Newspaper technology Publication production starting point · 2012. 6. 21. · 4 gxpress.net June...

Vol 12/2 June 2012 Asia-Pacific

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Newspaper technology Publication production

The software writing match

reports and helping editors decide

robot journos

The DRUPA project that will prime digital news printing

starting point

Country town’s tablet daily is a lifestyle alternative

organic growth

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The US’ third-largest newspaper publisher, McClatchy Company will use a cloud-based DTI Circulation system across all its 30 titles. Terry Geiger, director of corporate IT, says the company needs an audience relationship management solution to support emerging growth strategies, in addition to strong circulation management functionality. “Our choice is a key to our transformation into a print and digital media company which serves our diverse audiences on multiple platforms,” he says.

McClatchy’s largest newspapers include the ‘Miami Herald’, ‘Sacramento Bee’, ‘Fort Worth Star-Telegram’, ‘Kansas City Star’, ‘Charlotte Observer’ and the ‘News & Observer’ in Raleigh, North Carolina.

DTI has its first German customer in the cloud, with Bremen publisher ‘Delmenhorster Kreisblatt’ signing for an upgrade and cloud implementation of ContentPublisher editorial.

The customer was the first to rebuild their website using DTI Lightning. The software also includes support for open source web applications.

UK provider of cloud-based marketing technology Hydra has launched OneSearch, which integrates natural and paid search performance. The company has also published a white paper on how to enhance keyword lists. The firm says 55 per cent of the 200 digital marketers it approached did not know what words or expressions were worth spending time and money on. nngx

An MPC Media publicationVolume 12 Number 2 June 2012

Managing editor Peter Coleman Tel: +61 7-5485 0079 Mob: 0407 580 094 Email [email protected] sales Lisa HendryTel: +61 7-5485 3868 Mob: 0487 400 374South East Asia regional manager: Stephan Peters Tel: +66 2 9460 698 Email [email protected] office: (editorial, administration, production): PO Box 40, Cooran, Qld 4569, Australia Tel: +61 7-5485 0079 Fax: +61 2-4381 0246 E-mail: [email protected] Maggie ColemanPrinted by Galloping Press, NSW, AustraliaLatest industry news at www.gxpress.net

Published by MPC Media (Pileport Pty Ltd) ABN 30 056 610 363

Subscriptions A$30 pa. (inc GST) within Australia. Other rates on application© Pileport Pty Ltd 2012. 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

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SyStEMS, onlinE & MobilEgxpress.net


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iNSidEnEw MétHodE: News Limited invests $60 million in editorial integration PAGE 5

orgAnic growtH: Sleepy Byron sets the pace with tablet daily PAGE 7

robot nEwSrooM: How software writes stories and tells you which to run PAGE 10

StArting Point: Jump start for digital newspapers among dRUPA delights PAGE 14

SHort AnSwEr: US titles take engineered route to a sectioned ‘tab’ PAGE 25

our tHAnkS to tHESE AdvErtiSErS:ABB Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Agfa Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Conti-Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31CCi Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20-21Ferag Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Goss international . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Müller Martini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Océ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Pongrass Publishing Systems . . . . . . . . . . . 3QuadTech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35QiPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32WAN-ifra india . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24World Publishing Expo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Cover pictures © DRUPA, fotosearch, GXpress

Mindtree, Netbiscuits team for mobile web

T +61 2 9369 6100 F +61 2 9369 6150Australia: [email protected] and Canada: [email protected]

Cloud computing solutions by Pongrass free you to deliver IT as a service. Now thatPongrass Version 6 Advertising and Editorial Software runs on a standard browser, includingInternet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, your remote office is anywhere you can get an internetconnection. And today that really is anywhere. With lower communications and deploymentcosts, shouldn't you be looking at Enterprise Cloud computing solutions from Pongrass.

In a ‘no growth’ economy, www.gxpress.net traffic quadruples in a yearGXpress Magazine’s four-year-old news website is winning friends and influencing newspaper people throughout the world.

And in an amazing 12 months, the number of hits on the www.gxpress.net website increased fourfold, from 60,000 to more than 240,000 a month, and has stayed above 200,000 for four consecutive months.

A 150 per cent increase in average daily visits has also seen monthly totals rise from 8400 last May to more than 20,000 in April.

The focus on news has also paid dividends, with a 24-hour publishing model delivering for readers

worldwide: “We built our new website to bring the latest news to the newspaper industry in the Asia Pacific, but we’ve been amazed by the results,” says managing editor Peter Coleman.

“Breaking news has brought us new audience members, including a surge from late November, and the signs are they have stayed with us.

“I was waiting for a flight in Hong Kong when confirmation of the manroland restructuring came through, and just had time to post the story.

“We were among the first specialist media to publish, and in the couple of months following, an

increasing number of people relied on us for the latest developments.”

Apart from the sheer growth in numbers, the www.gxpress.net website is growing geographically, as new readers around the world get to hear about it.

In addition to news and features, the website carries advertising and advertorial from the print edition as a complimentary ‘add-on’. Says Coleman, “We’ve never charged print advertisers for it, and I’m delighted that the growth of the site means they’re getting such good value for their money!”• View statistics at www.gxpress.net/usage

The GXpress website topped 248,000 hits in April

asia is to get its own Newsplex training centre under an agreement between Nanyang Technological University and WAN-Ifra.

The new centre dedicated to creative innovation, training and research for newsrooms of the future will be operationally ready in September. It will be located in NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Singapore, and cover 160 m2 of space in the Yunnan Garden campus.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed by NTU Provost Professor Freddy Boey and WAN-Ifra deputy chief executive Thomas Jacob. The signing was attended by guests including Patrick Daniel, editor-in-chief of the English & Malay newspapers division of Singapore Press Holdings, and Walter Fernandez, editor of ‘Today’ and managing director of MediaCorp Press.

NTU will provide resources and space, with WKWSCI professors and researchers gaining access to WAN-Ifra’s newspaper and news publishing conferences, training, seminars and research reports, as well as its global network of publisher members.

Says Boey, “Newsplex Asia reflects NTU’s firm commitment to excellence in training the next generation of digital-savvy journalists, while advancing Singapore’s position as a global media hub in the heart of Asia.

Indian journalists learn new media techniques in a Newsplex seminar in Hyderabad led by Newsplex Director Randy Covington.

“It will leverage NTU’s strengths in communication studies, science and technology, and bring best practices in new media teaching and learning to the students. This is a timely and welcome development in an era when news consumption is rapidly changing and increasingly defined by new technologies, as more and more people use the internet and social networks as their primary sources of news and information.”

Thomas Jacob says news consumers are changing in the way they access and choose

news: “Newsplex Asia will help newspapers and media companies understand and manage these changes through training, coaching and research services.

“It will draw on many sources, both global and regional, to provide the latest tools and techniques to Asia’s media professionals.”

Newsplex Asia will be the fourth centre of its kind in the world. The others are at University of South Carolina, USA (November 2002), WAN-Ifra headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany (September 2005), and the International Media Centre in Saint-Etienne, France (expected to be ready next month).

NTU is a research-intensive public university with 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Beside the main Yunnan Garden campus, it has a satellite campus in Singapore’s science and tech hub, one-north, and is setting up a third campus in Novena, Singapore’s medical district. nngx

NTU deal to deliver Singapore NewsplexNewsplex Asia will be the fourth centre of its kind in the world.

indian IT and product engineering services company MindTree is partnering with

web app platform provider Netbiscuits to develop and deliver ‘reusable solutions’, templates and development methodologies for its customers.

Netbiscuits says trends suggest consumers are accessing an increasing variety of services via their mobile devices. The proportion of US adult mobile phone owners who access the mobile web at least daily rose from four per cent in 2007 to one third last year and is expected to increase further.

MindTree delivers IT solutions to enterprises through a globally distributed model, and will be able to bring similar capabilities to enterprises.

“The growing adoption of smartphones across the world is turning mobile web into everyone’s window to the internet,” says MindTree mobile technology solutions vice president Balaji Krishnan.

“To reach consumers across the globe via mobile, brands need technology solutions that deliver a reliable and consistent web user experience over a variety of devices.

Netbiscuits’ mobile web platform will enable them to ramp-up mobile channel initiatives.

Netbiscuits recently released Tactile, an HTML5 framework for creation and delivery of touch-enabled mobile web experiences for smartphones and tablets. It delivers more than 9.6 billion pages per month. nngx

http://www.gxpress.net



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Atex has installed its first advertising system for a Chinese customer at ‘Jin Wan Bao’ evening newspaper in Tianjin.

The 900,000-circulation daily is using the system to control advertising processes from order-entry to placement and billing, eliminating manual processes.

‘Jin Wan Bao’ project manager Zheng Wei says the installation has significantly simplified workflow in advertising: “Now many manual tasks have been cut and proofreading, which is done by the system, can now easily detect errors made in the manuscripts.”

Atex Asia chief executive Jerome Laredo says this is the first time the company has installed an advertising system in a Chinese environment. “Both teams worked together to make this a success, and I am very pleased that management is seeing improvements in the workflow process.”

Published by Jin Wan Newspaper Media Group, Tianjin, ‘Jin Wan Bao’ one of the country’s top ten newspapers, with advertising revenue among the top three evenings at RMB 500 million.

Star Malaysia has launched an enhanced digital replica version of the top-selling English-language daily tabloid.

The Star ePaper – which went live in April – offers subscribers new tablet and online editions, both powered by NewspaperDirect’s SmartEdition and PressReader technologies.

Editions deliver all the content from the printed publication – including StarBiz and Metro sections – and allow subscribers to read the paper online or downloaded to a PC, smartphone or tablet. iOS and Android versions are supported.

Readers can switch between replica/page view and article view, or read from cover-to-cover by swiping from page to page.

“Smartphones and tablets provide a fantastic

opportunity for ‘The Star’ by enabling us to give our readers the content they want, the way they want it, where they want it,” says digital business chief operating officer Wong Siah Ping.

• NewspaperDirect has fol-lowed its new iPad reader with a major update of its PressReader for Android de-vices. The new version adds a proprietary high-definition PDF rendering engine – including powerful zoom facilities – and the Smart-Flow ‘intelligent’ technology seen on its versions for other platforms.

With SmartFlow, a touch gesture switches from ‘replica view’ to a new mode designed for digital natives who value the content of the publication, but want a more fluid presentation.

Complete stories and pages are presented in a continuous flow that maximises readability.

Sydney-based HotHouse Interactive is one of two members of a new ‘global partner network’ announced by Netbiscuits.

The alliance covers of technology and IT services companies leveraging the company’s platform to deliver web apps across mobile and connected devices, and has levels for business, technology and solution partners.

Dutch workflow developer Van Gennep has launched a new publishing platform based on digital asset management technology from Adam Software, which bought the business last month.

Dubbed PublishingNow, the system draws on the two companies’ strengths – with centralised DAM assets and powerful workflow tools – to deliver a system for multichannel publishing.

Van Gennep’s Plansystem4 flatplanning system has been popular with magazine and catalogue publishers. The new product enables users to collect content from cross-channel sources, storing it for output driven by approval-based

workflows, and publication to any channel.

Product manager Gerda Oppewal says the ability to integrate with Adobe Creative Suite and other digital publishing tools will enable a single solution to cover the complete publishing process.

A recent partnership with Aquafadas extends the product’s publishing reach to mobile devices. “Now we’re adding the efficiency of Adam’s DAM system to our offering, which will create real increases in efficiency and ROI,” she says.

ppi Media chief operating officer Norbert Ohl says acquisition of the former manroland subsidiary by Evers-Frank and Bertsch Innovation is already showing results.

A first new project focusses on corporate publishing, and the company’s Content-X editorial solution for dailies and small magazines, has been piloted and installed at several sites. Now large companies, associations and agencies will be offered the technology.

Ohl says the company is now able to present its solutions in a new, dynamic way. “Our access to the market offered by the network is extremely valuable,” he says.

Joint targets for the year include gradual expansion of digital products in addition to its classic offering. Services will be extended to include software as a service and application service models.

Workflow software developer Dalim says a new version of its Twist automation technology will optimise PDFs for use on mobile devices, dealing with defects such as artifacts and small white lines.

The new normalisation feature is being used at Roularta Media, where assistant premedia director Peter Maes says neither quality nor file size of many files received meets the requirements of advertisers, who also wish to conduct full text searches on content and keep embedded URLs live. nngx

Méthode in the madnesst

he pressured and sometimes slightly crazy newsroom environment of Australia’s top-selling tabloids is to be tamed and organised by a new cross-platform editorial system.

News Limited is to spend a reported $60 million installing EidosMedia’s Méthode solution across across its Australian print and digital publishing businesses.

News publishes more than 100 metropolitan, regional and suburban titles, including the national daily, ‘The Australian’, as well as operating a range of websites and data services.

A two-year rollout has been set for the ‘project streamline’ implementation, but chief executive Kim Williams says he will press for an earlier completion.

Williams – appointed from Foxtel at the end of last year – has picked up a project which has been under consideration since the revolutionary Italian-developed technology went live at the ‘Wall Street Journal’ in New York soon after its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2007.

While it has since been adopted by News’ ‘New York Post’, it was widely expected that News Limited would be Australia’s first Méthode site. Instead, the publisher was pipped by arch rival Fairfax Media for its Financial Review Group – which includes the ‘Australian Financial Review’ and ‘BRW’ – in 2010, during the tenancy of then FRG chief executive Michael Gill.

An EidosMedia team has worked steadily on the project since, with group chief executive Gabriella Franzini announcing the establishment of a new Sydney-based subsidiary last September, along with the appointment of former manroland executive Lodovico de Briganti as general manager.

In an email to staff, Williams describes the order as “the most significant and complex upgrade to our editorial technology in the company’s history”.

A single editorial system based on Méthode will be used by all newspapers across print and online.

“We’ll be able to break news faster, from more places, and more easily watch stories develop. We’ll be able to collaborate on stories, and easily share content,” he says.

“For our business, the programme will mean one single content creation system.

It will deliver a ‘create once, publish many’ capability, greatly reducing duplication of effort and improving speed to market as we publish across all our channels.

“It will eliminate many of the frustrations of the current systems that we all know only too well.”

In a report in the Media section of ‘The Australian’, Simon Canning speculates that the upgrade will fundamentally change the way in which the group’s publications interact with social media.

He says the new platform will “feed relevant tweets and other social media updates directly to journalists as they draft stories, just like a wire service”. Twitter and Facebook streams will be piped to journalists’ screens, he says.

A News Limited spokesman had declined to comment on the specifics of the system, but Canning says the social media integration is unlikely to make the first stage of the Méthode roll out.

“Several newsrooms have screens constantly scrolling through Twitter feeds focusing on tweets about finance and politics, while some journalists also keep social media streams running on a second screen as they work on stories,” he says.

DevelopeD by a Milan-baseD coMpany which included many former Unisys people, the new-generation EidosMedia system allows XML-based content to be published simultaneously through multiple channels using an object-orientated Versant database. A first adopter was the UK’s ‘Financial Times’, which placed an order in 2002 after an Atex project in which it was a partner was aborted. But even

allowing for the design and implementation, it has taken a while for Méthode to gain momentum.

‘Le Figaro’ in Paris took the system for a non-integrated workflow, with HT Media – New Delhi publisher of the ‘Hindustan Times’ – using it for ‘Mint’ from early 2007.

In 2008, the ‘Seattle Times’ became the first US newspaper to pick up the system, followed by the ‘Wall Street Journal’. Gill, who at one time worked for the ‘Financial Times’ in London, told GXpress at the time that he heard from a friend about the Méthode system in use there, and took the next available opportunity to check it out.

MéthoDe’s popularity with the financial publishing community has already seen it installed in the Australian office of WSJ publisher Dow Jones, and is reported to be using Tweetdeck software to keep abreast of Twitter commentary. Canning says the move paid dividends when NAB announced a rate cut first on Twitter.

Apart from these sites, EidosMedia has Méthode clients at ‘Lloyds List’ in the UK, Europe, India and South Africa.

‘Le Figaro’ and ‘Le Monde Magazine’ are among more than 30 print and online publications in France.

In North America, customers include the ‘Washington Post’ and the ‘Boston Globe’. The Boston daily launched a new (second) Méthode-based website a year ago, and has since been named for the Society for News Design’s top award. Its design enables page layouts to be tailored to the pixel size of the viewing device, from desktops to tablets and smartphones. nngx

News Limited is to spend a reported $60 million installing EidosMedia’s Méthode solution across across its Australian print and digital publishing businesses

Audience-first model for Gisborne tabloidNew Zealand tabloid daily the

‘Gisborne Herald’ will switch to an ‘audience first’ business

model with the implementation of Digital Technology’s editorial and advertising systems.

Despite a string of firsts – including being the country’s first tabloid daily – its use of a number of older editorial and advertising systems had prevented it from transforming into a new digital direction. The new systems will enable it to deliver digital news and advertising content to a more targeted audience, expanding channels across a variety of digital formats.

Managing director Michael Muir says the new “cohesive digital solutions” will enable them to achieve current strategic goals and allow future expansion of the newspaper: “DTI ContentPublisher provides us creative flexibility to build engaging customer experiences on every channel, while DTI Advertising extends our digital ad sales capabilities,” he says.

“The architecture creates new opportunities for us to sell advertising across the newspaper and into website sales. We needed the tools both solutions provide to increase revenue and be the go-to leaders in our media market.”

Using the new system, the ‘Gisborne Herald’ plans to unify

their news team and content, and expand their digital offerings by increasing audience engagement to their print, web, and mobile platforms. ContentPublisher provides a flexible way of pushing up-to-the-minute news to the web, rather than going through a number of manual interventions.

David Page, managing director of Digital Technology Asia Pacific says the new digital solution will empower the newspaper to distribute content in a variety of mediums – including print, web, tablet and mobile – and expand their web presence.

“The new workflow and integrated software components will also provide many new benefits to the company and will enable the ‘Gisborne Herald’ to grow their new solution over the coming years to incorporate many additional features and help expand their revenue,” he says. nngx

a lfaMedia has introduced Agenda, a new component for the logical organisation of editorial work desks. It can be used to administer business dates, theme choices, task assignments,

resources and addresses, as well as for vacation and out-of-office planning, trainee management and work schedules.

The company says a major feature consists of individual task lists for designated employees and workgroups. It can be independent of location, making it particularly suitable for end-user mobile devices, and can be used directly outside an Alfa environment.

New features for AlfaMedia’s first AdSuite version of the year, 2012.1 include provision of QR codes in advertisements. nngx

Alfa sets Agenda

http://www.snd.org/2012/04/snd33-worlds-best-designed-website-bostonglobe-com/

http://www.snd.org/2012/04/snd33-worlds-best-designed-website-bostonglobe-com/


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Incorporating / Waarby ingelyf is: HET SUID-WESTERNR4,00 incl

GEORGEHERALD Thursday 24 May, 2012

Website: www.georgeherald.comA resident of Camphersdrift is up in

arms after a break-in and theft at his home

by vagrants, who have moved onto a near-

by property that is rented by the police

for staff. The property has been standing

empty for months.The resident, Steve Smit says they found

the stolen goods afterwards at this police

property at 5 Sandy McGregor Street. During

the break-in, the entrance gate to the Smits’

home was damaged and will cost R13 000

to repair. Smit says the police house used to be oc-

cupied by the Commissioner of police, but he

vacated it some 18 months ago. “Since then,

the house has deteriorated badly and is totally

unkept. We are a very proud neighbourhood

and have invested a lot of money in our pro-

perties and we pay heavy rates and taxes, but

our properties are being devalued as a result.

