC hardware. Windsor Star director of production Doug Shillington describes it as “an exciting time” for the Star’s packaging department. Moving the MP630 will allow current lines gx to be expanded to meet client demands. n n MM has postpress stitched as Heidelberg trims Müller Martini is the big winner from the withdrawal of Heidelberg from the saddlestitching and perfect binding markets. The Swiss specialist will take over service and support for the discontinued products, while some packaging orientated products will be manufactured for Heidelberg by Chinese OEM partner Masterwork Machinery. Heidelberg chief executive Gerold Linzbach says production of the finishing machines at its German sites is “no longer competitive” under current market conditions. It will continue to make folding machines – at the former Stahl site in Ludwigsburg – and supply Polar paper guillotines. Masterwork will make the Diana folder-gluer, to be sold and serviced by Heidelberg. The announcements follow comments in June, when Linzbach spoke of “portfolio optimisation” including new business models for products on which margins were low. The “humbled” German sheetfed press maker expects to save about 30 million Euros a year from the measures. The Leipzig site is to be closed and a total of 650 staff cut at Ludwigsburg and Wiesloch-Walldorf. Muller Martini says it will take over the worldwide service and spare parts business and “complete know-how” of the machines produced in Leipzig by the end of 2014, for an undisclosed sum. Chief executive Bruno Müller says the transfer is an “optimal solution” for Heidelberg customers since print finishing is its core business: “We will do everything we can to transfer the know-how efficiently to our organisation because we want to provide Heidelberg customers with reliable service support smoothly and seamlessly,” he says. • Muller Martini will launch a new and ‘cost-effective’ NewsGrip F conveyor at WANIfra’s the World Publishing Expo in Amsterdam. Flexible and claimed to be “the fastest and most economic conveyor in its class”, the new newspaper system addresses Müller Martini chief executive Bruno Müller says the transfer is an ‘optimal solution’ for Heidelberg customers current needs for end products geared toward target groups, shorter lead times and resulting process complexity. The NewGrip F – which makes its world premiere at the Amsterdam show (October 13-15) – is seen as a new backbone product to underline the Swiss maker’s “innovative strength” in the mailroom equipment sector. Müller Martini will also show its Connex.Mailroom data and process management system, which records and compiles production data in real time, offering optimisation gx options and transparency. n n The power generation group of giant Babcock & Wilcox has acquired press peripherals maker Megtec Systems. The US company formed by the 1997 merger of the French-owned Materiels Equipements Graphiques (MEG) with American rival Tec Systems, is a major player in the heatset web segment, making dryers, splicers and a variety of heat and solvent recovery systems. The Babcock & Wilcox Company is an international provider of clean energy technologies and services, mostly for nuclear, fossil and renewable power. President and chief operating officer of the Power Generation Group, J. Randall Data says Megtec’s industrial environmental business is “highly complementary” to the group’s utility environmental business, while its engineered products business including drying, coating and material handling equipment provides new growth opportunities. insert & Heatset He says no changes to sales, service or other personnel are planned “in the medium term”. KBA is working with Italian systems developer Logica to bring production planning and control systems to the Asian market. The latest outcome is the teaming of the DataProduction data capture module with the KBA ProductivityPlus software suite to capture data, preview current jobs and view the production status as well as monitoring production processes via a BDE terminal. German large-format heatset pioneer Stark Druck will bring a new 80-page Lithoman autoprint into operation this December. The highly-automated long-grain manroland web joins eight existing presses at its plant in Pforzheim. It will have a web-width of 2250 mm and the full suite of the German maker’s automation features and technical gx n solutions. n gxpress.net Complex drying, finishing for ‘single-source’ hybrid G oss is to deliver an end-to-end hybrid print system including inline finishing for German print service provider Mohn Media. The Gutersloh, Germany, print service provider plans to have the new system – based on a 24-page Goss Sunday 2000 press with a 1.5 metre web – in operation before the end of the year. Ability to source the wide-web, singlecircumference press and complex inline finishing equipment from a single supplier was of “key importance”. Goss will supply the five-unit Sunday press with inkjet personalisation and inline coating, glueing, diecutting and prefolding components from its Contiweb Vits subsidiary. The press will have a 1450mm web width, semiautomatic plate loading, a pinless folder, Contiweb CS zero-speed splicer and Ecotherm dryer, as well as an additional made-to-order web drying configuration featuring further chill rolls and a remoistening unit. Mohn Media chief executive Axel Hentrei says the intention is streamline processes to improve production flexibility: “Once the new Goss press line is up and running, we anticipate significant time-savings on regular jobs as well as less waste and a more efficient use of resources in general,” he says. The 1450mm wide/six-pages-across format will deliver up to 65,000 iph combined with the flexibility of the single-circumference (two-pages-around) format. Based in Güttersloh, Mohn Media has as its clients renowned publishing houses, as well as industrial and service companies, leading European consumer brands, retailers and mail gx order companies. n n Fit for profitability. Surprise your clients and increase your earning power. State-of-the-art technology from Muller Martini creates competitive advantages: your clients will appreciate the high-quality products and the creative added value. Connex ensures your profitability by providing the highest level of availability, unbeatable changeover times and intelligent production flows. Our modular product program, hybrid systems and extensive MMServices ensure you are equipped for the markets of today and tomorrow. Muller Martini – your strong partner. Muller Martini Australia Pty Limited Sydney +61 (0)2 8707 7300, Melbourne +61 412 749 761, Auckland +64 (0)21 790 600 Fax +61 (0)2 9773 1245, www.mullermartini.com/au, [email protected] gxpress.net August 2014 37 Newspaper technology Publication production newspaper history gxpress.net rodkirkpatrick W hen World War I was about to begin 100 years ago, it was front-page news in the Sydney Morning Herald, but not frontpage headlines. Front pages were not then generally devoted to news, and the Herald did not make Page 1 a page devoted primarily to news until April 15, 1944. But it began filling the first column of Page 1 with one-sentence summaries of the major news from January 1903. On August 3, 1914, the ‘Summary’ column began: “Germany has declared war against Russia.” Editorially, the Herald declared it as “the gravest crisis that has faced the British people since first they became members of a worldwide empire” and the Melbourne Argus said that the European conflict had “undergone a startling change”. In an era when news headlines were generally single-column, the Argus had a three-column, six-deck headline, all in capitals, beginning: ‘RUSSIA AND GERMANY. WAR DECLARED ON SATURDAY. GREAT BRITAIN’S DECISION AWAITED.’ The Adelaide Advertiser did not mince words: ‘ARMAGEDDON! EUROPE ABLAZE. GERMANY JOINS AUSTRIA. DECLARES WAR AGAINST RUSSIA.’ Three days after its first front-page mention of war, the Herald ‘Summary’ began with grimmer news that Great Britain was now involved. Readers had to turn to Page 7 for the story, with a wandering single-column headline, but a concise introduction: “Britain is at war with Germany.” For the Australian newspaper industry, World War I radically changed the economic basis of operations and made a major impact on journalistic techniques. Imports of newsprint fell by half over four years while prices for it rose by 600 per cent between July 1914 and July 1921. Cable charges also jumped 600 per cent. While actual sales of papers increased, advertising revenue tended to fall, but not savagely. For Queensland country papers, the war was a period of “grave anxiety”. During the war, both the volume of news and the hunger for detailed news from the front grew. Because the competition to be first in publishing the news increased, many cable messages that would ordinarily have been sent at standard rates were now sent at urgent rates. One result was a terser journalism. Proprietors, faced with rising costs, increased sales and newsprint shortages, cut the size of newspapers. Terseness became a necessity, not an experiment. In country districts not served by daily newspapers, the demand for daily war-news bulletins was high. Parents, relatives and friends of those who had enlisted to serve in the Australian Infantry Force wanted the latest news from the different battle fronts. For instance, in NSW, the bi-weeklies at Hay and Gundagai and the weekly at Molong were publishing daily war-news ‘extras’ by the end of August 1914. 38 gxpress.net August 2014 Newspaper technology Publication production war headlines turned inside INDUSTRY gxpress.net Rod Kirkpatrick tells how depleted newspaper staffs coped with coverage of World War I At Hay, the Riverine Grazier began posting short cable messages about the war daily, or more frequently, on its noticeboard. On August 25, 1914, the Grazier announced: “At the request of a number of the townspeople, we have decided to issue a daily ‘extra’, containing the latest telegraphed news of the progress of the war.” The newspaper charged 1s 6d (15c) a week for the extras but delivery was limited to the main part of Hay. It was much the same at the Gundagai Times which asked on August 28 for “40 volunteers to contribute 1/- (10c) per week each, say for three months, in order to prevent any curtailment of the messages, or the fixing of a charge for the extraordinaries issued daily to the public”. The Molong Express was making “a small charge” for its daily extras and the weekly Snowy River Mail at Orbost, Victoria, charged a penny for each of its daily extras. The Coleraine Albion also charged a penny, but its extras did not appear daily. Study Australian newspapers published during World War I, especially after April 1915, and you can almost hear the pages toll with a muffled drumbeat as they present the daily war casualty lists. Your eyes flick down the subheadings: ‘Killed’,‘Wounded’ and the scores of names listed. Australians today know the Gallipoli campaign began on April 25, 1915, but the news of the landing and its significance trickled through at the time. On April 30, 1915, Melbourne’s Argus carried in small type in the left-hand ear of its masthead: “Australians under fire/Landed at Gallipoli/Fighting against Turks/Conduct commended.” The story on Page 7 gave little indication of the full significance of the landing. The immediate cost of Gallipoli became clearer in the Argus a few days later: “41 die of wounds” (May 4); “49 killed; 40 wounded” (May 6). But a much fuller sense of what Australians look back on as a turning point in the nation’s history did not come until May 8 when the Argus published (on Page 19 of a 24-page edition) British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett’s report of the Gallipoli landing. A banner headline ran across the top of his report: “Australians at Dardanelles: Thrilling deeds of heroism”. Various books, such as Harry Gordon’s An Eyewitness History of Australia, carry extracts from the AshmeadBartlett report which is attributed with helping to create the legend of Anzac. Referring to the Australians as “these raw colonial troops” and “this race of athletes”, the reporter observed there had been “no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and storming the heights, above all holding on while the reinforcements were landing”. Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean, who narrowly defeated Keith Murdoch in the contest to become Australia’s official war correspondent, went ashore at Anzac Cove fiveand-a-half hours after the first landing and was the only correspondent to stay until December. He later wrote the official history of Australia in the war. A journalist of a later era, Les Carlyon, has written two outstanding books on the war, Gallipoli (2001) and The Great War (2006). The war produced an interesting sidelight on the so-called power of the press. In 1916 and 1917, just about every newspaper in the nation gave solid editorial support for a “Yes” vote for conscription of young men to serve in the war. Both referenda were defeated. Apart from the economic cost of the war, many papers were left short of qualified production staff because so many men enlisted in the AIF. At John Fairfax, 97 of the 446 employees enlisted, with 21 being killed and 28 wounded. Fortunately, the war came when mechanised typesetting was becoming the norm in country papers. Linotypes, and variations of them, were reducing the number of compositors needed. Nationally, the number of newspapers reached a peak immediately before World War I, declined slightly by 1919, and continued to decline over the next 60 years. The war, a period of grave anxiety, had long-term impacts on Australian newspapers and for Australia’s social gx fabric. n n GXpress welcomes Caitlin Miller Caitlin Miller – ‘broad-ranging’ media tastes Self-confessed social media addict and former ACP Magazines account manager Caitlin Miller has joined GXpress in a new sales and business development role. Based in Terrigal on the NSW Central Coast, she brings wide print and new media experience to publisher MPC Media. “Devouring business news online and via social media while reserving weekend time for printed newspapers, she has the broad news media appetite of her generation,” says managing editor Peter Coleman. “She is already Charting change and innovation What has changed and what has stayed the same in newspapers’ rollercoaster ride of the last 15 years? WAN-Ifra has published a ‘collector’s set’ of the Innovations in Newspapers World Report commissioned since 1999. “Fifteen years is a lifetime in the newspaper industry,” says deputy chief executive Larry Kilman, “and this unique document is testimony to the breadth of transformation that has occurred in that time. “Since the report was first published, the newspaper industry has undergone a radical transformation, with digital, social media, citizen journalism and interactive content now at the forefront. But the reports have been prescient: much that occurred in 1999 is familiar today. “The books not only reflect how quickly news media have changed, but also how much stays the same – the details and approaches change, but the basic challenges remain fairly constant.” Founder and president of Innovation and editor of the reports Juan Antonio Giner says the newspaper industry is “leading the digital transition” with more and better multimedia integrated newsrooms, journalists and managers than ever. bringing fresh ideas and attitude to the business, and we’re delighted to welcome her as a key member.” “Her experience in publishing with ACP (now Bauer Media) – building partnerships with companies of all sizes – and a strong interest in sport – means she understands and knows exactly where our readers and advertisers are coming from,” he says. A blogger, social media fan with more than 3000 followers, Caitlin is returning to publishing after leaving to start a family – she is the mother of two girls – during which time she built a business in celebrity make-up… and an Instagram following. At ACP Magazines, she liaised with stores and agents, working also on promotions and specials. Her past experience includes insurance sales, property management and retail management on Hamilton Island and at London’s Covent Garden Hotel. “Publishing sales and writing is where my heart and passion