We take pride in our homes and are very un-

happy with the state of this house.”Smit says he has communicated with the

police on a number of occasions regarding

residents’ fears and the danger posed to them,

but to no avail. “It is disgusting that we have to live in fear

of being watched and being taken advantage

of, and the culprits of the negligence are the

SAPS themselves. We pay heavy rates and

taxes and have a common right to safety and

security. Our protectors, the police, have total

disregard for the situation. Taxpayers’ money

is being abused and wasted.” Other neighbours have gone so far as to

raise their boundary wall to shield their pro-

perties from the vagrants.Heavy, unsightly burglar proofing has been

installed on the outside of the windows of the

house. Police spokesperson Capt. Malcolm Pojie

Police property attracts crime

ALIDA DE BEER

commander has also ordered that these sites

(police properties) be patrolled more regu-

said the burglar bars were installed because

the house was vandalised after the General

had moved out. “The member to whom the

house was allocated is currently on maternity

leave and will move in soon. Arrangements

have been made for renovations to the house.

Thereafter, the member will be fully respon-

sible for its maintenance. The George station

The team of The Big Autism Thing setting off from the George Municipality on their way to Cape Town, where they are scheduled to arrive

on 9 June. They have been walking since 31 March from Durban, all along the coast, creating awareness about autism and raising funds.

From the left are (front) Gareth Moore, Angus Moore, Wayne Rutherford, Paul Ringrose, Melissa Naudé, (back), Marieta Young, Rosemary

Moore and Nolwazi Nagwaza. Melissa, a second-year student in Social Science, was diagnosed with a form of autism at the age of eight.

See the full article on page 16. Photo: Alida de Beer

Footprints for autism

To page 2

NBM 7’S

SKIETDOODBekende sakeman dood na skietvoorval

Rugby-boerpot vir George5 72

Lovejoy admits the idea for the daily came from former ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ editor Eric Beecher, who is involved in a similar digital project, ‘InDaily’ in Adelaide, and is a shareholder in the ‘Echo’.

“He came to us, ‘swimming with money’ after he sold his Text Media business, and it’s been a good relationship,” Lovejoy says.

With a separate production stream to the print editions, the day starts early for Dobney and a colleague, who are in at 6am scanning news sources for the day’s edition.

A sub-editor, designer and ‘back-end’ person follow the workflow through editing and InDesign layout to the provision of links and content such as galleries and video before uploading to Sydney provider RealView, on whose server it resides.

The presentation is commercial with character, making use of the medium for interactive content and allowing readers to ‘drill down’ with links to classified and dining guides, which are effectively separate documents.

The character comes in part from contributors such as columnist Mungo McCallum, a 70-year-old former Sydney journalist who retired to the area in the early 1990s, and author and stand-up comedian Mandy Nolan, who does a regular comment piece to camera.

Despite commitment to the project, Lovejoy and Dobney – who came to the ‘Echo’ from experience with Fairfax Media’s early digital ventures – are open-minded about technology. While the daily goes out on RealView, they use Isuu for the print edition and are looking at other digital media formats.

“We’re not seeing the demise of print experienced in other markets, but if a fold-up portable reader comes along, we think that will change the way people obtain their local news”.

And Echonetdaily, “will evolve, may well end up in a different form,” he says. nngx

s outh of the bustle of Brisvegas, the country town of Mullumbimby presents a quieter, alternative lifestyle.

And perhaps a lesson to those looking to the future of newspaper publishing (writes Peter Coleman).

A page-turning ‘Echonetdaily’ digital edition complementing Byron Bay free weekly the ‘Echo’ is a head-turner in newspaper circles and, according to publisher David Lovejoy, unusual in never having lost money.

It serves a distinctive and fashionable area with a passionate readership – “everyone knows



By George, they’ve got itAustralian developer Pongrass wins 500-seat South African upgradeAustralian systems developer Pongrass Publishing Systems has scored a major for a 500-seat editorial system at a South African publisher.

Caxton and CTP Publications has signed an enterprise license agreement for an editorial and production system which will cover all of the Caxton properties, which include 120 newspapers and magazines across South Africa. The initial order includes 500 seat licenses and the new installations will integrate with the existing Caxton ad booking system.

The first installation has gone live at George on the west cape of South Africa, with seven community papers in the area to continue the rollout throughout 2012.

Caxton IT director Tony Rorke says a key

was the flexibility of enterprise technology agreement with backup from Pongrass as required: “We have dealt with Pongrass for ten years with the classified pagination product which we integrated at our sites.

“Purchasing their editorial and production technology allows us to roll out the technology ourselves. Pongrass software uses an open interface and is definitely easy to install and train. The first installation at Group Editors in George was completed in two weeks with two staff from Pongrass onsite.”

The Pongrass relationship with Caxton extends to 2000 when they bought their classified pagination product for the group. Introduction now of the InDesign based ad production and editorial solution was inline with their technology vision. The group is

one of the largest publishers of newspapers and magazines in the country, and includes community newspapers and Johannesburg national daily ‘The Citizen’.

Ten monthly magazine titles cover a wide variety of topics including fashion and beauty, food, décor, parenting, travel, entertainment and celebrity. nngx

Live in george: Print and online products from Caxton in George, on the west cape of South Africa

App takes Miles’ GN4 newsroom on the roadu K-headquartered systems

developer Miles 33 has placed an editorial content submission

app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices on Apple’s AppStore and the Android Market.

A mobile-based editorial tool for journalists and editors, GNXcapture effectively extends a newsroom based on the company’s GN4 system to roaming mobile users without sacrificing their ability to interact with other users, it says. Users will be able to create new stories and edit existing ones directly into GN4, or upload externally created content complete with metadata, tags and header information.

It also supports the capture of multimedia content including audio, video and images - subject to the capabilities of the smartphone or tablet.

Miles says the configurable interface delivers a ‘look and feel’ consistent with the current system.

“We see these apps as a natural extension of the GN4 content management system, which more and more customers are choosing to deploy in a cloud”, says chief executive Michael Moore. “It really doesn’t

matter where in the world you are, the GN4 ecosystem is a true virtual world.”

• New Miles 33 advertising software provides the ability to book radio and TV slots, as well as improved customer relationship functions including cloud-based integration.

Features in the new advertising and financial systems enable media houses with multiple ad channels to package orders for all media types into a single order and bill with a single invoice. Radio and TV specific attributes such as time slots and duration can now be booked in the same interface as for online and print ads.

Interfaces for Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and Microsoft Dynamics extend the already cloud-enabled Miles 33 ad solution, to third party CRM tools. Additional functionality has also been added to customer management abilities, including new HTML email templates, web address management, email verification and enhancements to sales team management.

Canvassing features provide more customer information for sales staff and canvassers and a customer focus report provides a historic overview of a customer’s activity. nngx

E idosMedia says an extension

to its Méthode publishing platform comes close to the ‘holy grail’ of effortless creation of dedicated tablet editions from existing content.

The company’s tablet publishing module allows tablet editions and print editions to share the same page planning space, marketing vice president Massimo Barsotti says. “This latest extension comes close to realising that ideal through extremely tight integration between print, web and tablet workflows,” he says.

Stories and graphics can be dragged from the print edition into the tablet layouts where they reformat

automatically, with portrait and landscape orientations created in parallel.

But although pagination and formatting of content is largely automatic, staff can make manual adjustments using the same tools as for print editions.

“In its most automatic form, the tablet edition is managed just like an additional print edition,” chief technology officer Ismail Gazarin says. “That means that for a daily publishing schedule, the tablet

editions – both portrait and landscape – can be created in parallel with very few additional resources and with complete control and visibility at every stage of the

process.”Tablet editions are

exported as PDF pages with an interactive overlay driven by HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. This provides quality zoomable text and graphics combined with flexible navigation and interaction functions.

Says EidosMedia chief executive Gabriella Franzini, “We believe the latest extension is a key enabling technology for publishers… especially those who need to work within the constraints of a daily publishing schedule.” nngx

Eidos adds tablet extension in pursuit of ‘holy grail’

1: An email tells subscribers the issue is ready; 2: The e-edition is in a page-turning Realview format. Ads have website links and frequently animation or video; 3: Stories in the echonet daily turn to Wordpress pages similar to the ‘main’ Echo website; 4: A linked dining feature is a separate Realview document; 5: Visitors to the Echo website are offered the print edition in Isuu or PDF form

David Lovejoy launched the print edition of the ‘Echo’ in 1986 with Nicholas Shand, a politically-active local who was aghast that established papers didn’t report – let alone comment on – a savage police swoop on the valley in which he lived.

A former News Limited sub-editor, he had sold the typesetting business he ran with his wife in Brisbane – just before the desktop publishing revolution sucked the value out of such enterprises – and moved to the area the year before.

“I provided the technology and the legs for the venture, and it has gone well,” says Lovejoy (left with Chris Dobney). “A lot of currents had come together here. The farming families, hippies who has stayed on after the Aquarius festival, and sea and treechangers who followed.”

Shand was killed in a road accident in 1996, but the ‘Echo’ has continued to prosper, spawning editions for the Byron, Ballina, Lismore and Tweed shires at various times, despite difficult market conditions.

One of these, the Northern Rivers (Lismore) paper was sold “for a pittance” to staff, who then onsold it to regional giant APN News & Media, much to the dismay of Lovejoy, who now has a competitor selling against him under the ‘Echo’ name, while GFC pressures led to the closure of the Tweed edition.

The original flagship 22,000 free weekly ‘Byron Echo’ is the dominant publication in fashionable Byron, he says, with APN coming into the town from its Lismore base. Production is at Horton Media in Narangba, north of Brisbane, a contract newspaper printer for whom Lovejoy is full of praise. nngx

Byron,” says Lovejoy – and through an association with industry veteran Eric Beecher is able to “punch well above its weight”.

Its crowded office in leafy Mullumbimby, half an hour into the Byron hinterland, has become the centre for a publishing experiment which may point the way for the future.

Based on RealView’s Australian-developed page-turning edition technology, the ‘Echonetdaily’ is a separate publication with its own direction and production stream.

Editor Chris Dobney says the brief for the digital edition was always to maintain the ‘look and feel’ of the print edition. The ‘Echo’ also has a Wordpress-driven website, but the two have separate aims and editorial direction.

In particular, the internet daily delivers national and international news, sourced from AAP and publisher relationships. “We try to be a ‘one-stop shop’ giving people some daily news without overwhelming the local content. The primary constituent is local people, and those with a connection with the area.”

Organic growthAn association with industry

veteran Eric Beecher has led a Byron independent to a digital

daily, writes Peter Coleman

Fight for freedom started it all


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PubliSHing

www.wan-ifra.org/worldpublishingexpo2012

The leading exhibition for technology to publish news on tablets, mobile, in print and online.

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Sexier SCMP convinces readers and staffMarketing director Anne Wong is part of the bright ‘new look’ at Hong Kong’s ‘South China Morning Post’.

And at the 82nd INMA World Congress, she told how the two got together, following a career marketing films and theme parks.

She learned fast about the English-language daily, turning her hand in 2010 to selling news and journalism, a commodity she says, “isn’t dying, simply changing”.

The 109-year-old paper was criticised for being “too white”, lacking focus for natives, and dubbed

the ‘South China Boring Post’.“We had to change in order to

capture all of these people,” she said.And changing it is: Wong told how

the newspaper adopted a three-part strategy to ‘elevate, engage, and expand’. Brand quality and voice was lifted with the intention of capturing the hearts not only of readers but its own staff, and a new tagline – ‘make every day matter’ – introduced which she says “applies to every aspect of your life, and not just news. Whatever it is, we’re going to help you.”

International newspaper design expert Mario Garcia was called in

for a redesign which changed the “anatomy, health and fitness” of the newspaper and its website. Five compact supplements and a new editorial section were added.

“Now there’s a reason to purchase the paper every day of the week,” she told delegates of the plan for a “sexier” paper. “We’re trying to sell what people want, and what they want is content.”

So far the changes have been rewarded with a three per cent increase in circulation – against an increase in cover price – and readership is at an all-time high. nngx

‘Star’ app is a Philippines chart-topperThe ‘Philippine Star’ has added digital and HTML5 editions, as well as a dynamic app, one of five developed for Star Group. The products extend the reach of the newspaper and magazine group – claimed to be the largest in the Philippines – to PC and Mac computers, smartphones and tablet devices.

The PageSuite-developed app uses the increasingly-popular Dynamic App framework, and contains all the popular sections of the paper, including business, lifestyle, entertainment and sport.

As well as search, share and download functions, users can access all editions of the publication by incorporating subscriptions allowing the purchase of seven-day, one month, three month and six month subscriptions. The app has Newsstand compatibility and is currently the number one free app in Newsstand in the Philippines iTunes store. More than 25000 copies have been downloaded in two weeks. It is also number two in the free app download chart and number five top grossing app in the iTunes store. nngx

Server-based mini solution puts journos in the cloudswedish editorial systems developer

Roxen has reported a number of Editorial Appliance installations in

Scandinavia and Europe.The new cloud-based Roxen

editorial solution provides access to its bigger portal system without needing local installation, systems management or software configuration, the company says.

Chief executive Per Östlund says that while more media customers are expected to choose cloud solutions, today’s price tag – as well as the perceived shift in technology – makes them hesitant.

“Our newly-released appliance-solution gives smaller and mid-sized media companies access to a modern editorial publishing system without breaking the bank,” he says. “And they take a major, important step towards the future and the cloud.”

The system addresses the problem of handling an increasing number of channels for news and other editorial content efficiently.

Dutch newspaper group Best Publishing has moved LGBT newspaper and website ‘Gay Krant’ to the system, running it on a Mac Mini server with hosting at an external data centre. And through Irish partner Webfactory, political party Fine Gael and betting exchange Matchbook have gone live using the Roxen CMS 5.2 web content management system.

Webfactory’s partnership with Roxen dates to 2005 and now covers more than 20 client websites.

Consultant and integrator Gothia is also strengthening its cooperation with Roxen, providing installation, training and systems integration of its software solutions for media customers mainly in Scandinavia. One is regional newspaper

publisher Magazin24, based in the Mälardalen region in mid-Sweden. The company provides local news in print, online and television in Köping, Arboga and Kungsör, publishing a weekly free magazine distributed to 30,000-40,000 homes and businesses, as well as online and to mobile devices.

Editorial Appliance is a lean version of the Editorial Portal product, which also contains an OEM version of Adobe InDesign Server, a backup and recovery solution, and remote management tools.

• Roxen has won the 2012 Red Herring Europe award for which it was shortlisted as a promising new company.

Awarded companies were evaluated both quantitative and qualitative criteria, including financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries. nngx

During an emerging technology session at SXSW Interactive in Austin, USA, Netbiscuits introduced Tactile, a design and development framework to create mobile web experiences. The cloud-based platform uses web

standards including HTML5 and CSS3 to create web apps rapidly.

Its Markup feature replaces a large portion of JavaScript, reducing the size and complexity of the code without compromising user experience, the

company says, while the HTML5 framework allows developers to extend the JavaScript library at all layers – from kernel to UI components – or using CSS preprocessor capabilities. A large number of ‘out of the box,’ cross platform

optimised display and behaviour effects and events are offered.

Device information services provide characteristics from the device and from NB Testing Intelligence to all touch points of a web application. nngx

Austin’s SXSW sees Tactile platform for experiental web

http://www.inma.org/blogs/world-congress/

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positive – game summary with which parents, grandparents and other fans can follow the action on the web. And produce full match reports virtually before players are back in the changing room. The reports are positive, incidentally, because the system is programmed that way.

Figures quoted suggest the number of such reports is already close to half a million a year and may triple in 2012.

In the company’s two-year history, there have been numerous examples, and financial information is a natural for the technology. The format collects data – adding statistics as they become available – finding angles and placing it in researched contexts, then structuring sentences using pre-chosen vocabulary and templates. Tone can also be customised, and the company says it could cover the stockmarket “in the style of Mike Royko”.

Mike who? Wikipedia will tell you that Royko was a local hero; a Chicago journalist with (at least) two claims to fame: He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and later – while working for the ‘Sun-Times’ at the time of its acquisition by News Corporation, famously commented that “no self-respecting fish would want to be

wrapped in a Murdoch paper”.But back to Narrative Science: One of a

founding trio behind the company is chief technology officer Kristian Hammond, who sees a future in which news publishing is dominated by computer-generated stories.

His own story includes challenging journalism and computer science students at a local university where he and a colleague taught, and seeing them nut out a programme which took match data and turned it into prose… picking a picture to accompany it and writing the caption into the bargain.

The suggestion is not that algorithms such as Narrative Science’s will take over the jobs of journalists – few enough attend Little League, apparently, anyway – but that they will ‘write’ reports which would otherwise not be produced… either because there is no viable market, or because of the speed with which the data must be handled.

Not that there will be fewer stories written by humans, but that there will be more written by robots. And as Hammond reportedly predicted, the possibility of a robot winning a Pulitzer in as little as five years. nngx

the ‘love-hate’ relationship most of us have with satellite navigation is extending into the newsroom: Should you run this story or that? And for how long? And what about the headline?

But it doesn’t stop there: Computer systems can now write the stories and design the advertisements that surround them.

The NAA mediaXchange in Washington in April brought a handful of such smart systems to US publishers, but only scraped the surface of a growing industry.

And none are without controversy: Dennis Mortensen, founder and chief executive of New York-based Visual Revenue calls the editorial ‘decision support’ platform his company has developed “Susan”… and expects a healthy dialogue with her.

“She’ll tell you what stories to run, and help you to retain them while they are still attracting interest; which one’s in tune with your audience, and which isn’t,” he says.

“Of course you’re free to differ.”He says ad hoc decisions by online

editors can lead to dangerously self-fulfilling results, and the platform – recently complemented by a module to ‘test’ headlines – can avoid that, helping an editor to base decisions on fact.

Typically, the advice will be grounded on analysis of information from at least two sources – crawling for story data and importantly following readers. And it will support a decision on which story to give prominence – whether its own or that of the editor – with suggestions about which stories should surround it on the page.

The relatively-new concept is already being eagerly adopted by digital publishers. One client, two-year-old information and opinion site The Blaze (www.theblaze.com) uses the system to support its focus on “deeply engaged and high-value readers”.

Specific real-time recommendations from the VR system are like having a second front page editor, according to editor-in-chief Scott Baker, quoted in a company case history. He cites the example of a story about presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s tax returns: “I knew it was an important story that would resonate but I had no idea to what extent,” he says. “I put it in top stories at 10.20am and it stayed there until 2.30pm as per VR’s recommendation. If I hadn’t seen

The results aren’t eloquent prose, but they’re functional… and they are helping to provide coverage which publishers find it increasingly difficult to justify and finance. It’s hard to get examples, but ‘Wired’ magazine’s Steven Levy cites Forbes among a largely private list of publisher clients.