is,” Caitlin says. “I am looking forward to meeting and building relationships with new and existing partners, and helping expand GXpress’ influence in the industry globally.” You can contact her on 0422 272 200 (+61 422 272200) or email caitlin@ gxpress.net Caitlin succeeds Lisa Hendry who is stepping back from GXpress after more than two years, following a move to Geelong to spend more time with her young family and pursue other projects. “We’re grateful to Lisa for her efforts for GXpress and our sister sporting goods and outdoor trade title Sportslink, and wish her well for the gx future,” says Peter Coleman. n n The Hindu grasps an opportunity in Tamil T amil readers are getting the best of both worlds with the launch of a regional-language version of The Hindu. Kasturi & Sons corporate general manager Bharath Ganapathi says the edition successfully penetrates the regional niche, delivering “a brand they loved and trusted, but in their mother tongue”. The launch follows audience research which showed a need for a Tamil-language print edition, and complements what is south India’s most widely read English daily. Bharath Ganapathi says The Hindu has maintained its lead in the face of heavy competition in the English print media market for many decades. “The newspaper’s reputation for authenticity and credibility, as well as its award-winning team of journalists, has earned the trust of millions of loyal readers during the past 136 years,” he says. However, continuing growth in the market for Indian regional language newspapers – both in circulation and ad revenue – presented an opportunity. Ganapathi says the publisher also found demand for a Tamil newspaper that had The Hindu’s values. “Armed with this overwhelmingly positive research, we put together an editorial team of 150 people for The Hindu in Tamil, headed by an editor with more than 25 years of experience on a leading Tamil language magazine,” he says in an INMA blog. The decision to name the brand The Hindu (in Tamil) was made to capitalise on the equity that the mother brand had built over the course of a century. An editorial mandate – to deliver the same quality of journalism that has been delivered in the English language for 136 years – was supported by product design reflecting that mandate. A 360-degree marketing campaign titled ‘The world comes alive in Tamil with The Hindu’ generated buzz around launch and drove subscriptions. It included a 12-day teaser to keep interest levels high and generate advance subscription enquiries – considered “a lofty goal” by industry analysts in light of wellentrenched players. Loved and trusted brand, in their mother tongue “However, this goal was achieved following an extensive campaign that included radio, outdoor, social media, print, and television spots,” he says. Advance subscription requests via SMS touched exceeded 15,000 in two months. A website was launched on the first day, and a Facebook page had picked up 100,000 likes in four months and has now gone on to more than half a million.“There was also significant traction that could be seen in the number of shares and discussion threads on the news items that were posted on the page,” he says. “The long months of preparation, research, planning, and marketing culminated in this success. In a short time, The Hindu Tamil had gone from being ‘the new kid on the block’ to a force to reckon with both as an editorial product as well as an audience delivery gx tool for marketers. n n gxpress.net August 2014 39 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production industry events gxpress.net Time critical for ANP delegates A It’s time: ASEAN Newspaper Printers conference goes to Manila speaker from News Corp Australia will be among keynoters when technical group ASEAN Newspaper Printers takes its annual conference to Manila next month. The one-day technical programme, bookmarked by golf, social events and the annual meeting, is planned for the Shangri-La Makati hotel from September 21-23. Chairman Mohamed Hassan Mohamed Ali says the decision to hold the conference in the Philippines capital has been welcomed and supported by colleagues in the country: “We have chosen Manila because until now, we have we never held our ANP conference there, and there are many newspaper printers who would benefit from it,” he says in a posting on the non-profit organisation’s website. The shorter event will allow more local delegates to participate, but still include regular components including a golf competition, city tour and welcome reception (September 21), the conference, workshops and gala dinner (September 22), with time for the annual meeting and user/supplier networking on September 23. Theme this year is “It’s time….” – chosen because of the importance of Full two-day agenda for Delhi delegates F orty speakers are slated to speak across newsroom, printing and crossmedia topics at WAN-Ifra’s India conference in Delhi next month. The 22nd annual event for South Asian publishers will also discuss opportunities for engaging young readers, monetisation and efficient operation at Le Meridien hotel from September 17-18. Among confirmed speakers are WAN-Ifra chief executiveVincent Peyregne, TN Ninan (chairman of Business Standard and a board member of the World Editors Forum), Kevin Anderson (regional executive editor of Gannett Wisconsin Media, USA), Mariam Mammen Mathew (chief operating officer of Manorama Online), Mint editor R Sukumar, Ola Stenberg (digital editor of VG, Norway), K Balaji (director of Kasturi & Sons), Rahul Kansal (executive president of Times of India publisher Bennett, Coleman & Co), Nikhil Ganju (Indian country head of Tripadvisor), DD Purkayastha (chief executive and managing director of ABP Pvt and chairman of the WANIfra advisory council), Kartik Taneja (channel sales head for Google India) and Florian Nehm (head of corporate sustainability and EU affairs at Axel Springer, Germany). The conference will also see the formal release of a new WAN-Ifra special report on Newsprint waste management, of which K Balaji is author. The event – returning to Delhi after a gap of eight years – is expected to attract about 400 delegates from across South Asia and rest of the world. It also includes an expo component and parallel pre-conference workshops on data journalism, new media metrics, and densitometry, all on September 16. Registration and full details are at www.wan-ifra.org/india2014 or email gx [email protected] n n Back to ‘media city’ for WPE 2015 WAN-Ifra’s World Publishing Expo will be held in the media city of Hamburg again next year. Organisers of the former IfraExpo and conference say the 45th event will be held from October 5-7, 2015, following consultation with exhibitors and a unanimous ‘yes’ vote. It will be the third time the World Publishing Expo has been held in the seaport city, to which more than 10,000 delegates visited in 2010. Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and the eighth largest in the European 40 gxpress.net Union. About 100,000 people work in media and information technology, the 23,000 companies including Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Stern, Axel Springer Verlag, Bauer Media Group, Gruner + Jahr, Google, Facebook and Xing. WAN-Ifra says the combination August 2014 of easy access, moderate hotel prices and low auxiliary costs for exhibitors make conditions optimal for the Expo and its related conferences, including the seventh Tablet & App Summit, the 13th International Newsroom Summit, and the World Printers Forum. More than 130 exhibitors have already booked around 6,500 m2 of exhibition space at this year’s World Publishing Expo in Amsterdam from October 13-15 October. More about this year’s Expo at www. gx worldpublishingexpo.com n n time to newspaper printers, the need for timely execution and properlytimed maintenance. Hassan says it is also time to look again into how we package and deliver information to readers, and at the processes to ensure minimised waste and improved efficiency. Time is however, short for those wishing to attend, with full details on the ANP website or email to secretary.gen@ aseannewspaperprinters.com “I would like to urge all of you, be it newspaper printers/publishers and vendor supporters to assist us in making this conference successful,” gx says the chairman. n n WAN-Ifra teams with NAA for US congress WAN-Ifra will partner the NAA to take the World Newspaper Congress to Washington next year. Traditionally, the NAA holds its mediaXchange event in the city in a presidential election year, the next being 2016. The 67th World Newspaper Congress and 22nd World Editors Forum will be held from June 1-3, 2015. Details are at http://www.wan-ifra.org/DC2015 The Congress and Editors Forum – held annually since 1948 – have been held in the USA on five previous occasions, including in Washington in 1970 and 1996. Newspaper Association of America president and chief executive Caroline Little says she is thrilled to welcome the Congress to Washington in 2015: “The event is a tremendous opportunity for global publishers, editors and advertisers to gather and exchange ideas about the future of our industry. “We look forward to showcasing how the US newspaper industry has transformed by innovating its print, digital and mobile offerings.” WAN-Ifra chief executive Vincent Peyrègne says the event is returning to Washington at a crucial time: “A gathering of publishers and editors from more than 80 countries in the American capital will be an opportunity for a wide exchange of business strategies, editorial practices and policy positions that will gx be beneficial for all.” n n gxpress.net Dr Karl tree hug campaign struts recycling credentials Trees hug back in a new Australian environmental campaign launched by The Newspaper Works last month. Popular science icon Dr Karl Kruszelnicki fronts the national advertising campaign which congratulates Australians for being among the best newsprint recyclers in the world. The campaign, titled The trees are hugging back, was developed for TNW’s environmental advisory group and has Kruszelnicki getting up close with a tree to say thank you. It highlights that print newspapers and Tree friendly: The Newspaper Works’ campaign leverages the popularity of science icon Dr Karl Kruszelnicki magazines are produced using recycled fibres and sustainably managed forests. Australia has one of the best newspaper recycling rates in the world, recycling enough newspapers every year to fill 7605 swimming pools, or stretch to the moon and back. “Around 25 million newspapers are in circulation in Australia every week, so our readers’ efforts nationally to recycle newsprint is significant,” TNW chief executive Mark Hollands says. “Initiatives of the environmental advisory group are another example of the ongoing collaboration between newspaper publishers. As a result of public education and kerbside recycling programmes, Australia’s