One adoption in the US is via the very technology-savvy Little League Baseball (www.littleleague.org) which has a host of smartphone apps including one based on the GameChanger for iPhone, which provides tools for supporters to report match information, pitch by pitch. Instructions on how to set it up are even provided by a synthesised voice.

Narrative Science’s piece of the action is to turn that data into a – usually highly-

how well the position and article were engaging the audience, I would have taken it down well before and lost out on the extra value.”

The bottomline is a claimed 59 per cent increase in article views driven from the ‘featured story’ position alone… and more from other homepage elements.

And there’s the implied corollary that if a computer can make such valid suggestions, why wouldn’t you want to let it get on with the job of implementing them?

in chicago, a coMpany calleD narrative Science is working on the next part of the picture: Software that writes stories, and is doing so at the rate of hundreds an hour.

From data.

Visual Revenue’s newsroom decision support at the ’New York Daily News’. The data used is for illustrative purposes only Below: Visual Revenue founder and chief executive Dennis Mortensen

• The NY Daily News logo and nydailynews.com are registered trademarks of Daily News, LP. Daily News content is copyright by Daily News, LP. Used with permission.

Software that creates spec ads... and sources data to populate them

Automated ad production sounds tame by comparison… but we promised it and will deliver. After all you’ll need more sold inventory to pay for the clever software.

An interesting offering for print publications – and there may be others – is PaperG’s PlaceLocal advertising platform which, among other things, can automate the production of ‘spec’ advertisements for print and online.

More than that, Tyler Bosmeny, vice president of the San Francisco company, says the system will search online sources for enough data about a potential advertiser – including sourcing brands and logos – to populate a prospective ad.

“It can produce versions in a range of sizes, colours and styles, ready to be placed in a page or posted online,” he says of the solution for which users enjoy a “double digit” closing rate.

...and just how do you feel about this?Sensum is a mobile platform that uses conscious and emotional choices to personalise an entertainment experience. Using sensors attached to your wrist or fingertips, it notes how you are reacting to video or games… and responds accordingly.

An interactive digital experience creates the opportunity for the viewer to influence what happens, pushing media to new boundaries. Brand communications and loyalty are also seen as area for study and reaction, delivering new ways to engage in a fun and deeply immersive relationship. And in product testing, it can report on different layers of user data for audience tests and marketing.

Supporting the product is Biosuite, a collaborative project resulting from work by Belfast, Ireland, film production company Filmtrip and the sonic arts research centre of the local Queens University. Beyond 3D and the ‘physical effects’ of 4D, the government-supported project aims to get into the minds and emotions of an audience.

Sensors which pick up ECG signals and galvanic skin response were used when a new short film was shown as part of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, results from which are being analysed for a future project. nngx

Newsy Susie lends a handSoftware systems which write stories and tell you which one to promote are the near future for online publishers, writes Peter Coleman

Outcomes: Opinion site The Blaze, and (below) results from Visual Revenue headline testing

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with Agfa Graphics, the standard in newspaper prepress production

Prepare for Take-Off

www.agfa.com/graphics

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WSJ in year-long digital print test with TKSa one-year test agreement sees production

of some copies of the ‘Wall Street Journal Asia’ printed digitally on TKS equipment

in Osaka, Japan. Previously all Japanese copies of the newspaper had been printed web-offset in Tokyo and sent by train or plane to the Osaka area, but publisher Dow Jones was keen to have more local production.

Under the new agreement, press maker TKS is printing the Osaka copies on a JetLeader 1500 inkjet web at its IGA Techno Centre.

Dow Jones operations senior vice president Joe Vincent sees the arrangement as an opportunity to get in important markets which were previously being serviced from a regional

offset print centre: “Instead of having the product being delivered hours later, it will be delivered first thing in the morning,” he says.

“Content will be much more current and up to date and the cost will be significantly less.”

Vincent says this is the first time anywhere in the world a multisection newspaper is being produced on an inkjet press.

TKS chairman Kohei Shiba says one of the main reasons for developing the JetLeader was for applications such as this: “This opportunity will assist us in proving the business model for companies that need to upgrade their existing equipment and produce a wide range of new products with one press.” nngx

Uncertainty dogs the future of Australian direct mail company SEMA – formerly Security Mailing – which went into administration in May, two months after announcing the acquisition of world-leading Impika inkjet web technology in a partnership with Fuji Xerox Australia.

The French company’s iPrint eVolution presses installed in Sydney and Melbourne were part of a reported $10 million investment.

Drop sizes on the twin-engine-duplex presses printers can be adjusted to better match print costs and job requirements. The scalable eVolution platform prints at speeds from 76 metres/minute according to the number of printheads installed.

The company was a pioneer in digital newspaper printing, producing international editions on toner-based web equipment.

McPherson’s Printing – now part of Opus Group – showed its new Australian inkjet book production line to industry visitors in March. The new ‘Onyx’ system includes HP’s T400 inkjet web, Magnum FlexBook inline

finishing and Müller Martini’s Acoro binding line. Covers come from an HP Indigo 7500.

Among sales at DRUPA in what HP describes as its “best ever” graphics arts show tally, Italian mailing house Rotomail bought HP T410 inkjet webs for itself and Rotolito Lombarda.

With the installed base over 60 worldwide, Tokyo-based manga publisher Kodansha will not only be HP’s first Japanese purchaser of the system, but also first publishing company to do so. The new press is joined by a Müller Martini SigmaLine.

Elsewhere, two HP inkjet web customers – O’Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles and CPI Group in Paris – are installing their sixth presses. HP says ten billion pages have been produced on the press system since 2009, a quarter in the most recent fiscal quarter alone. nngx

D anish plate processing and management systems maker Glunz & Jensen is to build a

new production facility near Shanghai, China, to serve Asian markets.

The factory in the Suzhou region about 80 km west of Shanghai will open next month, complementing existing facilities in Slovakia and the USA.

Chief executive Keld Thorsen says growth in the Asian region is a strategic aim: “With the new facility, we will be closer to customers and the Asian market, enabling us to respond much more quickly to market needs within commercial, newspaper and packing printing.”

Initially, the plant will assemble products from elements produced at the Slovakian factory, with plans to

reach full Chinese production and local sourcing during the year.

Sales director Peter Jensen says it is a “fantastic opportunity” to improve customer and aftersales service for distributors and end users: “With strong growth over the previous years, we see this as the ideal way to continue our development in this important region,” he says.

Glunz & Jensen – represented in China through distributors for the past 30 years – claims about ten per cent of the market for offset processing equipment. The company makes plate processors, platesetters and punch-bending systems under its own name and as an OEM supplier to companies including Agfa, Flint, Fuji, Kodak and MacDermid. nngx

a t DRUPA, Agfa showed an expanded Arkitex workflow offering for newspapers and two high speed platesetters.

The Arkitex suite products include Eversify to automate mobile publishing via a cloud-based system, and an upgraded Portal, enhanced with single layer colour-managed soft proofing, with page position indicators and annotations.

Director can now display soft-proofs as a flip-book and ad stitching, and Agfa has introduced PressRegister to correct press-ready TIFF bitmaps for press mis-registrations.

Veripress software – an integrated version of the Australian-developed Serendipity Blackmagic product – enables checks on a publication right press console with a combination of a high-quality display and a touch screen.

The Advantage N PL HS (for pallet load, high-speed) and N TR HS

(trolley load) run at up to 350 plates per hour, 50 plates more than the Advantage N. Agfa says the N PL HS is a completely new design, able to hold up to 6000 plates in two pallets. The system preseparates plates and slip sheets in the stack before loading, avoiding plate and paper jams.

The N TR HS uses a trolley to transport plates from safelight environment to the platesetter.

A new Azura clean-out unit is designed for plate volumes up to 40,000 m2 a year, bringing its chemistry-free thermal plates to high-volume users, the company says.

The Azura CX125 COU – shown at DRUPA – accommodates plate widths up to 1250 mm and has a bath life of up to 7000 m2.

‘Cascade’ technology cleans in two steps, with a cascade of gum from the second to the first section, where a small volume of water is added to compensate for evaporation, reducing gum waste and extending bath life. nngx

CTP and RIP developer ECRM showed new digitally modulated screening and a high-speed newspaper platesetter, the NewsMax at DRUPA. The new CTP system – available in versions from 100-400 plates per hour – is said to be newspaper industry’s fastest.

Dalim Software has new features for its ES customer-facing online production management system and

Virtual Library (DVL) to assist file sharing and viewing.

A browser-based option to DVL is a page-turning application and can real-time access to job progress for soft proofing and approval.

GMG has introduced CoZone – for ‘collaboration and colour management in the cloud – as a soft proofing solution and “comprehensive web strategy”.

Marketing director Michael

Farkas says the modular Collaborate product allows users to track the status of a project and manage production and approval processes between different partners.

UK RIP and screening innovator Hamillroad Software says newspaper and commercial printers have taken to its Auraia product since the launch of its DM-II screening in May last year.

Spanish commercial web

printer Tu Grupo Gráfico claims an increase in image quality and significant increases in the smoothness of flat tints after switching to the system, along with predicted ink savings.

ABB has extended its MPS PlateWorkflow system for the management and automation of plate production with a new ‘press register’ module which automatically repositions images on the

plates to compensate for any misalignment of a press.

Britain’s Midland News Association, which is centralising production in Ketley, Shropshire, after closing its Wolverhampton site, will run Fujifilm’s Brillia PRO-VN plate on a newly-installed Krause LS Jet 350 platesetter. The plant prints 1.2 million copies of daily and weekly titles per week on two Goss Colorliner 80 presses. nngx

New Shanghai factory will get Danes closer to Asian market

Faster platesetters in Agfa’s DRUPA offering


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is president and chief executive. With that settled just before DRUPA, its printhead technology was to be seen all over the Düsseldorf show.

One exhibitor was Delphax Technologies, known for its web-fed systems but focussed on sheetfed at the show with an Elan system printing 1600 dpi colour at up to 30,000 iph.

Many applications are small-scale, and for newspaper users, it will be notable primarily for its speed and relatively low cost… and only if an OEM cares to pitch it to this market segment.

MeMjet is however, being MentioneD in imprinting applications, a market segment which Kodak has pretty much had to itself with its S series Prosper systems for newspaper and commercial web presses.

The technology enables web-offset press owners to print an increasing amount of variable data at normal press speeds, personalising copies and opening the opportunity of microzoned editions and advertising.

New introductions include HP’s C800 Print Module – based on the same scaleable print technology as its inkjet webs – for which colour production at up to 244 metres/minute is claimed. An M800 mono version is also available. Impika is also in the market with its iEngine 1000L, and a partnership between GSS and Adphos is offering transports and drying systems.

The fact that most of the sheetfed press makers also had imprinting options as a means to add value and flexibility to their offerings will contribute exposure to the concept… and competition.

If you can wait, IfraExpo in Frankfurt this October will deliver more newspaper-related reality to DRUPA’s concepts. Traditionally, Ipex (next in 2014) will have the products to market, but in today’s newspaper market, that’s a very long time. nngx

which ended with applause… even though there no marketable product yet and they were prevented from taking samples away.

Away from the hype, the technology is of course, enticing: At its heart are pigments which produces images at 500 nanometers thick, about half the thickness of those of offset and promising the lowest cost-per-copy of digital options.

Despite the press – with its tablet-like interface – shown at theatre presentations, it’s possible implementations will come from ‘traditional’ manufacturers. Partnerships with Heidelberg, Komori and manroland sheetfed were announced before or at the start of the show, and KBA’s name mentioned, but these are sheetfed-focussed. Landa itself had talked of web presses “for publishing and flexible packaging” printing on webs between 520-1040 mm wide at up to 200 metres per minute.

And fruits of these developments are not expected to market until late next year or 2014.

The promise of liquid toner was,

there’s no doubt that Benny Landa was – as at the Ipex launch of Indigo in 1993 – the star of DRUPA 2012… even if his product is unlikely to be market-ready before late next year.

But for newspaper publishers, the digital ‘pump primer’ may well have been the Océ-manroland order which supports an innovative French publishing project, announced in a traditional eve-of-show briefing.

Importantly, it will bring forward development of manroland web systems’ variable digital newspaper folder… a development many have been waiting for, and which may finally prompt the first newspaper installations in Australia and elsewhere.

Other newspaper-specific finishing systems are said to be in the pipeline, but the options need to come soon, before publishers in some developed markets lose interest in print altogether.

To that extent, DRUPA was an unsatisfactory event for newspaper publishers: The Düsseldorf show was full of inkjet technology, much of it web-fed. But the minds of exhibitors were clearly elsewhere… on packaging and short-run commercial printing for example.

Accustomed to low cost-per-copy, most publishers are as yet unconvinced by the high-value arguments of variable data printing, although that may come later. Right now, the need is for lower digital print system costs and cheaper per copy (ink) costs neither of which seem to be priorities for vendors.

Kodak’s Stream is starting to deliver the latter; liquid toner technologies such as Landa’s nanographic process and Océ’s InfiniStream – currently pitched at packaging applications – are among those which may do so soon, but vendors appear to need more encouragement.

A couple of weeks before DRUPA opened, Kodak’s business development manager for digital newspaper printing systems, Jack Knadjian remarked to me that “not one publisher has demanded inkjet from us.

“Why would I want to put research and development money into it.”

DRUPA’s focus on segments such as book printing and packaging demonstrated the fruits of that lack of interest.

KBA’s new RotaJet 76 inkjet web was shown inline to Müller Martini’s SigmaLine book folder and a Primera digital saddle stitcher, and other majors such as HP

can be printed and released in the exact order required by the distributor,” he says. “Better still, the production line will be able to publish newspapers ‘à la carte’, that is to say some having a common core of content where topics can be added or removed from one day to another, according to the reading interests of each subscriber.”

He says he expects production and distribution costs should be “considerably lessened” by the fact that the titles are printed at localised print plants.

manroland’s Kuisle says it is exciting to see the company’s hard work in research and development activities and their common expertise paying off in a future-oriented project. “This can change the way some newspapers will be printed and distributed in future,” he says.

Most of the reMaining Digital exciteMent of the show was about technology… and with Landa back, excitement there certainly was.

Digital printing’s master showman held journalists in rapture at a media event

emphasised the book market. French innovator Impika has promised high-speed inline newspaper finishing, but it will have done that maker’s cause no good that its first major related customer in the Asia-Pacific went into administration a couple of months after installing its gear. At 375 metres per minute its top performer is significantly faster than most competitors, and is being matched with a 711 mm print width to deliver formats for broadsheet, tabloid and Berliner newspapers.

Away from the show at Océ’s Poing factory, near Munich, manroland web systems and the printer maker demonstrated a new combo including a new variable cut-off book folder. But the order for a newspaper system from a Limoges, France, publisher may encourage the partners to different priorities.

At a joint press conference with its new sheetfed namesake, manroland web systems executive vice president for sales, service and marketing Peter Kuisle gave details of the Limoges project with Océ executive vice president Sebastian Landesberger.

Rivet Presse Edition plans the distribution-optimised production of a claimed 40,000 newspapers in five hours. Under a project called Synapse – developed with regional daily ‘L’Echo’ in Limoges – the partners say a new business model will open up editorial opportunities for publishers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Low Cost, High Speed Inkjet Tower, Dryer, Carriage (TDC) Solution Bruckmühl, Germany - February 28, 2012 adphos Digital Printing GmbH based in Bruckmühl, Germany, outside Munich, has installed a low cost high speed inkjet tower solution with a web offset press. The TDC was built for a web width of 965 mm (38”) and a web speed of up to 600 m/min (2,000 fpm). It allows the installation of two Kodak S20 print heads with a manual print head positioning system and provides sufficient drying capability with a small footprint of only 800 mm x 1,400 mm. (32” x 55”) The print head positioning can also be designed to mount any type of inkjet print heads and can be seen at DRUPA 2012 Hall 5 / A30. The print head bucket is equipped with positioning possibility across the full web width as well as with a height and skew adjustment for exact positioning and alignment of the print had. The drying is accomplished by two NIR120 drying modules installed after each print head. For heavy print jobs or even higher print speeds, the system could be upgraded with a third NIR120 drying module. In addition, there is an integrated exhaust system for removing the evaporated water steam. System controls enables changes to process parameters and adjustments according to requirements for individual print jobs. The tower includes all necessary rollers for the web transport and can be integrated with an existing or new press / finishing line. Through openings in the base frame, full access for maintenance, and fast paper webbing is provided, while meeting all requirements for safe operation.

Contact information: Michael Schumann John Palazzolo Martin Doherty adphos Digital Printing GmbH Adphos North America, Inc Adphos UK Limited Bruckmühler Straße 2 3490 North 127th Street 8 Fowler Close, Earley, 83052 Bruckmühl-‐Heufeld, Germany Brookfield, WI 53005, USA Reading, Berks, RG6 7SS, UK +49-‐80 61-‐3 95-‐0 +1 513 277-‐0464 +44 (0) 118 986 1928 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.adphos.de www.adphosna.com ###

starting pointMost of the 10 million Euro investment

goes into the equipment which will produce national, regional and overseas editions of daily newspapers, printed in the order required for delivery around Limoges.

A 90-minute delivery radius has been defined around the new 960 m2 production plant.

Project leader Christian Sirieix says digital production opens a new economic model supporting “editorial innovation” and highly targetted advertising.

“Central to the success will be use of a cutting-edge production line consisting of integrated manroland and Océ equipment,” he says.

Two 200 metres/minute Océ JetStream 4300 colour inkjet webs will be teamed with new ‘fully variable’ manroland VPF211 pin-type folders, which can produce broadsheet or tabloid newspapers in either long or short grain formats, and with different structures.

Sirieix says the project is unique for newspapers anywhere in the world: “On the same production line several different titles

however, being demonstrated in nearby Poing, where Océ showed its 18-metre InfiniStream printing carton stock in very high quality colour at 14,000 sph. A limitation with this – and other liquid toner systems except the water-carried Landa technology – is the need to remove carrier oil, in the case of the Océ press by a blade and hot air dryer.

Again, the press will not be available until next year, by which time it will have a competitor in the liquid toner Trillium from Xeikon (formerly Punch Graphix) the pioneer digital press developer best known in newspaper circles as the OEM maker of Agfa’s CTP hardware.

For remote newspaper applications, equipment cost and total footprint will be major considerations.

Fujifilm had a ‘technology showcase’ of a 127 metres/minute colour inkjet which printed duplex with only one tower – resulting in an extremely compact footprint – which it expects to bring to market late this year.

Offerings from traditional offset makers included KBA’s RotaJet 76 – developed with RR Donnelley and mentioned above – and Komori’s prototype Impremia IW20, a 150 metres/minute near relative of the sheetfed IS29 which uses Konica Minolta printheads.

Chinese maker Founder showed a new Eaglejet P5000/5200 press, HP’s inkjet web range was upgraded and extended with models including the HP T410, T360 and T230, while Kodak showed a new Prosper 6000XL model. Apart from its cooperation with manroland, Océ had improved ColorStream and JetStream inkjets to show.

Screen’s Truepress Jet520 appeared with a web inspection option, JI-500 which is integrated into its Equios workflow.

Memjet has been in the news lately more because of the spat between its Australian developer Kia Silverbrook and its US backer and marketing company, of which Len Lauer

It’s not the pin-type VPF211 newspaper folder the

German maker is building for Rivet Presse Edition in

Limoges but this manroland book folder, shown by Océ

at its open event in Poing, is helping to build enthusiasm

for digital printing in the newspaper segment. ‘At

least three’ installations are expected in the near future

in Australia aloneKBA’s co-developed inkjet causes a stirThe product of a 14-month alliance between KBA and Chicago-based RR Donnelley & Sons, the RotaJET 76 inkjet web press was the subject of keen interest at DRUPA.

Among those calling in to look was digital printing pioneer Benny Landa, who launched new nanographic technology at the show. He is pictured with KBA president and chief executive Claus Bolza-Schünemann.

Donnelley president and chief executive Thomas Quinlan and digital solutions president Mary Lee Schneider also visited. Quinlan is pictured, second from left, with Claus Bolza-Schünemann and web press sales executive vice president Christoph Müller.

German specialist Adphos showed a combined inkjet tower, dryer and carriage for commercial and newspaper webs up to 965 mm at the show. Designed for web speeds up to 600 metres/minute, it housed two Kodak S20 printheads with drying from two NIR120 modules after each printhead. A third could be added for higher speeds. An integrated exhaust removes evaporated water. nngx

DRUPA delivered promised new digital print technologies, but it was a new finishing system which raised hopes for newspaper publishers, writes Peter Coleman

upgrade: Kodak and HP (right) had higher performance inkjet webs to show in Düsseldorf

KBA’s co-developed inkjet causes a stir

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technology and market leadership.“Contracts finalised at the show, the

acceleration of projects in the pipeline, and initial discussions about new projects, particularly in packaging, were encouraging endorsements of our technology and our global team,” he says.

KBA says it exchanged contracts with customers from 30 countries – many of them for sheetfed and commercial web presses – with China, Russia, Germany, Poland and France heading the list. The RotaJet 76 inkjet web was also a further focus of keen interest and first contracts are “expected shortly”.

The company says the total value of orders taken was far higher than anticipated, but declined to quote a figure, “given that financing must still be clarified”.

Says president and chief executive Claus Bolza-Schünemann, “We have signed a lot of contracts, both with existing and new customers.”

Big money, of course, was being recorded in the digital printing halls – HP reported orders from more than 200 customers with

newspaper towers, a tower from the 96-page Sunday 5000 heatset web, and showed the evolution of the workhorse 16-page M-600 web to a new generation version with DigiRail inking and optional makeready software and automated job change sequencing.

The company says orders for 11 new presses were signed during show. Among these was an upgrade for Star Malaysia. Three 2002 Colorliner presses will get new control and drive systems, and Baldwin spraybar upgrades and web cleaning devices. Automated colour register and cut-off systems with closed-loop fan-out control are also included in the project.

The complicated project includes provision to run individual towers and folders on the old Honeywell and new Goss platforms during the upgrade.

Goss president and chief executive Jochen Meissner says the company “accomplished what we set out to do” introducing customers to innovative ideas for commercial print, packaging and newspaper production and demonstrating strong

perhaps more than ever, this year’s DRUPA print trade show was an indication of the way print is going… notably into personalisation, colour and added value.

And for newspaper visitors, there was networking, razzamatazz, and the reassuring knowledge that key vendors were taking orders… even if most weren’t for newspaper equipment.

Heatset webs seemed at one point to be racing out of the door, all forms of press upgrade were popular, and the huge amount of inkjet web technology (see page 14) showed promise for the future.

Pragmatically too, traditional vendors such as KBA (digital printing) and Goss (packaging) expanded their market base to improve prospects in an uncertain future.

In the mainstream web-offset segment the focus was on three things: Colour, colour and colour. Upgrades for existing presses to increase colour capacity, technology to help publishers print better quality colour; and systems to reduce the waste and manpower in the process.

Most of the orders reported were in these areas. While all three of the three largest press makers reported new heatset web orders – some for new customers – the newspaper orders focussed on upgrades.

at 314,500, nuMbers for the show were down 20 per cent on 2008 – a dip explained by industry consolidation – but exhibitors were publicly more than satisfied with the quality of visitors. DRUPA president Bernhard Schreier, who is chairman of sheetfed press maker Heidelberg, says business was done and “points were set” for the future of the sector.

Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, president of Messe Düsseldorf, commented that in Germany alone the printing industry lost 3900 operations with more than 61,000 employees between 2000 and 2011. “In the USA over the same period more than 7700 printing operations closed,” he says.

Organisers also say the proportion of top managers among visitors has grown significantly since 2008 (50.8 per cent compared with 44.4 per cent in 2008).

Some measure of what’s happening in the world was in the figures: The 190,000 foreign visitors came from all over the world, but India (15,000) ranked second only to Germany.

Little wonder then that new owner of manroland web systems, Possehl had opted to retain direct control of the sales

Product-wise, the company announced the extension of its energy-efficient DriveSys control and drive system to newspaper presses, having trialled it on a Colorman autoprint at DHO in Crailsheim, Germany, late last year.

manroland web systems board member Peter Kuisle put the value of its DRUPA orders at about 70 million Euros. “Numerous large customers signed contracts, among them Axel Springer, Kraft-Schlötels, and the Times of India, thus endorsing their further cooperation with us,” he says.

on a huge space bookeD to parent Shanghai Electric, Goss International used DRUPA to pitch into the packaging market, showcasing its Sunday Vpak system – which uses variable sleeve offset technology for folding carton, film and label applications – in a central presentation theatre.

The stand also featured static Colorliner CPS and single-width Magnum HPS

and support in the region in the post-administration reorganisation, as it has in Australia and New Zealand.

At the show, publisher of the ‘Times of India’, Bennett, Coleman & Co committed to upgrade its manroland Regioman 4x1 presses with an order at the show for seven towers and three folders, following a visit by top executives. The group is a major manroland web customer, with double and single-width presses at various sites.

Also in India, HT Media is continuing an upgrade programme with towers and balloon formers to one of three 2005 Colorman presslines at Greater Noida.

At DRUPA, manroland also reported upgrade sales to Luxembourg publisher ISP – for a 15-year-old Colorman – and Impressions Media in Pennsylvania, for a 17-year-old Geoman. Both focus predominantly on controls. Another order will see Cromoman single-width and Colorman double-width presses at Drukkerij Noordholland in Alkmaar refurbished.

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upgraDEs anD aDDED vaLuEQuality and quantity: Numbers may have been down, but exhibitors said the right people came, seeing (clockwise from above) the Colorliner CPS compact tower shown by Goss, which is destined for Scottish newspaper publisher DC Thomson; print and prepress quality at Agfa Graphics; new Müller Martini finishing options; and finding plenty to discuss on the Fujifilm stand

Goss president and chief executive Jochen Meissner says the company ‘accomplished what we set out to do’


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construction in Beijing. The 61,000iph are part of an strategic plan to maintain present rates of growth, according to managing director Zhang Lin Gui: “We’re investing in advanced equipment with reliable automation to achieve higher production efficiency and ensure first-class customer services.”

Specialising in the production of high-quality magazines and publications for large commercial publishing houses, book publishers and the government, Hong Bo is subject to market dynamics that are in evidence worldwide, according to Zhang Lin Gui. “As the market is evolving and reading habits change, the print runs for some publications are getting shorter, but the number of specialised magazines and titles is increasing.”

Another M-600, ordered for Neef + Stumme in Germany will make five there, but president Andreas Bauer says choosing another Goss “was not an automatic decision” with a team conducting a methodical evaluation.

Brazilian printer Posigraf signed for a Goss 3000 web with an 1830 mm web width and 2x8 format. With a PCF-3 pinless combination folder, it will produce magazine, tabloid, digest, delta-fold and slim-jim products at up to 15 metres per second. And Grupo Ajusco in Mexico bought a second Goss M-800 press with a 4x4 32-page cylinder configuration. nngx

while there were relatively few newspaper press orders, those for heatset equipment seemed to come

thick and fast.Among them was a 160-page twin-web

Lithoman maker manroland web systems claims will be the world’s largest heatset press. The order from WKS Druckholding will bring the German contract printer’s tally to eight webs from 48 to 80 pages at its sites in Wassenberg and Essen, with earlier Lithoman presses having “absolutely proven their worth”. manroland also focussed on a 96-page Lithoman recently commissioned at Niedermayr in Regensburg, part of a 22 million Euro investment.

Having exhibited a 16 unit on its stand, KBA was happy to take an order for the 16-page press for magazine printer B&K Offsetdruck, which joins a Compacta 217 installed in 2004. Like the show unit, the 65,000 iph press will have the company’s latest automation features including roller locks and new console technology with presetting software.

Goss International also had 16-page orders to announce, including two for a Chinese customer on the final day.

Two Goss M-600 heatset webs will go into a new printing facility for Hong Bo Hao Tian Technology Company, currently under

sales surpassing those from “any other graphic arts tradeshow in its history” and “thousands” of qualified sales leads.

Kodak’s chairman Antonio Perez also described the show as “extraordinary on many fronts”, adding that he was excited by the way in which customers were embracing change and adding new solutions.

Landa Corporation’s Benny Landa “imagined we would have a big impact”, but was overwhelmed by how customers responded to its message, technology and partnering strategy. “We have received unprecedented levels of interest and orders (letters of intent with deposit) for our family of sheetfed and web presses,” he says.

Dutch press registration anD colour control specialist QI Press Controls international sales and marketing director Jaco Bleijenberg said orders of “nearly three million Euros” – including one from a Malaysian printer – was a DRUPA record for the company. “Our new marvel – the mRC-3D self-cleaning depth detection camera – has seen an excellent response and we’ve already secured a number of major orders,” he says. “DRUPA 2012 was a great success for us, and an opportunity to fine-tune our compass for the future.”

Longstanding customer Dumont Schauberg (MDS) – which has had QI’s micro-mark based IRS colour register system on its KBA Commander pressline for

press to be installed in Biri, Norway. The CRC4 scanner – which also detects

also detects scumming and web wrinkles – will be integrated with manroland Pecom controls.

Ferrostaal which has transformed itself from being the manroland agent in 2008 to “the world’s largest supplier-independent provider” of printing equipment, reported order volumes beyond its own expectations at “significantly above 40 million Euros”. About an equal number were in the traditional offset sector as in digital printing systems, with growth in the Gulf region, where the company has been establishing a network of branches, was above average.

The PrintCity Alliance seemed to be damning the event with faint praise, describing it as “the best networking DRUPA ever”. President John Dangelmaier said some 28 vendors worked together to deliver “must see” shared attractions.

“Our focus was to encourage industry networking and knowledge sharing under the theme ‘connection of competence’,” he says.

Features included press enhancements and upgrades, the balance between digital and offset printing, and opportunities from ‘lean and green’ production. An environmental conference was attended by 80 participants.

The next DRUPA will be held from June 2-5, 2016. nngx

almost a decade – signed for a new mRC-3D-based system at the show..

The historic deal was confirmed with a handshake by MDS production manager Manfred Poischen and QI board member Menno Jansen, and follows the release of the self-cleaning camera system at the start of the Düsseldorf show.

QuadTech also had “significant sales” to report, including colour control systems for German printers ADV Schoder and B&K Offsetdruck (both KBA C16 presses), French printers BLG Toul/st Finance and Gulliame Rotative, and Grandeco Wallfashion Group in Belgium.

Hong Bo will use QuadTech controls on the M-600 they ordered from Goss at the show, as will Thran Phu from Vietnam, for a similar press, and a further order was reported for Pelican Rotoflex of Rajkot, India.

During the show, QuadTech announced new Instrument Flight colour balance control strategies from partner System Brunner, and a cooperation with Alwan Color Expertise to automate dot gain compensation curves, among other initiatives.

President Karl Fritchen described the event as “a huge success” with several significant orders.

A new densitometry-based inspection system from DCOS Sweden – now a sister company of Tensor – scored an order from NR1 Trykk for a new manroland Uniset

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Press buyers hot for heatset

Demos, deals and delights: (clockwise from above) a Manugraph M360 single-tower was a talking point; Xerox brought the precision of Cirque de Soleil to the show; manroland was back with emphatic DRUPA signage; Peter Kuisle with Ravi Dhariwal, chief executive of 'Times of India' publisher Bennett, Coleman & Co; QI Press Controls’ Menno Jansen congratulates MDS production manager Manfred Poischen while offset manager Henry Winkler, Offset Manager at Dumont Schaholds the new mRC-3D; B&K managing director Jörn Kalbhenn with KBA sales director Kai Trapp and executive vice-president for web sales Christoph Müller; and super-showman Benny Landa during a nanographic printing demonstration

Two Goss M-600 heatset webs for Chinese magazine printer Hong Bo were among orders announced by Goss at the show


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manroland switches web agency to Melchers

US single-width press maker Tensor has been bought by management and the company behind Swedish graphic arts automation specialist DCOS.

A new company, Tensor International has been formed to acquire the assets and intellectual property of Tensor Group, which had been owned by the Hozjan family. Shareholders are Automation House (owner of DCOS Sweden) and Michael Pavone, Christopher Dalu and John Bonk who worked in the old business. Mattias Andersson – one of the original partners of DCOS – becomes chief executive.

Andersson says the synergy and combination of resources will provide “extreme benefits” to

customers: “DCOS’s automation solutions are in the forefront today in any press segment and it is one of the few companies specialising in printing press automation,” he says. Manufacture of equipment and parts will continue in the USA. A worldwide network of dealers support sales, service and marketing.

Tensor had most recently been owned by the Hozjan family, which founded Illinois machine shop MAH Machine Co in 1977. It is based in Woodbridge, Illinois.

It is understood that Martin Hozjan had wanted to retire for some time, and had already been in touch with DCOS when the distribution relationship with manroland collapsed. nngx

New camera technology, water algorithm for QIr egistration and colour control specialist

QI has announced next-generation camera technology – which includes depth detection and a self-cleaning

facility – and added water control to its IDS product.

Longstanding customer Dumont Schauberg (MDS) – which has had QI’s micro-mark based IRS colour register system on its KBA Commander pressline for almost a decade – signed for the system at DRUPA.

The new mRC-3D camera will initially use the twin sensors to increase performance and positioning flexibility. Chairman of QI Press Controls Menno Jansen says this means the system will be able to cope more effectively with depth, with the concept adding value in case of unsteady paper web routings and surfaces.

“And as our latest technology, it embodies all the developments which have taken place since the introduction of its predecessor four years ago,” he says.

Automatic self-cleaning works with an antistatic mist-shield roll which is advanced as necessary. Precision measurement resumes after fully automated calibration.

Automated fountain solution control has been added to the IDS colour density system, which scans and analyses the printed web and compares the image to a prepress version, controlling and correcting colours via the ink fountains. Analysis algorithms have now been expanded to include water.

The company says dampening supply control can fluctuate at times, such as when the press is warming up. Judgements about water control which an operator may make when viewing the printed product – perhaps through a magnifying glass – are now automated by the IDS system.

Functions operate within a cycle of about 100 prints and can be implemented in existing IDS/IQM systems.

The Dumont Schauberg deal was confirmed with a handshake by MDS production manager

Manfred Poischen and Menno Jansen. A loyal customer from the “very beginning”, DuMont Schauberg installed the then-revolutionary IRS technology on its 11-tower Commander a decade ago. Poischen says it has performed “to our fullest satisfaction” over all of the

years since, and praises innovation in monitoring and controlling CCD camera technology for web presses: “Through mRC-3D self-cleaning depth detection cameras, QI clearly shows its added value for newspaper and magazine producers.”

He says the new system will be “a highly useful rejuvenation”, to more so given the potential the mRC-3D technology has for the press installation. Confidence comes from longstanding cooperation on earlier Commander and Cortina projects, and Poischen says the mRC-3D upgrade will soon start paying off through efficiency gains and other benefits.

Installation is scheduled for next December. Menno Jansen says QI’s development team will work with MDS’s printing experts to demonstrate what the company’s latest optical-digital high-tech innovation can do.

DuMont Schauberg Cologne’s newspaper group traces its roots to the early seventeenth century, and has a reputation of investing in trendsetting innovation. Its equipment includes the KBA Commander and a waterless four-tower Cortina 6/2 pressline. nngx

Pictured: Manfred Poischen, Menno Jansen and Dumont Schauberg offset manager Henry Winkler with the new mRC-3D

Repeat order takes Xuzhou into heatsetEastern Chinese publisher Xuzhou Press Media is moving into semicommercial printing with a KBA Comet, 11 years after installing a similar press for its newspapers.

China’s semicommercial sector is flourishing and Xuzhou target further growth with the new single-tower heatset press. It will come on stream early next year in the rapidly expanding industrial city in the north of Jiangsu province, eastern China.

The press is the group’s second Comet press following commissioning in 2001 of a two-tower press with four reelstands and two folders.

In addition to its own regional title, the top-selling ‘Xuzhou Daily’, the group prints other titles including the ‘People’s Daily’ and ‘Xinhua Daily’.

Xuzhou, with a population of ten million, is a traffic hub linked

by motorway and rail to other big cities including Shanghai, and also has a domestic airport.

Xuzhou Daily president Liu Ming says the group’s choice of press was informed by experience of quality, performance and service: “When we set out to address the mounting demand for semicommercials we did a lot of market research and came to the conclusion that KBA offered the best technology for our purposes.

“The heatset Comet will enable our printing plant to handle new production specs.” nngx

An impression of the new press with one reelstand, tower, folder and dryer

Goss rebuilds Newsday pressesgoss is reconfiguring

several existing Metro double-width presses

at ‘Newsday’ in New York to create three upgraded lines with doubled colour capacity.

The enhanced presses will go into production this month at its Melville, New York, plant. They print the flagship ‘Newsday’ daily – which reaches nearly 1.4 million readers weekly on Long Island and New York city – as well

as other products. Units and folders are being relocated, drive lines and motors modified and repositioned, and customised stacking frames and platforming installed.

Goss is also adding motorised registration to the presses and converting the web width of one of them to 1220 mm. The three upgraded presses will print up 96 tabloid pages with 64 in full colour, at up to 60,000 cph. nngx

Planatol shoots glue at DRUPAPlanatol previewed a new noncontact system for cross-web glueing at DRUPA. The Crossjet system is based on a valve technique, with glue dots shot onto the paper web via positionable applicator heads arranged across the web.

Planatol claims to be the only supplier offering cross-web glueing systems, which can also be used to glue paper ribbons across the web travel, creating short-grain products.