newspaper recycling rate is one of the best in the world, with 78 per cent of newsprint being recycled. TNW’s environment executive director Peter Netchaef says the campaign is an opportunity to highlight the importance of the industry’s ongoing environmental responsibility. It was running for nine weeks in magazines and metropolitan, suburban and regional newspapers across print and digital formats. The environmental advisory group succeeds the PNEB, formed in 1990 to advance newsprint recycling and improve product stewardship. Participating publishers are News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media, APN, West Australian Newspapers, Pacific gx Magazines and Bauer Media. n n Alliance channels academic and industry research A Mill upgrade ‘a real team effort’ Community and employee representatives joined Norske Skog Australia for the official opening of the Boyer mill paper machine conversion. Cutting a ribbon to mark completion of the $85 million project were the local mayor, and the mill’s general manager and union representative. The 18-month project involved the conversion of one of the mill’s two newsprint machines to produce LWC paper, which is being branded as Vantage. Norske Skog regional president Andrew Leighton thanked federal and state governments for supporting the project, adding to the “significant capital investment” by the mill’s owners. “This has been a real team effort across our entire business and literally hundreds of people have been involved to make it a success.” Almost 200 Tasmanian firms were involved in the project, with local gx expenditure of more than $40 million. n n Cutting the ribbon: Derwent Valley Council mayor Martin Evans, Boyer union representative Rodney Graham and general manager Rod Bender mong outcomes from the World Editors Forum in Turin was a new global partnership to promote research and innovation. WAN-Ifra has brought together academic and industry stakeholders in the new International Alliance for Media Research and Innovation, with nine members joining the steering committee. They are WAN-Ifra, EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland), iMinds (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium), PUCRS (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande Sul, Brazil), NextMedia (an initiative of Finnmedia, Finland), the Media Innovation Studio in the School of Journalism and Media at UCLan in England, Aalto University School of Business (Finland, to be confirmed), Médias Suisses (the publishers’ association of the Frenchspeaking part of Switzerland), AFP (Agence France-Presse) and Grupo RBS (Brazil). The initiative – which it says, responds to the emergency situation” the industry is in –will operate under the umbrella of WANIFRA’s Media Innovation Hub. A document setting out aims and intentions forsees “the future of news media being invented right now, all around the globe, by hundreds of different companies, universities, and entrepreneurs. “However, their separate efforts, research, prototypes, and rollouts receive inconsistent attention and analysis. Many good ideas fail only because of a lack of development support. Others get hyped beyond their real value.” Four objectives are to share a strategic vision and understanding, to connect various efforts to partners and resources, facilitate cooperation between news publishers and the academic and research environment, and to train media professionals and “encourage multi-disciplinary approaches enhanced by closer collaboration with academic centres associated to the project”. It is envisaged a project manager will be appointed in October. WAN-Ifra chief executive Vincent Peyrègne says the document is a starting point and a statement of principles: “It is a work in progress, and we welcome comments and participation.” More information and the document are at www.wan-ifra.org/node/104703 or email gx [email protected] n n gxpress.net August 2014 41 peoplenews industry gxpress.net Jailed Ethiopian named for 2014 freedom prize W AN-Ifra has named jailed Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega for its 2014 Golden Pen of Freedom press freedom prize. The award was announced in Turin, Italy, during the opening of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum. A relentless advocate for freedom of expression, Nega became an emblem of Ethiopia’s struggle for democracy, his commitment to human rights landing him in jail on at least seven occasions in the past ten years. He is currently being held in Kaliti Prison outside of Addis Ababa, serving an 18-year sentence as a convicted ‘terrorist’ for having challenged the very same laws used to imprison him, and for questioning whether the Arab Spring protests could be repeated in Ethiopia. World Editors Forum president Erik Bjerager said the Ethiopian government has tried to present Eskinder Nega as a rabble-rouser bent on fomenting violent revolution: “However, accounts from other journalists, backed by court documents and the hundreds of articles he has written, portray a tenacious writer who has called only for peaceful change and reconciliation.” Eskinder Nega’s newspapers Asqual, Satenaw and Menelik were among 13 titles closed in a clampdown following 2005 elections in which the ruling EPRDF party claimed a disputed victory. Accepting the award at the request of Eskinder Nega’s family, Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye – himself a former prisoner of the Ethiopian regime, jailed alongside Eskinder Nega for 11 months between 20112012 – reminded delegates that Nega “at many points” faced a choice: “He could have chosen an easy life, he could have chosen another profession, but the love for the truth, for his country, for his fellow human beings, and for Ethiopia, made him gx into a journalist.” n n ‘Harvest’ instills pride in print A seminal 20-year-old film about graphic communication and its influence on civilisation has been updated to reflect changes in technology. It’s a big ask, but much of Harvest of Wisdom comes in the form of an illustrated lecture, created by US printing industry visionary and scholar Nolan Moore a year before his death in 1995. Now a joint effort by the Nolan Moore Memorial Education Foundation and the graphic communication institute at Cal Poly has remade the second half of the hour-long film. The update is led by Jerry Waite and Phil Snyder of the University of Houston along with Harvey Levenson of CalPoly’s graphic communication institute – through the support of the Nolan Moore Memorial Education Foundation created by PIA MidAmerica after Moore’s death – 42 gxpress.net August 2014 and is now available online. Levenson (pictured in the video) says that despite its age, the film has stood the test of time. Moore intended it to be used in classrooms, and demonstrate how written communication and print affected civilisation and the dissemination of knowledge. “Indeed, the film is a statement on the relevance of print throughout the ages and the important and continuing accomplishments of the printing gx industry.” n n • See the hour-long video on our website. Goss International has promoted Tim Mercy to a new role as Asia Pacific managing director. Most recently a sales vice president in Asia, he now leads a unified Goss sales, service and support organisation serving newspaper, commercial and packaging operations throughout the region, with the exception of China. Mercy reached Goss via Harris Web and Heidelberg, spending 30 years of his 40-year career in the graphic arts industry with these companies. He has been based in Asia for the past 20 years. Goss chief executive Rick Nichols says the appointment continues the company’s alignment based on four regional centres responsible for the Americas, Asia, China and Europe. Mercy has been “a valued resource” for printers, publishers and converters in the region for two decades, he says: “He is uniquely qualified to unify and lead the Goss team in that region and to help us continue to deliver the highest levels of value, product performance and support.” A graduate of Northern Illinois University – where he earned an MBA as well as a Bachelors degree in industry and technology – he worked previously with a leading US commercial web and direct mail company. • Marketing manager Greg Norris is among those shed by Goss International in cut of its Americas teams, US magazine News&Tech has reported. Director of newspaper sales Doug Gibson has also left the company – to join Newspaper Solutions Inc – in the changes which follow the appointment of Mike D’Angelo as managing director. He told the magazine the “upper-management reduction” went across the board throughout departments in the Americas. Goss is currently installing a 6x2 Uniliner press at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the world’s first automated Magnum Compact, due to be commissioned at Advance Publications in Staten Island, New York. After leading Adobe’s Asia Pacific enterprise sales for the past year, ANZ managing director Paul Robson now moves to regional president. He succeeds Craig Tegel who is leaving the company at the end of this month after 17 years with Adobe. Worldwide field operations executive vice president Matt Thompson says Tegel led extensive growth for Adobe in the region, and he is confident business will continue to thrive under Robson’s leadership. Robson will continue to be based in Sydney headquarters, travelling frequently to oversee operations elsewhere in Australasia, and in southeast Asia, Korea, India and Greater China. He joined Adobe as ANZ managing director in 2012 from Hewlett Packard, having transferred to the company from Compaq. His CV includes the founding of Bridal Gifts Direct in 2003, building turnover to $5 million in four years. He is also a director of Tresillian, the Royal Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies, which is involved in the delivery of child and family healthcare. Würzburg register court has followed shareholders’ recommendation, appointing Dagmar Rehm to the KBA supervisory board. The appointment follows HeinzJoachim Neubürger’s decision to leave the board, leaving the seat vacant. It is the first time since the company’s listing on stock exchange nearly 30 years ago that a woman has held a seat as shareholder representative on the supervisory board of what is the world’s oldest and second-largest printing press manufacturer. Rehm (50) is chief financial officer at Bilfinger Industrial Technologies. She has a a degree in economics, worked in finance and accounting from 1989-1995 at the former AEG and until 2005 held senior commercial positions at German rail operator Deutsche Bahn. She later became senior vicepresident corporate controlling at tour operator Thomas Cook. She moved to construction and services group Bilfinger Berger in Frankfurt as chief financial officer of the concessions division and has held her gx n present position