The innovation is one of a number from the 80 year-old Planatol group, which now also owns Gammerler, following its acquisition from an insolvency administration late last year. Other new functions include web edge scanning and glue line monitoring. nngx

EAE is to put its colour control system loop into the Axel Springer newspaper plant near its factory in Ahrensburg near Hamburg.The system will be installed in a three-web configuration on a manroland Colorman press at the site.

EAE says its Measurement system – which covers the entire web width without control patches – differentiates its product. A ‘web inspection’ function also detects failures in the printing process. EAE makes controls, automation solutions and software for newspaper production, used in all areas from prepress to dispatch.

manroland has announced the signing of an order for a two-tower Geoman press for Fujian Daily Group’s Xiamen factory in southern China, following a tender. The 75,000 cph double-width press with two splicers and a PFN-23 folder, will be delivered by the end of this year. It will have movable formers in the folder superstructure to handle web widths of 1440 and 1360 mm.

Press drive and control systems developer ABB has scored a first US sale of its APOS positioning system.

The ‘Dallas Morning News’ in Plano, Texas, will install the technology on two press towers as part of an upgrade of its Wifag OF370. The publisher will also install ACSM1 drives for the towers and upgrade hardware and software on the five MPS control consoles in use.

• ABB will supply its MPS control systems to bring the manroland Colorman e:line being installed at Allgaeuer Zeitungsverlag in line with existing equipment.

The press at Kempten, Germany, will be the first with this system, and Allgaeuer Zeitungsverlag will update and extend its existing MPS press management system work with the press.

Occupational skin disease is the second most common work-related disease presented to general practitioners in Australia, according to a report published by Safe Work Australia.

Chair Tom Phillips says preventable occupational contact dermatitis has a total economic cost of more than $33 million dollars a year. “Workers most at risk are those exposed to chemicals or wet work in their day-to-day jobs,” he says.

Loghicon in northeast Italy has gone on-edition with a new 16-unit Goss Community SSC press at its new print facility, Centro Stampa Friuli. Owner Simone Saletti (below) says the publisher’s key titles, ‘Città Nostra’ and ‘La Gazzetta Immobiliare’, are high-quality advertising newspapers for the north eastern region of Italy. “It’s very important to invest, particularly when times are tough, to differentiate your product,” he says. In a second phase, three mono units and a folder are to be added to the press line, all existing equipment from another facility.

• Three new single-width presses online in two months signal ‘business as usual’ for Goss in the Gulf and Egypt.

Regional sales manager Paul Feeney says the installations in Bahrain, Oman and Cairo all reflect the need to gain greater control of production and productivity.

“While these orders were placed before anyone had heard of the Arab Spring, timing of the installations underlines the continued importance of printed news within the modern multimedia landscape,” he says. “Social media were certainly instrumental in precipitating events, but printed media continue to be essential for communicating in the aftermath.”

A two-tower Community with two SSC folders is being commissioned for the Police Press Pension Fund in Cairo, following an order through agent Youssef Allam. In Oman, a

new four-tower Community with one heatset dryer for Apex Press and Publishing will solve the problems of using contract printers for its growing portfolio.

A new Community for Publishing & Distribution in Bahrain, went on edition a couple of month ago to print daily newspaper ‘Al-Watan’ and other publications. The new press line comprises five four-high towers, with ten 1270 mm reelstands, a ten-web N40 folder for half and quarter pages with upper former and a gas dryer.

German web press maker KBA has created a new company, PrintHouseService to deliver technical support for newspaper and commercial web printers.

Marketing director Klaus Schmidt says the move is a response to growing industry demand: “More and more commercial web and newspaper printers are recognising the appeal of technical support partnerships to handle comprehensive and timely maintenance for their press installations,” he says.

PHS will be based in Würzburg, Germany, and have “several decentralised branch offices” but there is no indication yet where these will be. Geographical and technical proximity to KBA means PHS staff will be “right up to date” on the latest technology developments.

Reports from one of the first Nela print-to-cut register system installations claim substantial savings on tabloid products. Reiff Zeitungsdruck in Offenburg, Germany, installed the company’s OPRC system on a three-tower three-folder press mid last year. Addressing the problem of an earlier system being unable to recognise horizontal pages, the new system had to control circumference as well as the edge of the web.

Press department manager Ludwig Holl says the new system provides a valuable histogram – displaying tolerances on screen – and has contributed to considerable savings in paper waste, especially on catalogue and tabloid production. nngx

new sales and service arrangements for manroland web systems in southeast

Asia have been confirmed, with the German press maker appointing Melchers Techexport to the territory.

Bremen, Germany, based Melchers take responsibility for Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.

Originally it had been thought that the Langley-owned sheetfed systems business would cover the area, with only Australasia, India and more recently the UK, directly owned by Possehl, owner of manroland web systems.

Sales, service and marketing executive vice president Peter Kuisle says Melchers has been very familiar with the region for many decades and is intensively committed to it: “Customer proximity and local presence are important principles of our corporate philosophy,” he says.

“To realise this strategy successfully, we are very happy to win Melchers Group as our sales and service partner for southeast Asia. We are convinced that this cooperation makes sure we can provide our customers with the high support quality they are used to from manroland web systems and are expecting for the future.”

Melchers Group managing partner Nicolas Helms says the company offers manroland web systems customers “an excellent infrastructure and spirit of partnership” in Asia. nngx

Timothy Ruth, Nicolas Helms, Peter Kuisle, and Matthias Jacobi (managing director of Melchers) conclude the agreement

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gEnEricgxpress.net


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reductions in page width are commonplace in the US, with most ‘broadsheets’ anything but broad, and slashed by paper savings to an ugly rectangle.

Now the independent Ohio publisher of the ‘Columbus Dispatch’ is counting down to the day when things get back in proportion… reformatting with a one-third cut in page depth. Interestingly, they will do so on the same double-width presses which had been printing the broadsheet.

Apart from its own newspaper, the paper prints a couple of titles for publishing giant Gannett, and elsewhere, Gannett itself is taking a different route to achieve a compact “tabloid” format.

In a kind of ‘death by a thousand cuts’, American newspapers have been reducing web widths for years in the name of saving paper. Each change has required costly engineering: But instead of upgrading to improve quality and efficiency or boost colour, the actual effect is of course to reduce the amount of press capacity used.

The privately-owned ‘Columbus Dispatch’ is taking a different course, with a new two-thirds page depth both saving paper and increasing the number of pages produced by a half.

Change doesn’t come lightly for the 141-year-old, and follows “the most research we have ever done”, according to chief marketing officer and Dispatch Digital vice president Phil Pikelny. Nor fast, with reconfiguration of the paper’s existing four presses on track for a September 10 introduction, with “no looking back”.

Dispatch is moving to a new page width but the biggest change is that it will get three page lengths from a cylinder revolution instead of two, retaining – and adding to – the section format enjoyed by readers of broadsheet titles.

The work which includes the supply of new Foldex NJ2C folders, is in the hands of Pressline Services USA, which has patents pending on what it calls a 3Volution conversion. The presses are also being engineered to handle web widths of 1066 and 1168 mm in addition to the current 1118 mm.

Among others providing supporting technology are German plate management specialist Nela – supplying punch benders and responsible for the revised plate lock-ups in the Pressline contract – and Harland Simon, upgrading its auto-impositioning system. Quipp stackers, Goss Magnapack inserters and Schur palletisers are also being modified, with a fifth Magnapak being sourced from Cincinnati.

The Dispatch company has four double-width TKS M72 presses, each with a colour deck and tower. By adopting a new plate format – in which the plate is the length of the cylinder circumference – and retaining the old folders, it will be able to print either format.

Three new Krause LS Performance XXL platesetters – a format originally designed for the Korean market – have also been installed.

has a 162,000 weekday, 283,000 Sunday circulation – is set to move to Columbus shortly after.

Then, we suspect, the attention of newspaper publishers around the world will be on ‘Ohio’s greatest home newspaper’ to see whether they can use the idea themselves.

a More conventional conversion, effectively reversing the US trend to narrower web-widths, is underway at Burlington, Vermont, where a five-unit Goss Metro press at the much smaller ‘Free Press’ is being converted back from a 1220 mm web width to the 1524 mm of which the press was originally capable.

Slitting these webs will deliver a tabloid of 508 mm deep and 280mm wide and – with high-speed MPEL stitchers being installed after each former – up to four sections can be delivered. The press has two colour decks, enabling it to print four-colour on one side of two webs.

Pressline is also doing the work, including ribbon superstructure, and director Jim Gore says the option is a good one for smaller newspapers, “under 50,000 copies and less time-critical production,” he says. “In big cities and at sites that want to do contract printing, there’s a need to go fast, and for them the three-around 3V is a better concept.”

Neither publisher is increasing the proportion of colour pages to mono on their presses – something Asian and Australian readers might find strange – although both conversions increase the notional number of colour pages.

Whether these different moves to a “tabloid” format are the start of a trend in North America remains to be seen.

Gore, however, admits, “I’m hoping”. Other publishers in this giant market – with even more at stake – may have their fingers crossed too. nngx

Each exposes about 160 of the long ‘three-around’ plates an hour, equivalent to about 480 single plates – and is designed to support mixed production of the two sizes.

phil pikelny says newspapers “haD to be More convenient” and claims he was stunned when members of a focus group smiled in response to samples. “It’s the Goldilocks principle… not too small, not too large.”

Some 80 per cent of those who saw samples liked it and no-one said they would cancel because of the change (although three per cent said they probably would). Content following the press changes and a comprehensive redesign will be “identical or more” with eight entry points on the front page. In a sample Thursday edition produced to show stakeholders, there are no fewer than six sections – each separately folded – including a second A-section cover.

Of the Cincinnati and Kentucky Gannett newspapers, Dispatch will print under contract, Pikelny says, “Cincinnati needed a new press, and the printing deal was sealed on a handshake.”

The Columbus newspaper – with daily circulation of 143,000 and 267,000 Sundays – has been family-owned for 110 years, with present head John F. Wolfe in charge since the 1990s, who Pikelny describes as a “very collaborative” owner, able and willing to proceed on a project such as this. He won’t say what the engineering cost is, the prerogative of a private owner with no outside shareholders to account to. In addition to the newspaper, Wolfe family interests include property, local TV, community newspapers and about 30 websites.

Work on one of the four presses, originally installed in the 1990s, will be complete by July, with all four ready for the September 10 ‘go live’. Production of the two Gannett papers – Cincinnati

Re-engineering its presses to deliver a multi-sectioned compact product, Ohio’s ‘Columbus Dispatch’ may be setting a path for tomorrow’s newspapers, writes Peter Coleman

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sectioned: With their new folders and engineering,

the ‘Dispatch’ presses will

produce six folded compact sections in

a single pass


gxpress.net


in Darwin and completion of an upgrade at Fairfax’s Dubbo site rate mention – and there’s a review of the corporate changes and challenges among suppliers including Kodak and manroland, both of which are major sponsors of the event. Another supporter, Baldwin is debt-free after being taken over by a US investment company.

But if times are more subdued, there’s still cash to share around. Supporter GAMAA has a new sponsorship grant, for which delegates are urged to apply, and SWUG itself is later to up its $20,000 biannual leadership scholarship by 50 per cent to provide DRUPA travel for a ‘runner-up’ in this year’s award.

The group supports the Penrith printing museum – for which Lockley was able to secure an 1864 Albion press from a Fairfax contractor – and matched a $500 donation to the local surf club, one of the organisations helping with catering when delegates visited the company’s Ormiston print centre.

And money is being made in print: Goss regional sales vice president Peter Kirwan talked about the runaway success of free papers in Hong Kong, including customer Sing Tao, which has installed four of his company’s presses since

launching ‘Headline Daily’ in 2007.And although global orders for newspaper

presses were down by a third last year, KBA sales director Guenther Noll pointed to areas in which print is doing well. Web volume was growing by three to five per cent globally, with directories among segments going against predictions.

The SWUG programme gives suppliers a platform to introduce new products it thinks may be worthwhile: Chiorino Australia’s new business manager James Hunter got to talk about new web-up tapes, including a magnetic system sourced from South Africa. Mark Harvey of giant waste management provider Transpac talked rubbish… or rather, how the recycling “harvest” could make waste management cost-neutral.

And delegates learned more about lubricants from Sean Thiele of Indisol. “People change oil to remove contaminants, but this isn’t always necessary,” he says. “At some Fairfax sites, we have oil which has been running for 18-19 years.”

With fewer new presses going in, the focus is on printing better and with less waste and cost, using the equipment you have.

Michael Gee, who runs Fairfax’s North

Swug AuStrAliAgxpress.net


on a memorable Queensland weekend in March, when most were either celebrating or commiserating the decimation of Labor in the state elections, delegates at Australia’s Single

Width Users Group were hard at work.Their two-day annual conference is about

learning and sharing, and president Bob Lockley is anxious the 200 delegates from 32 sites don’t waste a moment of it. After all, half the user delegates work for him within Fairfax Media, and 14 of the 20 speakers are either employees or suppliers.

But they will have a lot of fun in the process: Rousing delegates on the second day, Lockley finds the previous day’s wisdom is a good starting point: Lessons from Ruby, the dog that didn’t wait until her stick had landed; from chicken processor Ingham which now recycles or reuses 90 per cent of waste which would have gone into landfill; from Dubbo print centre manager Charlie Fletcher on the dangers of oral lamb-marking (hold your breath); from Gold Coast Publications’ Mike Molloy – “an ex-comp so he must be good” – and Ormiston plant manager Mark Dibble, with his recollections of “sex drugs and rock’n roll”.

And that Travis O’Donnell from Mildura, last year’s top SWUG apprentice, who turned out to be a star speaker. But where is he? Not in the room… doesn’t he know better than to risk being caught playing truant?

But Lockley is in his element. As he had been the previous evening, when 200 or so delegates climbed over the Goss Uniliner 80 press at his company’s Ormiston print plant.

Speakers put over a serious message with as much lightness as possible.

DIC Australia chief executive Ian Johns talks about the accident his Staffordshire bull terrier had while chasing a stick, and jokes about the day a tank cover flew off at the ink maker’s

Visiting New Zealand SWUG apprentice of the year Jamie Melgren told how he had spent time with press engineering company Webco before joining APN Print.

Mike Molloy, print centre manager of News Limited’s Gold Coast Publications told how he got a taste of newspapers with an inserting job at Bowen Hills, before joining the ‘Brisbane Telegraph’ as an apprentice compositor in 1978. He moved back to Queensland Newspapers in 1986 as a platemaker, and progressed to the new mailroom at Murarrie where he became publishing manager in 2007, before moving to the new Gold Coast site.

And before welcoming delegates to the Ormiston print site, its 55-year-old manager Mark Dibble introduced a different side of himself – as a member of 1970s pop group Maxwell, which once supported iconic pop group Sherbert at the Festival Hall.

Despite the good times of “sex, drugs and rock’n roll”, he still needed a day job and joined what is now Harding Colour in Brisbane, making rubber stamps and later as a letterpress apprentice…. and got into newspapers in Gympie, helping run a flatbed newspaper press. He’s been at Ormiston since the Goss Community with its “big deal” tricolour unit was installed in 1987.

as for the inDustry itself, lockley’s annual review of new installations isn’t as extensive as it has been on some occasions – the new 64pp KBA Comet at the ‘Northern Territory News’

Auburn factory: “people thought it was just another drive-by shooting,” he says.

Underlying is a serious message about occupational health and safety, and the comprehensive audit the company has undertaken with the help of Fairfax’s work safety specialists.

A different risk is implicit when Dubbo plant manager Charlie Fletcher recalls growing up in rural Coonamble, and the risks implicit in lamb-marking (by mouth and without the use of rubber rings). So much, in fact, that the following day Norske Skog Albury technical product support manager Stephen Cox is moved to present him with a graphically evocative souvenir he found in the markets.

He outlines a colourful career, and counsels believing in yourself: “Learn from your mistakes, and master patience.”

Part of the SWUG message is about personal development, and it encourages printers from an early age with awards for top apprentices and promising management.

There’s O’Donnell from the ‘Sunraysia Daily’ in Mildura, whose SWUG prize delivered the opportunity to see a variety of different eastern states print sites. The Herald & Weekly Times and catalogue printer Franklin Web in Melbourne, Fairfax sites in Ballarat and Wodonga, and the Norske Skog newsprint mill, all impressed in different ways. In Sydney, O’Donnell visited News Limited’s Chullora site, the familiarly single-width Torch Publishing plant and Fairfax’s Rural Press North Richmond plant.

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Learning and sharing

swug action: (clockwise from above) Flamenco-style glamour from String Diva was a highlight of the presentation dinner; the North Richmond communications team; Fairfax corporate lawyer Penny Karvouniaris; Bob Lockley (right) at Ormiston with DIC Australia’s Ian Johns; Mark Dibble in a previous incarnation with rock band Maxwell; guests at the barbeque respond to a smile and a pretty face; and motivational speaker Andrew Matthews’ take on Fairfax’s UV developments

A bad weekend for Queensland Labor brought another great conference for SWUG Australia

28 gxpress.net June 2012

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finding the selection of consumables to optimise results,” he says.

His immediate boss, Michael Gee admitted to problems with consistency – “It’s not bloody awful,” he says – and reports suggest quality is indeed outstanding when everything comes together.

Somehow suppliers managed to keep out of the public dialogue, and it seemed notable that relatively little was known about a process which was featured strongly at last year’s conference, as it has been in the columns of GXpress.

While others kept quiet, motivational speaker Andrew Matthews had something to say on the subject with a cartoon which announced progress scores in an imaginary ‘SWUG Open’ match: Lockley -2, Tkachuk 9… a reference to Peter Tkachuk, whose company Baldwin Graphic Systems, had supplied Fairfax with UV hardware. Perhaps it was all too early and too sensitive, and next year will be the time to learn more.

the seconD Day of the conference also expanDeD on themes from the first: APN Print’s general manager for regional operations Gary Osborne told of a career which started as a letterpress apprentice on the Sunshine Coast; Geoff Austin recalled the early days of SWUG; Goss sales manager Matt Hancock brought things up to date with press developments including the compact Colorliner CPS and 70,000cph Magnum HPS, latest in a best-selling line; Andy Stephens of Global Press Technologies explained a new waste minimisation system based on a prepress loop; and a quietly-spoken Steve Tangee brought a droll tale of daisies and manhood to his explanation of the fluids used for press wash-ups.

QIPC chairman Menno Jansen had heard sales pitches were not well received, and gave instead, the presentation of European customer Coldset Printing Partners. A 2009 project to automate all possible motor corrections including full registration control (with fan-out) and closed-loop colour, led to reduced manning, lower start-up and production waste and increased quality.

“Its successful implementation improved profits substantially and will pay for itself within two years,” he says. As a result, the company ordered similar solutions for a second factory.

Motivational speaker and author Andrew Matthews proved himself not only an amusing speaker but also a talented cartoonist. To a familiar tune, he argued that misery is a choice and that the happiest people he knew were the ones with the most problems. So what do you do if the share price of the company you work for plummets… don’t worry, be happy. And if your job disappears as well… “do something else”.

SWUG delegates would at least be up for it.Peter Coleman nngx

Richmond print centre, brought a couple of colleagues on stage to demonstrate and explain communication and team motivation. A two-week project focussed on communication between shifts, set standard procedures and yielded paper savings worth $170,000 a year.