since 2013. n newswrapper Newspaper technology Publication production Fun at the Forum, a feisty Zemiro, awards business and a waning moon at the Crescent, as Peter Coleman wraps it up W e held publication of this issue until after Australia’s The Newspaper Works had held its Future Forum, an event still known by the former PANPA brand. Coverage of this year’s event is in pages 14-17. Invited down as a judge on the technical awards, I also had an opportunity to see the Newspaper of the Year process from the inside... popping up to North Richmond afterwards to take up an invitation extended by Bob Lockley at SWUG (see report page 22). As it turned out, a majority (perhaps all, but I do not have this information) agreed the substantially-expanded Fairfax Media site should take this year’s inaugural ‘print centre of the year’ award. The new category is timely, and while I thought we chose the right winner, the efforts made by News Corp Australia in management (and cultural) development across a range of its sites is also worth recognising. The nominated Sydney Print Centre was a runner-up, but similar work has been done at other sites including Murarrie (Qld) which I wrote about last issue. The ‘big night’ of the NOY gala dinner is always a highlight, spiced this year by host Julia Zemiro, who used the event to attack her employer (News, with other major publishers, owns the competition) over what she claimed was a fanciful report of her Eurovision coverage. Always notable is how the awards forwardplanning 2014 Aug 27-30 Sep 3-6 Korea International Printing Machinery & Equipment Show (KIPES) and K-Digi Print (Korea Digital Print & Solution Show), Kintex Exhibition Hall, Seoul (www.kprintweek.com) Indoprint (with Indoplas and Indopack), Jakarta International Expo, Kemayoran, Indonesia (www. indoprint.net) Sep 17-18 rise and fall in stature according to the success of the publications reporting on them. The Australian dedicated a long piece to “outrage and accusations” when it was pipped by The Age for the metro/ national Newspaper of the Year title a couple of years back But last year’s result – when what we thought a much-improved Oz was honoured – and this month’s accolade for the Weekend Australian, have obviously met with approval in Holt Street. During the Forum, the CEOs panel was asked whether they would prefer a newspaper with a report of the Bledisloe Cup match to one without. No crossTasman slurs here, but a carefully pointed reference to print deadlines, which Julian Clarke (for the News titles, which did) happily took up In what I shall therefore call a Bledisloe Cup moment, none of the newspapers I saw the following day managed to report their PANPA successes in print. Whether they diss the success of others remains to be seen. WAN-Ifra India 2014 annual conference (including Newsroom, Printing and Crossmedia Advertising Summits), Hotel Le Meridien, New Delhi (www.wan-ifra.org) Sep 28-Oct 1 Graph Expo, Chicago, Illinois, USA (www.graphexpo.com) Sep 21-23 ASEAN Newspaper Printers annual conference, Manila, Philippines (aseannewspaperprinters.com) Oct 13-15 WAN-Ifra Expo and conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands (www. wan-ifra.org) Our recent delve into news printing history with the Cossar tales feature has brought interest, new contacts and this gem from Colorado, USA. It’s the story, told by CBS News reporter Barry Petersen,of the Saguache Crescent, of which Dean Coombs is all things… which means editor, proprietor, Linotype operator (and mechanic), pressman (on an 1915 sheetfed press) and delivery hand. The video – posted by Gold Coast (Queensland) mechanic George Finn on the Metaltype.co.uk forum – is on our website. Intriguingly, Petersen suggests there may not be another newspaper in the USA – and by his implication, the world – set on a Linotype, something we believe to be incorrect. It’s a good news paper – “I don’t do bad news,” he says, “everyone knows that” – and with no kids, succession is in doubt. There’s a vacancy here for someone with an equal level of commitment, since Coombs (pictured) says, “I don’t know anyone I dislike enough to give the Crescent to.” Not me, thanks... like Malcolm Turnbull at the Future Forum on media regulation, “I’ve seen that film.” Nov 14-17 Nov 18-20 2015 May 13-15 2016 All In Print China 2014, Shanghai, China (www.mdna.com) WAN-Ifra Digital Media Asia, Singapore (www.wan-ifra.org) PrintEx15, co-located with Visual Impact, Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush, NSW (gamaa.net.au/ trade_shows/printexex15/) May 31-Jun 10 DRUPA Print & Crossmedia Solutions trade show, Dusseldorf, Germany (www.drupa.com) Contact the organisers for fuller information about gx n any of the above events and to confirm dates. n gxpress.net August 2014 43 Newspaper technology Publication production Newspaper technology Publication production Generic Generic gxpress.net gxpress.net ...new Magnum Compact Combining compact inker modules with powerful automation and agility features, the Goss Magnum Compact press introduces advantages never before available in the singlewidth sector. The result is a versatile, cost-effective option for newspaper, semi-commercial and book production, including multi-product business models and ultra short run lengths. LOCAL CONTACT: Goss International, Unit 16, 35 Dunlop Road, Mulgrave, Victoria 3170, Australia +03.9560.1666 44 gxpress.net www.gossinternational.com August 2014 gxpress.net August 2014 45