And continuous improvement coordinator at Queensland Newspapers Noel Brennan had a similar story, his role “challenging the status quo” at the 17-year-old News Limited plant. After attending a competitive manufacturing course, he initiated the installation of cameras at reelstands to understand what caused the 1607 web breaks a year.

Specifying marginally larger reels helped save 2.6 per cent of breaks, and further analysis of every break or potential break has now brought the total down to 579.

occupational health anD safety is appropriately a recurring topic at SWUG conferences, “an area where you’re either scaring people or depressing them,” according to recently-recruited Fairfax Media corporate lawyer Penny Karvouniaris.

That’s as well, when penalties now reach $3 million for corporations and $600,000 or five years’ jail for individuals.

Karvouniaris quoted Australian statistics of 128,735 workers compensation claims for serious work-related injuries or illness in 2008-2009, defined key terms and provided tips for staying out of trouble.

She urges practical steps such as updating health and safety procedures and allocating responsibilities. Establish safety committees (reporting upwards) and increase staff awareness of their obligations. There should be processes for hazard identification and risk assessment; safety audits and contractor management procedures; an incident reporting and review process and channels for communication of health and safety concerns.

Are Worksafe officers always fair? Delegates were warned to take care over the possibility of ‘loaded’ questions and the way statements were drafted. SWUG delegates agreed that attitudes varied: “They come in with guns blazing, but when they see what we have in place, they’re reasonable,” says Border Mail Printing’s Frank O’Grady.

From its busy opening day – and the Ormiston plant visit – SWUG moves to a new phase on the second: Engineers’ sessions – in which plant managers demand straight answers from suppliers to technical problems – and a highlight motivational speaker.

Sean Tate from Fairfax North Richmond had what sounded like a prepared answer to colleagues’ questions about the introduction of UV print technology at that and the group’s Canberra print sites: The equipment had been installed and was working well. “We’re still

Second leadership prize reflects quality

winners all: (clockwise from top left) Rural Press Balarat with the Brissett Shield; Meredith Darke presents the Coates Shield; Horton Media Queensland finally beat their NZ parent site to the Flint award; Tania Gordon of Norske Skog congratulates the ‘New Zealand Herald’

Shimmering sequins and a SWUG-bag of cash glistened at the gala finale to this year’s Australian Single Width Users Group conference.

The dashing bows of female violin trio String Diva vied with a clutch of awards worth more than $60,000 at the twenty-sixth presentation dinner at Brisbane Convention Centre: Winners of four categories in the annual print competition shared half of that amount in value, while the group added a $10,000 runners-up prize to its biannual leadership scholarship, worth $20,000.

“Because the quality of the applications was so high, it was decided to present a second prize,” vice president Anthony Payne said.

Dean McManus from Fairfax Regional Printers (Beresfield) was travelling to DRUPA in Düsseldorf in company with Tristan Couzens – from another Fairfax group site, Rural Press Mandurah – whose top award also includes an around-the-world travel bursary.

Industry suppliers backed this year’s print awards with prizes in cash and kind worth more than $30,000, with a strong Kiwi emphasis to the winners list.

New Zealand newspaper sites took two of the four awards, with one of the remainder – the prize for coldset commercial printing – going to NZ-owned Horton Media Queensland.

winners were:• Brissett Shield for best overall print quality – presented by Glen Brissett – to Rural Press Printing Ballarat for the ‘Bendigo Advertiser’.• The Coates Shield – presented by DIC Australia web export manager Meredith Darke – went to ‘Hawkes Bay Today’.• The Flint Ink award for best coldset commercial printing went to Horton Media Queensland for ‘Hinterland Times’.• A new award for best double-width newspaper, sponsored by Norske Skog, went to ‘New Zealand Herald’, and was presented by Tania Gordon.

Also during the evening, the president’s prize (sponsored by Baldwin Graphic Systems) went to Mark Dibble of host site Fairfax Media Ormiston.

This year’s top SWUG apprentice is Joe Vaz (below) in his second year at Shepparton Newspapers, where he works as a night shift supervisor. nngx

President Bob Lockley with SWUG leadership scholar Tristan Couzens

(right) and runner-up Dean McManus

people everywhere: (clockwise from above) One of two folders on the Ormiston press; Ferag inserting equipment for a busy mailroom; visitors access platforms for a closer look; Travis O’Donnell of Sunraysia Daily discusses unit technology with a colleague; Maggie Coleman of GXpress talks plates; and six webs cross the press superstructure.


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KBA has sold a short-grain Compacta 408 heatset web to Saudi Arabia’s National Offset Printing Press, more than a decade after supplying a similar machine.

The family-owned business in Riyadh prints magazines, school textbooks, brochures and other products, and is expanding capacity to keep pace with demand from its ‘considerable’ success.

The order was placed with the support of local KBA agency Graphic Supplies.

KBA specifies the C 408 for 32/40-pages short-grain, with a production speed of up to 60,000 revolutions/hour. The completely

shaftless drive technology and automatically-adjustable V5 gripper folder deliver short changeovers and improved flexibility.

• A 48-page KBA C48 commercial web will avoid Loire Offset Plus having to add another sheetfed press, folder and guillotine to its line-up of 32 mostly sheetfed print units and 13 folding machines. The 20-year-old French book printer will install the new press – which will have a cylinder circumference of 1240mm and web width of 1450mm – next year. Among unique features will be a variable-format V5 folder for books, the company’s sixth V5.

DCOS has upgraded CPC controls on two Heidelberg (Goss) M600 presses at KHL Printing in Singapore. The largest privately owned print shop in the island state, KHL has 20 coldset, heatset and sheetfed, and is a market leader. DCOS introduced a retrofit quality package optimised for the M600 last year, recognising the huge worldwide install base.

“There is a need for a cost effective retrofit package for the CPC quality control system to extend the press life cycle,” says a spokesman. The retrofit package upgrades the old CPC control system, increasing efficiency and quality while reducing waste and start-up time.

Packaging and label producer for the food, beverage and consumer markets Precision Press will be the first in the world to install the new Goss Sunday Vpak web offset printing system, the company says.

US magazine and catalogue printer Brown Printing is installing a 20,000 cph Goss Universalbinder adhesive binder with 24 hopper positions and full inline inkjetting and mailing auxiliaries at its facility in Waseca, Minnesota.

Goss will equip the new system with an HT20 trimmer, BS60 stacker and overhead gripper conveyors. Brown – a Bertelsmann/Grunner + Jahr

company – currently operates close to 40 Goss finishing systems and more than 20 Goss web presses at three locations.

Trelleborg has introduced a new sleeve blanket for heatset web presses. The company says the Vulcan Synthesis Evo features an internal construction that promotes continuous image transfer throughout the plate cut-off area, which ensures minimal paper waste.

Managing director Thomas Linkenheil says a new composite base improved holding power to the press cylinder after mounting, eliminating radial movement during printing. nngx

M-600 evolution at DRUPA launcha new -generation version of

Goss’s workhorse M-600 heatset web was rewarded

with orders at DRUPA.Improvements to the 16-page

commercial press cover automation, operability and integration. DigiRail digital inking – with its workflow, presetting and ‘smart’ inker technology – is an option, complementing the already-available Omni Makeready software. As a new job is about to begin, software evaluates the presets and temporarily boosts the amount of ink delivered to the ink train, reducing the time and copies needed to reach good colour quality.

Similar adjustments take place just before the completion of a job to prepare the inker in advance for the next form. An automated job change sequence option that allows job or edition changes to be completed without stopping the press.

Product manager Jean-Pierre Moioli says some M-600 press users using the facility to print several jobs a day with an average

of 35-45 full-colour forms, output comparable to that achievable on Sunday 4000 and 5000 presses.

“A lot of variables unrelated to the press itself can impact the waste copies between jobs, but customer expectation is to routinely get to good copy in less than 1000 impressions,” he says. “This type of waste level, along with the possibility of continuous operation through the makeready process, can really change the entire approach to how a press is used for short-run applications.”

The company says servo drives on all components further help to minimise the environmental impact of the press. Almost 2500 M-600 printing units have been sold since the press was introduced in 1992.

At DRUPA, the company showed the press’s progressive automation, integration and ease-of-use features which have been added to the press platform and the reasons web printers continue to turn to it. nngx

NPA gold adds value to News Limited’s Hobart investmentnews Limited got a return on its

investment in KBA press technology when its Tasmanian business unit,

Davies Brothers won a gold medal in Australia’s National Print Awards.

The coldset web-offset award – for printing of flagship daily ‘The Mercury’ – follows the installation of a KBA Comet press and Ferag mailroom in a $32 million greenfield project in 2009.

WA’s Colourpress took the silver, but no bronze was awarded.

Offset Alpine was one of five companies to take two gold awards home. It took gold in heatset web-offset for the RM Williams Sprint/Summer catalogue, and in the ‘web-offset publications with a cover price’ category for Selector Spring 2011.

PMP Print Queensland took silver in the heatset category, with Adelaide’s Cadillac Printing taking bronze. PMP Print Victoria took silver in the ‘cover price’ category, with no bronze awarded.

The gala evening in the ballroom of Melbourne’s Crown Palladium was presided

over by RocKwiz host Julia Zemiro, her quirky sense of humour and patter of music trivia smoothing the way through the 33 categories and three sponsor awards. Entertainment from comedian Tommy Little – one of the hits of this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival – expanded the ‘greatest hits’ theme.

Sponsor awards went to Momento Pro NSW (Fuji Xerox Australia award for most effective use of printing technologies), Imatec Digital, WA (Currie Group graphics award for most innovative use of imaging), and Geon Group Perth (Heidelberg award for excellence in craft).

NPA chairman John Wanless described the evening as “one of the greatest NPA celebrations we’ve ever enjoyed.

“There’s no doubt it’s been a tough couple of years in the print and graphic communications industry, but it’s wonderful to see that, whatever they throw at us, Australian print professionals still take the time and effort to ensure that our work is on a par with print produced anywhere in the world.”

Next year’s 30th National Print Awards will return to Melbourne during PacPrint 2013. nngx

Hostmann Steinberg national sales manager John Erdman presents Vanessa Marven of RM Williams with the gold medal won by Offset Alpine

John Ralph from Davies Brothers, Tasmania, print site collects an NPA gold medal for coldset printing from John Erdman of Hostmann Steinberg

Martin Rodger of Australian Print & Pack presents Paul Diamond of ‘Selector’ with Offset Alpine Printing’s second NPA gold medal of the night

Drum roll: Ferag automation for Hannaprint Warwick Farm

new highly-automated postpress systems from Ferag will help drive productivity at Hannanprint’s new

Warwick Farm, Sydney, print centre to peak performance levels the company says. Parent IPMG announced last August that it would go ahead with the much-discussed project – originally to have been based on gravure print technology – with a $90 million investment scheduled for completion early next year.

A new 96-page manroland heatset press is being installed in July, with three further presses – two 48-page and one 32-page – to be relocated from the present Alexandria plant in Sydney’s inner south.

Ferag has detailed the postpress technology which it says will take gathering, stitching, trimming and inserting to an industrial level. Included

is a UniDrum 440 gatherer-stitcher drum system with automatic PreTronic CV format presetting to enable complete job changes within a few minutes.

The UniDrum is rated at up to 32,000 copies an hour across a wide spectrum of formats and grammages, and will be equipped with six hoppers. Separate sections are merged in the drum, stitched, and then given a three-side trim in a SNT-50 trimming drum.

Ferag’s modular EasySert system will enable up to three supplements to be inserted into the finished product. Finally, two compensating stackers and a palletising system from Segbert will ready the print products for distribution.

Ferag says installation will be complete and production will start by the middle of 2012. nngxPictured: The Warwick Farm site

Ferag concentrated on ways for publishers and printers to add value economically at DRUPA: Innovations included TapeFix, which it describes as “a new way to secure insert collections” and an alternative to a four-page cover.

Systems for polybagging had been extended to the A5 format – with the smaller Polypacer, with packed or unpacked products labelled inline using an offset or second inkjet head – and the company extended its move towards entry-level inserting with a modular MiniSert capable of handling 75,000 copies per hour. A new Accraply module which can be integrated ahead of a JobStack stacker extends MemoStick advertising note options.

ABB will install its MPS insert management system at daily and weekly newspaper printer Mittelland Zeitungsdruck in Switzerland. The system covers the complete handling of insert orders and the management of the insert stores at the printing sites in Aarau and Subingen.

Chicago Tribune Company is adding new inserting facilities to accommodate growth in its Tribune Direct TMC offering.

The company is installing a new 42-position Goss Magnapak system at Tribune Direct in Northlake, and will upgrade two existing systems at its Freedom Center in Chicago. The new system will be equipped for address-specific selective inserting at up to 30,000 copies per hour.

In Chicago, existing inserters will gain dual delivery capability to increase speeds and zoning capability for the ‘Chicago Tribune’ and other daily publications.

Technology and engineering director Craig Sipich says the decision to add another system was an easy one. Six Magnapaks – five at Freedom Center and one at Tribune Direct – with a total of 254 hopper stations were installed in 2007-2008. Goss Omnicon II and Omnizone systems control microzoning and selective inserting.

Buhrs launched a paper wrapping system at DRUPA, providing the means to combine wrapping and inkjetting inline. The Buhrs 5000 offers inkjet options from monochrome addressing to fully personalised variable data and images in full colour at up to 30,000 packages an hour.

The new system can also produce inline self-mailers with inserts. nngx

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Japan, Gulf join local heroesHonours in the Asia Media Awards were spread far and wide, with winners in Japan and the Gulf joining local and regional heroes.

Best in print awards went to Abu Dhabi-based United Printing & Publishing (under 150,000 copies) and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun (over 150,000).

Local heroes Jawa Pos and Kompas Gramedia – who were instrumental in bringing the conference to Indonesia – also featured in the awards list. Winners in other categories also included Star (Malaysia), the South China Morning Post, Jakarta Globe, Mid Day, Malayala Manorama, Gulf News and Singapore Press Holdings. nngx

Asia Media Awards winners (newspaper print categories) were:best in print (under 150,000 copies): gold– United Printing & Publishing for Al Ittihad; silver– HT Media for Mint; bronze– United Printing & Publishing for The National.Above 150,000 copies: gold– Asahi Printech for Asahi Shimbun; silver– ABP for Anandabazar Patrika; bronze– Bennett, Coleman & Co for Times of India.Design awards: newspaper overall design: gold– BeritaSatu Media Holdings for Jakarta

Globe; silver– Al Nisr Publishing for Gulf News; bronze– HT Media for Mint.Magazine design: gold– South China Morning Post Publishers for Post Magazine; silver– Zhejiang Daily Join-Home Media for Tao+; bronze– Sesame Seed Creatives for Garage Magazine.Newspaper Front Page Design: gold– for Century Jadi Target Utama; silver– Jawa Pos for Petaka Tenggarong; bronze– APN News and Media NZ for Herald on Sunday ‘Kiwi In Massacre’.Magazine cover Design: gold– South China Morning Post Publishers for Post Magazine, City limits; silver– Ink Publishing for fah thai Magazine, Into the wild; bronze– Sing Tao News Corporation for Sing Tao Daily, Investment Weekly.

Pictured (below) Jawa Pos director Azrul Ananda and WAN-Ifra’s Manfred Werfel congratulate best in print (under 150,000 copies) winner UPP Abu Dhabi; Centre: Japanese giant Asahi Shimbun won the best in print (over 150,000) category;Bottom: Joint awards host Jawa Pos won silver and gold for newspaper front page design


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Bali host to a vibrant media eventa

lively Publish Asia programme delivered a mix of international best-practice, spiced with experience and inspiration from the region’s ‘local heroes’.

Indonesian vice president Boediono opened the event in the holiday island of Bali, at what WAN-Ifra president Jacob Mathew described as the right time to be in Indonesia, with rapid growth of a “dynamic press” and plurality of expression.

Of 718 delegates from more than 30 countries attending what has become the organiser’s second biggest event – after IfraExpo/Congress – 300 were from Indonesia, and the region was “rippling with innovation”.

Mathew also points to the three-quarters of the 100 largest newspapers in the world which are published in Asia, their success “confounding those who prophesied the death of newspapers,” he says.

And although “bewildered by social media”, Boediono professed himself not worried about the future of the media industry. “Not all old models should be put aside,” he says. “The public have an appetite for all kinds of publication and there is plenty of room for printed newspapers to grow.”

WAN-Ifra delivered a carefully-interlocking programme which – despite a late start – allowed delegates to flit from session to session within the CEO, newsroom, advertising and printing ‘summit’ events.

Despite its sharemarket performance and other troubles, Australia’s Fairfax Media continues to be seen as a shining light of multimedia transformation, and metro media chief executive Jack Matthews was accorded solus keynote status.

The ‘newspaper to news media’ theme was pursued by Dipankar Das Purkayastha, managing director and chief executive of India’s ABP, explaining how it had built on a leading position in Bengali media with diversification into broadcasting, events and new media.

Its ABP One ‘360 degree’ cross media marketing unit provides advertisers with a total solution, with a campaign for Cadbury chocolate a stunning example.

Exploiting Bengalis’ sweet tooth, the ‘mishti shera srishti’ campaign in Kolkata worked with mishti shops in the city, and included recipes and a mock election with voting for celebrity supporters.

While the ‘print’ stream went straight into production

with discussion of related environmental and upgrade issues, Agung Adiprasetyo of Indonesia’s Kompas Gramedia kept chief executives to the theme with talk of print innovations, and Ross Dunkley explained the realities of news publishing in markets such as Myanmar, where his leadership of the ‘Myanmar Times’ has been the subject of a TV documentary.

Later Sanat Hazra, technical director of Bennett, Coleman & Co, publisher of the ‘Times of India’, told of a strategic approach to excellence in production, of which a “mindset change” – was a key component.

The company had looked for inspiration on automation, visiting a Belgian printer which had been able to halve its press staff – “people bring inconsistency,” Hazra says – and with the development of continuous improvement and ‘think green’ programmes. “It’s about what we do now to stay relevant in 2020,” he says.

in a coMMon session with the aDvertising suMMit, Australian media advisor Allan Marshall told of the work he is doing for the Telegraph Media Group as UK publishers respond to “the harsh reality” that circulations of ‘quality’ newspapers have fallen 22 per cent in three years, with a further 42 per cent drop forecast.

The aim, he says, is to be “the world’s number one in tablets” against competition which includes the top-rating Mail site, which Marshall describes as “fluffy”.

Building blocks were now in place following a decision to opt for a ‘hybrid’ rather than a ‘mass’ strategy, with TMG launching a digital subscription and new iPhone and Android apps. iPad subscriptions allow two users in a household. He admits digital subscribers for the iPad app are more of a replacement, but says only half were main print users, “and would’ve been susceptible to digital defection anyway”.

Development is being outsourced so that the business is not limited by internal capabilities, and costs are clear. Internally, new roles, rules and structure complement the moves.

The story of local hero, the ‘Jawa Pos’ always makes good listening: Having told his publisher father that his newspapers were boring, Azrul Ananda was challenged to do something about it. At 22, with a brief to “do anything you want, but don’t bring down the building”, he launched the newspaper’s ‘Det Eksi’ youth initiative – which delivers a daily page in the newspaper – and

has gone on to run the whole business. (His proud parent, Dahlan Iskan was among speakers at the Asia Media Awards dinner during the conference.)

Ananda now 34, presides over a multimedia empire which includes more than 200 newspapers, magazine and television stations from Aceh to Papua…. not to mention a paper mill and power station. He’s made a number of changes in the process, appointing a cartoonist as chief editor, publishing on public holidays, and placing gym equipment in the centre of the newsroom.

The efforts have been rewarded with a lively, positive readership, and last year’s WAN-Ifra Young Readers prize (pictured): In 2010, 51 per cent of ‘Jawa Pos’ readers were under the age of 30, and Ananda says research shows that there are more young newspaper readers in its home town of Surabaya than in other major Indonesian cities.

All of that accompanied by regular cover price increases which have made the ‘Pos’, “probably the most expensive newspaper in Indonesia”.

print Managers also hearD Muk kwong Meng, engineering senior production manager at Singapore Press Holdings, outline the challenges and benefits of an upgrade programme which would deliver “ten more years” of useful life from its 15-year-old Goss double-width presslines. The upgrade delivered more colour capacity, modern control systems, and side benefits such as press spares.

Goss had brought Scotsman Raymond McRobbie to talk about DC Thomson’s rationalisation of its Dundee and Glasgow newspaper plants, which includes the installation of the world’s first compact hybrid Colorliner CPS press (a tower from which was on show at DRUPA).

McRobbie says the publisher of the Aberdeen ‘Press

& Journal’ (established 1747) and originator of the ‘Dennis the Menace’

comics had closed its gravure plant and outsourced its magazines when revenue plunged during the

recession. Looking to “change the mindset” in production, it sought

ways in which costs per copy could be reduced, and its newspaper

presses put to other purposes.The programme sees a

press staff of 45 on one site producing more work than had previously been handled by 120 on two. Glossy products

previously produced gravure will also be brought back inhouse.

The investment has seen three existing Colorliner presses refurbished and reconfigured as a single line, new Agfa/Barenshee CTP and Müller Martini mailroom equipment, and the installation this year of the new shorter cutoff CPS press with eight towers, two heatset dryers and two 2:5:5 folders. Installed into the existing press hall, the 90,000 cph press has automatic plate changing, reel loading and web width change, with Baldwin blanket cleaning and QI colour controls.

Atex chief executive Jim Rose emphasised the role of data and the “opportunity to be more knowledgeable”, Innovation principal Juan Senor used headlines to show how newspapers were killing themselves. “We are where we were 17 years ago,” he says, urging the concept of print as a premium product.

Jack Knadjian, business development director of Kodak’s digital newspaper printing solutions, explained digital printing technologies, three of which are used by his company. He showed examples from Carlisle, UK, user CN Print and reported on a new Prosper S30 installation which went live at Axel Springer in Germany the previous week, delivering “readable six-point and good enough black, but obviously not offset”.

Knadjian says publishers need to start targetting: “The mass market is dead,” he says. “You must deliver to the home… then it becomes most valuable.”

Other print vendor presentations covered automated image processing workflows (OneVision) and ink optimisation (ProImage).

The conferences were supplemented by learning workshops and several networking functions including a welcome reception and a golf tournament. The Asia Media Awards were presented at a gala dinner.

There was no plant visit this year, but during the welcome reception at the ‘Bali Post’ in Denpasar, I grabbed the opportunity to take a look at the plant, a well-kept all-colour Goss Community press which prints the island daily. The company also has an older, mostly mono Community line it uses for other work.• Next year, there will be no Publish Asia as such when WAN-Ifra’s 65th World Newspaper Congress and 20th World Editors Forum comes to Bangkok in the first week of June. The Asia Media Awards will be presented during Ifra India in September.Peter Coleman nngx

After showing its NewsGate system on an iPad, CCI gave tablets to draw winners Agung Kurniawan of Jawa Pos and Dewi Gotama of Apps Factory (pictured with Kim Svendsen, right); Below: Conference hosts are honoured at the welcome dinner

A traditional welcome to the Asia Media Awards dinner

http://www.wan-ifra.org/events/publish-asia-2012?view=info&nid=44681



http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/asian-media-awards

http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/asian-media-awards


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at the Yass Tribune over 46 years, father-and-son editors, both known as Bert Mudge, forged a tradition of straight-talking editorials and independent journalism rarely seen in Australia’s

backblocks. Bert junior’s editorials panning the Vietnam

War were so strong, his anti-American views so forthright, that he attracted national attention, appearing on ABC programmes such as This Day Tonight and Chequerboard. Nowadays he would have been a natural for Tony Jones’s Q&A.

Here’s a sample from a Mudge editorial in April 1968: “President Johnson can weep crocodile tears from now until he himself dies, but he will never wash the blood off his hands of Australia’s conscripted sons who have been killed, and the countless thousands of peasants who have so far perished in Vietnam.” At times Mudge’s editorials even divided his own family.

Mudge edited the biweekly Yass Tribune from 1949-73 after his father had edited it from 1927-49. The town is about 35km outside the ACT border, 52km north of Canberra.

Bert senior – Albert Peter Mudge (1876-1954) – started out in banking but was a journalist for 44 years from 1905. Bert junior – Bert Parmenas Mudge (1908-92) – worked only at the Inverell Argus and the Yass Tribune, but his five years away from Yass in World War II provided the crucible for his political views.

He enlisted in the AIF at age 33 and was captured by the Japanese force that invaded Singapore. He spent three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war, some of it on the Burma Railway. He met men from all walks of life, from British colonels, Liverpool Irish and British regular soldiers, to Australian shearers, slaughtermen, station hands, coal miners and wharfies. He said as POWs they discussed everything, arguing and debating. “That was my education. We talked to stop ourselves from being hungry.”

More than three years of eating rice meals, and suffering no dysentery, cholera or other illness removed any fear he might have had of ever starving and so, back in Yass, he never worried about losing advertisers angered by his editorial outpourings.

It was during these POW years that Mudge developed a dislike of “brasshats, bureaucrats and The Establishment” which was reflected in his postwar editorials and columns.

Mudge wrote his editorials and columns in his study at home, usually between midnight and 2am. On the nights he planned to write he usually went to bed as early as 8.30 and slept until midnight, waking “fresh as a daisy” to get himself a good supper.

“I draft an editorial, with my basic

arguments,” he said. “I have a tendency to fly high, so I re-cast it and bring it down to earth. I then write it a second time and tighten it up. I then get myself a cup of coffee around 1am and settle down to the final draft, hoping to finish by 2am if I get what I think I want. Occasionally I tear it up, take two sleeping tablets and forget about it. Perhaps I should do that more often.”

He often typeset his own editorial or column on the linotype the next day if his No. 2 operator was busy on a money-making job. “I have been a two-finger ‘expert’ on the typewriter and the linotype since I was a youth. I get as much satisfaction out of mechanical work as I do out of writing,” Mudge said. He never refused to publish a letter to the editor that took a contrary view to his editorials.

Bert Mudge senior had a big influence on his son’s journalism. Frank Moorhouse wrote in 1971: “Bert, at 63, is totally conscious of his father, and the Yass Tribune’s absolute father-son continuity, with Bert publishing the opinions his father couldn’t afford to when the paper was financially weak.” There was only one basic disagreement: Bert senior believed that in one-paper towns, the paper should be neutral; Bert junior did not.

Bert senior grew up in Albury and entered journalism in 1905 as the editor of the Corowa Chronicle, owned by Albert John Esau. Three years later Mudge spent a year at the Newcastle Morning Herald before joining the Sydney Morning Herald as the editor of its ‘On the Land’ section, 1909-20. He was parliamentary roundsman for the Sydney Sun for two years.

Mudge was a pioneering member of the Australian Journalists’ Association and an early president of the Sydney Press Club. He contributed short stories and black-and-white sketches and cartoons to publications such as the Bulletin, the Sydney Mail and the Australian Worker, sometimes under the pen name, ‘Lyn Ridge’.

In 1922 Mudge bought a 50 per cent interest in the Inverell Argus (estab. 1881) from the sole proprietor and his former Corowa boss, Esau, and borrowed heavily to acquire the remaining Esau interest a few years later. In January 1927, Mudge

sold to E.C. Sommerlad’s Northern Newspapers, which incorporated the Argus in its Inverell Times (1875). Three months later, Mudge bought the rundown Yass Evening Tribune (1879) and in 1929 absorbed the Yass Courier (1857).

Bert Mudge junior enlisted for World War II only when a long-serving linotype operator, agreed to stay with Bert senior throughout the war. When Bert junior returned to Yass, he found the Tribune press “held together by bits of wire” and his father, who had not known for more than three years whether his son was alive, hanging by a thread after a heart attack.

Bert junior took editorial charge of the paper in 1949 and for the next 24 years kept himself aloof from public life in Yass. “I believe an editor should be independent to do justice to his work,” he wrote.

Bert told Moorhouse of the dilemmas of a country editor. “I remember a local identity was picked up for driving under the influence after the picnic races. Over the weekend every prominent person in Yass came to us and wanted us not to publish the story. I said to my father, and I hate myself for saying it, that maybe we’d better not publish it.

“My father eventually told one of them that if they gave him £5000 ($10,000) he wouldn’t publish the story – and they’d own the newspaper. My father said to me then, ‘Either we run the paper or they do.’ Then later on one of my father’s friends, a local bank manager he’d been playing bridge with for years, was charged with misappropriation of funds. My father told me to write the story without holding anything back but he didn’t want to see a word of it. That’s the agony of being a country newspaper editor.”

Bert junior had strong family support – his mother, Gladys, as proof-reader for 16 years, into her eighties; his wife Nancy did clerical work for 13 years; and his sister, Betty Howard, reported for the paper for 20 years from 1953, and held a one-third financial interest in it. She had reported for Melbourne and Sydney newspapers.

In 1969, Maxwell Newton offered Bert and Betty “the earth” for the Tribune when the nationally-known journalist was building a chain of NSW country newspapers to be printed in Canberra. They refused. By February 1973, with Bert only a few months short of turning 65, the Mudge family was ready to sell.

Roger Stewart and family took over the paper on March 1, 1973. Stewart said editorials would “become a rarity”. The Stewarts lacked a printing background and had no links with Yass. They sold nine months later to Colin Lord, a South Coast newspaper proprietor, who printed the paper in Bowral. The local content nose-dived. The Mudge heritage had been trashed. nngx

yASS BAdge oF CourAgeEditors of the Yass Tribune, Bert Mudge and his son, also Bert, established a tradition of straight-talking in the country town

Straight talking: Albert Peter Mudge (’Bert senior’) in 1946 (left) and his son Bert Mudge

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Metro media chief executive Jack Matthews stresses that Fairfax is a news media company rather than a newspaper company, but admits, “It’s easier to say than do”. Problems facing Australian newspapers mirrored those in the western world, and his pragmatic assertion is that “if you don’t read a newspaper today, you will never do so”.

The engine room of Fairfax was independent quality journalism, “the only reason people care about us at all,” he told a keynote audience at Publish Asia in Bali, Indonesia.

Fairfax’s metro division reaches a claimed seven million consumers a month – including that number accessing its websites, two million print and magazine readers, 300,000-plus on smart phones, and 500,000-plus iPad downloads. Since 2006, while its print audience had fallen, the total audience reach had grown from 33 to 38 per cent of population, and Matthews stresses the need to “deeply understand” its audience.

Critical steps also included the need to drive performance, “attract, retain and grow” talent, and invest in critical technologies to support and execute the strategies.

Optimising print involved rethinking the shape, design and content of the product, removing unprofitable circulation, reducing the proportion of fixed costs, and relaunching the bundling with other products (through member loyalty programmes as well as print-and-digital).

On the company’s rationalisation of print distribution – especially in remote areas – and accusations of abandoning print, he is unrepentant. Fairfax will deliver “the solution readers want, not just the one they have always had,” he says. “The key will be changes in our product mix, such as video,” he says. Matthews says Fairfax delivered 125 million video files to 3.3 million unique browsers, focussing on shortform video and innovative advertising formats. When it launched its Airlink print-to-web coding technology, an advertiser paid $1.5 million for a 30-day exclusive launch partnership, he says.

An important development will be access to living room TV screens, “allowing us to disrupt the television market in the same way as the internet disrupted newspapers.

“Lord knows, it will be good to be

What Jack Matthews told Publish Asia about Fairfax’s strategic plan

Change of emphasis: Matthews’ chart shows the proportion (but not the scale) of the change in advertising consumption it experienced and expects across a nine-year period.

a disruptor,” he says. “We must be in a position to give what (viewers) want.”

The challenge, he says, is to make money beyond advertising. Among advertising opportunities is diversification “beyond core” to deliver (for example) reservations, daily deals, books, e-mags and merchandise. A travel strategy cites opportunities – in ‘dreaming, planning, booking, anticipating, and at the destination’ – to “make money every step of the way,” he says.

“If we’re smart and brave, we can find a way to a very good future.” nngx


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WAN-Ifra’s World Newspaper Congress event in Kiev is a gesture of solidarity with independent Ukraine publishers, the organisation’s president says. With the World Editors Forum, it has called for greater support of press freedom in Ukraine amid concerns about the state of democracy in the country.

In a letter to members, president Jacob Mathew calls on the international media community to show its solidarity with the independent press in Ukraine at the World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2012, to be held in Kiev from September 2-5.

With some European leaders intending to boycott the Euro football championship matches in Ukraine this summer, the organisation says it has been asked whether it is appropriate to bring its annual meetings to Kiev: “We are going to Kiev to stand in solidarity with the local independent press, which struggles daily under great pressure, often in isolation,” Mathew says.

News Queensland has officially opened its $56 million renovation of its Bowen Hills, Brisbane offices, naming the building for journalist and newspaper executive Keith McDonald.

It houses the group’s Queensland metro and many of its suburban titles, websites and Sky News in almost 10,000 m2 of floor space. Chief executive Kim Williams told staff it was “the best, not just in Australia but anywhere. It represents the best of the best of what media companies should do,” he says.

The renovation provides an open-plan newsroom, editing suite, training and function rooms and a gym.

• In Adelaide, News’ metros have moved to a seven-day newsroom concept. Reporters on the ‘Advertiser’ and ‘Sunday Mail’ work across both titles on a shift rotation under the new arrangement. ‘Advertiser’ editor Melvin Mansell takes on a new role as state editorial director for SA, WA and NT.

Newspaper systems developer EidosMedia has been chosen by the Italian stock exchange to take part in a growth scheme for high-potential SMEs based in the country.

The Elite programme will provide support and resources aimed at promoting the growth of the target

extremely disappointing, we must be proactive in finding a solution, not just for Victoria and Tasmania, but for the industry nationally,” he says.

Apprenticeship numbers have been declining over many years and all publicly funded training providers have been experiencing difficulties in justifying stand-alone training organisations in their states.

PIAA Victorian manager Ron Patterson – who had been working with RMIT to develop a new approach to training – was disappointed by the announcement: “A great many people have been working to create a better system for our apprentices and a modern, relevant curriculum to attract more apprentices into our technologically driven industry, so RMIT’s decision to bail out is not welcomed,” he says.

Danaher Corporation – which owns inkjet marking company Videojet and packaging software developer Esko – is buying X-Rite, the densitometry and colour measurement company which also owns Pantone. The deal, which values X-Rite at about US$625 million, includes a cash tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of common stock at $5.55 per share. It includes debt assumed and is net of cash acquired.

X-Rite will become part of Danaher’s Product Identification group.

Executive vice president William Daniel is excited about the opportunity to acquire two premier brands: “Colour measurement is an attractive market adjacency to our existing Product Identification businesses,” he says. “X-Rite’s colour measurement technologies complement Esko’s digital packaging design capabilities to provide customers with a full range of solutions to meet their packaging and design needs.”

Australia’s PacPrint printing trade show will again co-locate with the Visual Impact Image Expo in 2013, a move expetced to boost visitor choice and attendance.

Vendors group GAMAA and the Printing Industries Association of Australia say PacPrint – traditionally held in Melbourne – will take place from May 21-25. Co-location follows “extremely positive” feedback, according to GAMAA executive director Karen Goldsmith.

Last year’s joint event drew attendance of more than 8000. nngx

enterprises in international markets, as well as access to important partners in the private and public sectors. The 30 companies admitted to the programme in its first phase have average annual growth rates of 20 per cent. They are drawn from high-tech sectors, as well as traditional areas of Italian excellence such as fashion, food and design.

EidosMedia group chief executive Gabriella Franzini says she is delighted that the company has been chosen for the forward-looking initiative: “Of course EidosMedia has had an international focus since its creation over a decade ago, but the resources and support that Borsa Italiana can provide will be invaluable in consolidating and extending our international presence.”

The Elite programme is being implemented by Borsa Italiana in collaboration with the Italian ministry of economy and finance, the confederation of Italian industry, the Italian banking association and the Bocconi business school.

EidosMedia’s Méthode system is designed to allow editorial content to be published simultaneously through multiple channels from print and web, to tablet, e-readers and syndicated distribution. It is based on XML, CSS and SVG standards, object-oriented technology and distributed, multi-tier architecture.

A national conference for Australian graphic arts association GASAA and three display and signage groups will be held in Sydney from September 23-25. The other partners in the three-day ‘Identify 2012’ event are sign and graphics group ASGA, SGIAA (speciality graphics) and VISA (visual industries).

Fairfax Media’s closure of its Invercargill print site brought a flurry of criticism on the group’s stuff.co.nz website… and some curious speculation about airlifting copies.

Rather than spend an estimated $10 million on new plant, the ‘Southland Times’ is being printed by rival Allied Press in Dunedin. Eight staff will lose their jobs and another 13 part-timers be “reallocated’.

General manager of print and distribution, Danny Trainor says the decision to move the printing of the daily paper to Dunedin was not taken lightly: “Fairfax had two options – to upgrade at a cost of around $10 million, or to share the printing resource with Allied Press.”

Equipment at the ‘Southland Times’ included Krause CTP, a 13-unit Goss Urbanite – capable of only three four-colour webs – and a Müller Martini AlphaLiner inserting machine… described in the Stuff story as “a very old printing press in a half-empty building”.

Allied Press publishes New Zealand’s oldest newspaper, the ‘Otago Daily Times’, and readers have speculated online about which will be printed first… and which will have the latest news.

Trainor says some staff may find work at Fairfax Media printing sites in other parts of New Zealand: “We will work through some options in the distribution part of the business to assist with employment options.”

A decision by RMIT in Melbourne to pull out of printing industry training has been greeted with “shock and dismay” by employers group Printing Industries.

PIAA chief executive Bill Healey says it is imperative for the industry to act quickly and collectively to remedy the situation: “While the announcement is

n ewspaper and online media professionals from Cambodia,

Myanmar and Vietnam are being invited to join a new WAN-Ifra development programme.

The southeast Asian countries and three in the Middle East and North Africa are the focus of a scheme to deliver leadership skills to midlevel professionals from the commercial and editorial side of newspapers and online media.

The organisation says the programme will equip them with sustainable strategies, skills and support networks to advance their careers and contribute to the growth of financially viable and editorially strong media enterprises in the region. Successful applicants will receive individual coaching to create a three-to-five year career action plan allowing them to identify strengths and weaknesses and learn how to leverage networks and gain skills needed to advance professionally.

They will also attend workshops on leadership and media management skills, and be able to network regionally and internationally networking through WAN-Ifra events.

The Media Professionals Programme is open to professionals working for a minimum of two years in middle management positions within newspapers and online media.

Successful applicants will already have a certain degree of leadership experience, have room for growth and aspire to progress within the media industry. Excellent English-

language skills are a must, since all programme activities are conducted in English.

The programme welcomes applicants from all departments of newspapers and online media (editorial, marketing, administration, human resources, accounting, etc.). In total, 20 participants will be selected to participate in 2012. Women in particular are encouraged to apply for the programme. WAN-Ifra says applications are considered on an individual basis and employment in line with the above-listed criteria does not guarantee admission to the MPP programme. Applications will not be accepted from those working in radio or television at the moment.

Interested applicants should submit a completed application form, outlining their motivation for applying to MPP and how they could benefit from the programme to: [email protected]

The application form can be downloaded from (bottom of page) http://www.wan-ifra.org/articles/2012/05/14/media-professionals-programme-2012-application and needs to be completed and returned by June 8, 2012.

The Media Professionals Programme is part of a strategic partnership between WAN-IFRA and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency to advance media development and press freedom worldwide.

More on WAN-IFRA media development projects can be found www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/media-development nngx

New Zealand’s Single Width Users Group has a date and a venue for its 2012 conference. Chairman Dan Blackbourn says planning is well underway for the event to be held on August 15-16 at the Chateau on the Park conference and hotel complex adjoining Hagley Park in Christchurch.

“Expectations are 120 delegates and suppliers will be attending the conference,

with two days of in-depth presentations on relevant print topics, and site visits to the Fairfax Christchurch plant and the Guardian Print press complex in Ashburton,” he says.

The programme has been expanded to include heatset topics to attract staff from that sector to the conference.

More information www.swug.co.nz nngx

‘Little help from market’ as paper maker gets debt under controlnorske Skog says lower costs strengthened its gross operating earnings in the

first quarter of 2012, compared with the same quarter last year, while debt was significantly reduced.

Gross operating earnings in the first quarter were NOK 380 million, up from NOK 296 million in the same period last year, mainly as a result of lower costs. Earnings were somewhat weaker compared with the last quarter of 2011, due to seasonal effects.

President and chief executive Sven Ombudstvedt says the company “received little help from the market” and has partly compensated for this through strong cost control. Cash flow from operating activities was NOK 267 million and improved significantly from the same quarter last year when it was negative NOK 239 million.

“In two years, we have cut debt by NOK 2.4 billion or 25 per cent, risk has been reduced, and the financial room for manoeuvre has clearly been improved,” says Ombudstvedt.

Norske Skog has sold its closed Follum mill to Viken Skog, and will sell the Bio Bio newsprint mill in South America to a consortium of Chilean investors. Group BO are paying US$56 million for the facility, at which it plans to continue producing newsprint.

• Meanwhile, European paper giant UPM says it has sold its unprofitable Albbruck paper mill to Germany’s Karl Unternehmensgruppe. Details of the deal – due to close in August – have not been disclosed. nngx

‘Little help from market’ as paper maker gets debt under control

News industry analyst and author Ken Doctor has joined the roster for the 2012 PANPA Future Forum in Sydney (September 6-7).

The author of recently-published ‘Newsonomics: Twelve new trends that will shape the news you get’, he has established a reputation for his insights into the future of newspaper businesses and his hard-hitting presentation style. Doctor spent 21 years with Knight Ridder before moving to industry analysis with advisory firm Outsell and his own Content Bridges company.

A speaker at a Moscow conference for international news agencies earlier this year, he made an impact on AAP editor-in-chief Tony Gillies who says he supports analysis with facts and figures: “He doesn’t hold back.

Importantly, Ken shines the light forward, so this is compelling stuff,” he says.

Among other speakers is Matt Gierhart, global head of social at advertising agency Ogilvy.

Recently appointed chief executive of News Limited Kim Williams returns to the conference as keynote speaker.

Entry to the Future Forum is free for those who are members of, or subscribers to, The Newspaper Works, including those who were members of PANPA. Venue is the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre at Darling Harbour. A highlight of the two-day programme is the Newspaper of the Year presentation dinner in the Grand Hall of the Convention Centre on September 6. nngx

IfraExpo switches to FrankfurtwAN-Ifra has responded to exhibitors’

calls, moving this year’s IfraExpo – now called the World Publishing

Expo – from the announced location in Madrid to Frankfurt.

Exhibitors had asked for a more central European location for their customers.

While the dates remain the same, the event from 29-31 October will now be held at the Messe Frankfurt exhibition centre.

President Jacob Mathew says WAN-Ifra is responding to its customers. “Many exhibitors and our members have requested a move,” he says. “This is not a reflection on Madrid as a venue, but many of our customers want a more central European venue to reduce travel costs and provide easier access. We want to

provide the best possible conditions for our exhibitors to get most attention for their publishing solutions and production systems.”

Frankfurt is a major international hub and less than a three-hour flight from any European city. The airport – 20 minutes by taxi from the exhibition centre – serves 108 airlines with more than 4200 direct flights a week to 304 destinations. Some 5.5 million people live in the metropolitan area.

This is not the first time the expo has moved: A similar decision was taken in 2000 to move the event from Stockholm to Amsterdam.

Last year’s Expo in Vienna drew 8000 visitors from more than 90 countries and attracted 306 exhibitors. nngx

Doctor makes a call for PANPA

SWUG NZ adds heatset to agenda

Print group ANP heads to KLK uala Lumpur’s five-

star Sunway Lagoon Resort is the venue for

this year’s second ASEAN Newspaper Printers delegates conference. The event is being held from Monday-Wednesday, September 10-12. The 1234-room resort in Petaling Jaya claims to be the single largest hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Two ANP directors,

Aszman Kasmani and Farouq Mamat head the conference organising committee, as chairman and secretary respectively. The other members are Jimmy

Oo, Willie Koo, Akhmad Junaidi, Hari Hardjono and Hangcheng Sow.

On the organisation’s website, ANP chairman and president Anthony Cheng says the Malaysian directors are “best placed to lead the organisation of the conference activities in their home turf ”.The committee will be guided and supported by the ANP board. nngx

WAN-Ifra leadership initiative to tap Asian countries’ potential

http://www.proprint.com.au/Feature/259247,printex-a-fair-to-remember.aspx

http://www.proprint.com.au/Feature/259247,printex-a-fair-to-remember.aspx

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.wan-ifra.org/articles/2012/05/14/media-professionals-programme-2012-application




http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/media-development

http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/media-development

http://www.swug.co.nz/

http://sites.google.com/site/aseannp/


newsagent doesn’t offer a delivery service.But no: You can’t blame News for trying,

however, and 30,000 paying punters is a decent number in comparison with the print edition’s relatively modest circulation. I can of course buy a separate digital pass for $2.95 a week – instead of having it as part of a discounted package – but why would I bother?

When I raised the issue in December, I mentioned that News also discriminated against my village shop by excluding it from distribution of their ‘Noosa Journal’. It’s an inequality they’ve now resolved by closing the free weekly. Another, independent paper has sprung up in its place.

when as eDitor of the now-Defunct ‘Ink’ magazine, I wrote about all forms of commercial printing, I remember the president of the local screen printing association boasting that his colleagues would print on anything.

“Just hold it down,” he said.I doubt, however, whether he had in mind the

“substrate” used in a demonstration at DRUPA last month.

Having already printed an image on water, Sun Innovations drew a crowd at the Düsseldorf show by printing on beer with a new UV-LED printer. The company claim it can print on “any surface and material” and also print raised relief “brush stroke” images.

anD before you collapse froM Drupa exposure: At Publish Asia in Bali, WAN-Ifra’s technical expert and interim chief executive Manfred Werfel played a video of WhatTheyThink editor Cary Sherburne interviewing industry guru and RIT professor emeritus Frank Romano about his tenth Düsseldorf show – and commenting on the trend he described as the predominance of “overaged experts”.

We won’t comment – people in glass houses etc – except to add that Werfel is 58. nngxne

wsw

rapp

er Why we all love our careers in newspapers, still no joy with News’ print-and-digital package, print literally goes to your head, and the oldies leading comment, as Peter Coleman wraps it up

So journalism is down there with washing dishes when it comes to a new list of best and worst jobs in the USA. If you’ve resisted the temptation to fell

trees, milk cows or go to war, what are you doing in journalism?

The North American statistics come from the ‘Jobs Rated’ report of CareerCast.com, Adicio’s North American job search portal, and possibly mirror the parlous state of the US newspaper industry. Jobs were judged on criteria including income, outlook, environmental factors, stress and physical demands.

However, things appear better in other in other parts of the evolving newspaper industry… in software engineering and human relations, for example.

‘Newspaper reporter’ dropped to 196 on the 200-strong list, with ‘broadcaster’ also close to the bottom. And if you were a bookbinder or compositor/typesetter, bad luck; your job has been eliminated, along with those of photographic process workers, telephone operators and railway conductors.

As a trainee reporter on an evening newspaper in Portsmouth, UK, many years ago, I recall a senior telling me it was “better than working”. Somehow, it stuck, even though working for yourself in this industry isn’t always rated as a “real job”.

Perhaps that’s why Australian universities seem to train far more journalists than are accepted into the “traditional” industry. And why so many journalists leave for other roles.

One radical new career for a newspaperman is that adopted by former chief executive of APN Australian Publishing and PANPA director Mark Jamieson, who has just been elected mayor in GXpress’s local council area of the of the Queensland Sunshine Coast.

news liMiteD says 30,000 people are now paying for premium access to ‘The Australian’. Sadly, it looks like I’m not going to be among them.

Time’s up on the three-month ‘digital pass’ trial, and because I collect from the newsagent, the print edition I subscribe to via News Queensland, I can’t have a ‘print and digital’ bundle.

It’s a shame, but I can live without it: Ironically the only ‘premium content’ I have so far been unable to read is a puff by media writer Simon Canning (‘Positive start for paid online content strategy’) for the digital product’s readership.

I have spent time with the ‘Australian’ app on a few occasions, but it doesn’t bear comparison with that of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, which I turned to regularly when overseas for the PrintCity media event earlier this year. And that’s free.

When the automated renewal notice from News offered me a range of packages including print-and-digital a couple of weeks back, I thought that perhaps they’d resolved a stupid anomaly which has to do with the fact that my

forwardplanning2012Jul 10-11 WAN-Ifra Young Reader Summit Asia

Pacific, Bangkok, ThailandAug 15-16 SWUG New Zealand, Chateau on the

Park, Christchurch (www.swug.co.nz)Sep 2-5 WAN-Ifra 64th World Newspaper

Congress, Kiev, UkraineSep 6-7 PANPA/Newspaper Publishers Association

Future Forum, Sydney (www.panpa.org.au)

Sep 10-12 ASEAN Newspaper Printers conference, Sunway Lagoon Resort, Kuala Lumpur (https://sites.google.com/site/aseannp/)

Sep 26-27 WAN-Ifra India 2012, Pune, India.Oct 29-31 IfraExpo, Frankfurt, Germany

(www.ifraexpo.com)Nov 27-29 WAN-Ifra Digital Media Asia with Asia

Digital Media Awards, Kuala Lumpur (www.wan-ifra.org/events/digital-media-asia-2012)

2013Apr 14-17 NAA mediaXchange 2013, Hilton Bonnet

Creek, Orlando, Florida (http://mediaxchange.naa.org/)

June TBA 65th World Newspaper Congress and 20th World Editors Forum, Bangkok

Oct 7-9 IfraExpo, Berlin, Germany. 2014Mar 26-Apr 2 Ipex 2014, ExCeL Centre, Docklands, London

Contact the organisers for fuller information about any of the above events and to confirm dates. nngx

PEoPlEgxpress.net


vendornewsDaniel Faesser has succeeded Thomas Klumpp as managing director of Ferag Australia.

He moves to the Sydney-based post from Singapore, where he has headed sister company WRH Marketing Asia for the past four years. He gained experience at the group’s headquarters in Switzerland over the last 20 years before moving to Singapore, where his focus was South East Asia and greater China.

Faesser (pictured) says he is looking forward to establishing a close relationship with business partners in the “interesting” Australia/New Zealand market: “Serving it and remaining a stable and reliable partner to this industry is of top priority,” he says.

Ferag Australia has a staff of 30 in four centres, representing Ferag and a wide range of graphic arts machinery and consumables.

“With the new products to be launched at DRUPA, Ferag will provide publishers with even more tools to effectively process their work load and at the same time allows them to opt for additional revenue streams,” he says.

Klumpp took up a new role in Switzerland in April, and thanked customers and colleagues for their cooperation and “incredible support” over recent years: “To work in this market was a great privilege and I look forward to seeing you in the future in Europe or here in Australia/New Zealand,” he says.

Job van Hasselt has joined QI Press Controls’ famous ‘white suit brigade’.

The former managing director of manroland South East Asia has been appointed QI’s sales director for the Asia Pacific region

including Australia/New Zealand and India.

He brings 25 years’ experience of the Asian graphic arts market to role, extending from 1982 when he joined then manroland agent Print & Pack in Singapore as general manager.

A 20-year term with packaging machinery maker Bobst took him to Switzerland and Belgium, before returning to Asia to run factories in Shanghai and Japan. In 2007, he took the packaging industry experience to his own consultancy business, prior to joining manroland in 2009.

“QI are a young and enthusiastic company,” he says, “with a small but dedicated team. I’ve always worked for large companies in the past, and am looking forward to being part of their very focused operation.”

Kenneth Hansen has left the Langley-owned manroland South Asia and North Asia sales

and service operation to head a new business in Korea for rival KBA.

The new KBA Korea Co joins existing

sales and service subsidiaries in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Australia.

Initially, newspaper presses will still be handled from Germany or by German staff in China, but KBA Korea will look after commercial web, sheetfed and digital presses.

New managing director Hansen (54) joined KBA in mid April after 35 years in the Asian industry, the last eight as chief executive of manroland Northeast Asia. South Asia had recently been added to his responsibilities.

He says KBA has the broadest and most advanced product range of all press manufacturers and in many sectors leads the field in technology and innovation: “Korea’s vibrant and demanding print market offers enormous potential for growth, and I plan to build on KBA’s success to date,” he says.

Xu Lianjie, chief executive of Hengan International has been named RISI’s Asian chief executive of the year.

Xu is the deputy chairman and responsible for strategic planning, human resources and the overall management of the company, of which he was a founding shareholder.

Australian prepress industry veteran Bruce Wright – a pioneer of the transition to Postscript technology – has joined Dainippon Screen as its northern region sales manager.

Through his own company, Wright Technologies, he developed and marketed page assembly systems and links to connect high-end scanners to desktop publishing systems. One of these, the Wright Jupiter was used extensively in Australia, North America and Europe.

The appointment to Screen Australia comes after more than a decade with Heidelberg, and fills the vacancy following Peter Scott’s elevation to managing director.

Scott says Wright will be a tremendous source of help and advice to customers. “At a time when Screen is launching exciting new digital printing and workflow products at DRUPA, he will find even more avenues to apply his technical knowledge and commercial skills with Screen.”

Christoph Riess left WAN-Ifra, of which he was chief executive, at the end of March. Until a replacement is recruited, the role is being covered by three deputy chief executives, Manfred Werfel, Larry Kilman and Thomas Jacob, supported by chief financial officer Andreas Musielak.

CIP4 has honoured Agfa technology manager Koen Van de Poel with a fellowship for significant contributions to the JDF standard. He has served as chair of the CIP4 origination and prepress working group since April 2001. nngx

PANPA’s Mark Hollands takes a break: We hope he’ll be back!

pANPA chief executive Mark Hollands announced his

anticipated departure from the organisation in April heading overseas for a crime-writers’ festival.

There had been speculation that Hollands - credited with ‘saving’ PANPA and certainly the best thing that had happened to the Australian newspaper organisation for years - would leave since the takeover by TNW, an advertising-orientated conglomerate formed by major publishers. At SWUG, delegates were talking of the trip and the book, but Mark Hollands did not respond to requests for confirmation and further information.

TNW chief executive Tony Hale, who was appointed in 2006, a couple of years before Hollands joined PANPA from Dow Jones and Gartner, says his arrival “like the white tornado of the Ajax ads” saved the organisation from almost certain extinction.

In fact, PANPA had certainly gone through a series of poor appointments following the departure of longstanding executive director Frank Kelett, and was in a parlous financial state. The glory days of multistream PANPA conferences with 1000-plus attendances and strongly-supported exhibitions had passed.

If the organisation was in danger, it was because of traditional suppliers’ inability or unwillingness to continue bankrolling activities and events, and the major newspaper publishers’ new-found ability to work together.

Eventually, that ability spawned the reality that if they were paying for TNW

and the greater proportion of PANPA’s costs, they could call the tune, and PANPA moved from being a members’ association to an owned group earlier this year.

Hale credits Holland with a string of initiatives including the free Future Forum, revitalised Newspaper of the Year awards, an e-newsletter, sports rights negotiations and more recently, a vital role in defining a more effective model for the Australian Press Council.

“It is a testament to Mark that we have now come full circle and the newspaper industry will have one industry organisation to speak with a strong, single voice,” he says. “This was Mark’s vision.”

In the e-newsletter he created, tributes flow from senior industry executives including former PANPA president Joe Talcott, Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood, editor-in-chief of the ‘West Australian’ Bob Cronin, AAP editor-in-chief Tony Gillies, and Ross McPherson, executive chairman of McPherson Media Group.

Mark Hollands joined PANPA in May 2008 from Dow Jones, where he had been Asia Pacific sales director. Prior to that, he had worked for Gartner and IDG Communications after leaving News Limited (where he had held a variety of roles including technology editor of ‘The Australian’).

While this may be crime writing’s gain, it would be a shame if the knowledge he gained and shared – and the passion for the industry – were the Australian newspaper industry’s loss. But have a great break, Mark.Peter Coleman nngx

not the usa one: Nature abhors a vacuum, so I suppose it was inevitable News’ pullout should spawn a new Noosa paper... pity about the less than original masthead design, however!

http://careercast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fe7c0b201685123a06de4c063&id=3db92cec03&e=9cf4b89987

http://careercast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fe7c0b201685123a06de4c063&id=55060f4f36&e=9cf4b89987

http://www.panpa.org.au

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/ORLHHHH-Hilton-Orlando-Bonnet-Creek-Florida/index.do

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/ORLHHHH-Hilton-Orlando-Bonnet-Creek-Florida/index.do

gEnEricgxpress.net


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