The completely electronic workflow

by David M. Cole
The author is a San Francisco newspaper consultant.

John Oppedahl, newly anointed publisher and chief executive officer of the San Francisco Chronicle, picks up the tiny Motorola StarTAC telephone sitting on the restaurant table, flips it open and says, “Get me the Chronicle. Hello, Chronicle, give me the three best restaurants in San Francisco. Give me the score of last night’s Raiders game. Give me the latest news on the Supreme Court decision.” Oppedahl then flips the phone closed, puts it back down on the table, and smiles.

“You think that’s a faraway scenario? I’ve seen technology that leads me to believe it’s only months away.”

The longtime newspaper executive’s mock demo of voice-recognition technology over a cellular phone probably would have provoked laughter last year. But a decade ago, they laughed when visionaries talked about delivering newspaper content to wireless devices. And today, another dream approaches fact: The last little bits (no pun intended) are in place to allow publishers to create all-digital print and online newspapers, from creation to delivery.

The long-sought nirvana of an all-digital publishing operation offers many blessings: quality control, later deadlines, efficiency, a variety of distribution channels, and probably, more profit.

One all-digital U.S. newspaper already exists, with one more on the horizonÐthe San Francisco Examiner and the Honolulu Star Bulletin, respectively. The Examiner’s technical glitches illustrate the headaches of publishing digitally with no legacy system to fall back on. Other publishers have technologies acquired during the last 30 years, some that have yet to pay out on the investment. These legacy analog methods that must be preserved, for whatever political or economic reasons, prevent executives from converting to, or even contemplating, a completely digital world.

But the fact that publishers won’t replace those systems doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. While very few newspapers in North America can claim to be all digital, many are 90 percent of the way there.

To get a handle on how a publisher could create an all-digital environment, Presstime went to a dozen industry players and asked them to sketch out how they would start a newspaper from scratch. Rather than dwell on specific hardware or software, which tends to be dictated as much by budgets as real needs or wants, we advised them to step back and outline the big picture, looking at workflow and the impact the changes will have on jobs.

We call this paper The Clean Slate. It begins as a traditional ink-on-paper, advertiser-supported product for subscription and single-copy sales, and it uses technologies available “today,” conveniently defined as no further than six months into the future. But keep in mind, as one panelist says, that anyone developing a new print newspaper today would consider it one facet, if the central one, of a multimedia news and information agency, extending beyond those ink-on-paper pages.

Duly noted.

THE DATABASE
All the panelists emphasize the notion of a universal database as the nucleus of development—”one hell of a core database that can hold everything, no matter what format,” explains Kerry J. Northrup, technologies editor of Ifra, the Darmstadt, Germany-based international association for newspaper and media technology.

“The ultimate system must know everything possible,” adds Dennis Nierman, president of Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill. “Subscriber and nonsubscriber profiles, advertiser profiles and demographics, and all the news that’s fit to print.”

Nierman outlined his ultimate system: It would be an enormous standard database capable of providing any information at high speed and in standard formats to a group of unrelated subsystems. It would perform daily operational tasks in print; on the Internet; via fax, audio, video or wireless; or any combination thereof. “Each subsystem reports its actions and progress to the database, allowing progress to be monitored from anywhere in the operation,” says Nierman.

H. Grady Cooper, an executive with Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., seconds Nierman’s view. Harris developed one of the largest electronic page-makeup facilities in North America at ANG Newspapers Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif. He says the value of the newspaper lies in its ability “to store, retrieve, search, back up and charge for the use of data.”

The team that planned and executed the start of the post-joint-operating-agreement San Francisco Examiner chose Harris, and Cooper, to develop the technology necessary to publish a paper, much as in our hypothetical situation. Databases figure prominently in that plan.

“We store dozens of types of files,” says Cooper. “In theory, we could even use a database to distribute software. Technically, we could do it now, but I don’t think the market is ready.”

If a second overriding theme rises from panelists, it is the word “intranet.” Using the same technologies as the World Wide Web, an intranet reaches only employees and provides an operationwide port for internal communications. Conversely, an “extranet” networks customers of a company within a contained environment.

Dave Gray, executive director of the Society for News Design in Providence, R.I., and a former editor at The Providence Journal, would hook up “the whole operation with a strong intranet and with browsers doing 90 percent of the work.” He’d add functions such as automatic verification of forms and improved user interfaces to maximize such systems.

An intranet can supply an all-digital newspaper with vital and exciting information—specifics such as community property and voter-registration records for news gathering, as well as a universal, ongoing status report as work moves through the channels and out to its distribution points. It also offers mundane information that’s part of a day’s work—expense reports, office-supply requests, or payroll information. And it can help build community among workers, reporting the scores of the staff softball teams or providing a bulletin board to announce graduations or births. Up-to-date staff directories, with work- and home-phone numbers and e-mail addresses, can be easily shared. Security methods can limit availability of certain kinds of information only to top managers.

Extranets, like some outside services, can distribute proofs of display and classified advertising, make marketing information available to potential advertisers, and coordinate orders and deliveries with suppliers.

All of which relates back to that core database, which is also integral to any new-media efforts. It allows versioning of stories and other content for different media, tracks online and print customers, and provides a common stage for various departments whatever their form.

THE NEWSROOM
George Landau, a former editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and founder and president of NewsEngin Inc. of Narberth, Pa., says, “We must move beyond the thinking that newspaper technology is a pagination system.” Indeed, he says, the industry may need to rethink the newsroom entirely.

Northrup, former writer, photographer and editor at U.S. newspapers, agrees. He envisions the all-digital newspaper’s physical newsroom as a smaller place.

“I’d want to use communications and collaboration tools to let my staff be out in the community and business districts, where news happens and sources are, rather than concentrated in an arbitrary central location,” he says.

Jack Stanley, senior vice president for operations and technology of the Houston Chronicle, takes that notion further. “A newsroom could just as easily be scattered across seven continents.”

The Honolulu Star Bulletin, exiting a joint-operating agreement and free to make technological choices, has in fact negotiated a contractual agreement with the Hawaii Newspaper Guild permitting half of the paper’s 60 editorial employees to telecommute. Though Star Bulletin executives were not willing to confirm the scenario, it appears that most of these editorial employees will have high-speed data lines provided by the newspaper in their homes.

Northrup has been working on the idea of the untethered journalist for a few years, heading up the Center for Advanced News Operations. It recommends a series of readily available technologies that allow journalists to function outside the newsroom. Recently, Northrup debuted the latest version of NewsGear (see Digital Reporter ).

Global-positioning systems will allow editors to identify the reporters closest to a breaking news story, says Northrup, and unshackle news gathering while keeping journalists electronically tethered to the central operations. “Mobile phones for everyone, even folks who are in fact in the newsroom, so that no one is tied down to a desk waiting for a call,” he advocates.

Northrup also proposes that all newsroom workers have laptops with wire- and wireless-network connections.

Jim Mosley, an executive with NewsEngin and another former Post-Dispatch editor, says that cell phones should be set up to use the least expensive dual-bands, with rate plans that encourage use and protect newspapers’ bottom lines. If laptops connect via cell-phone modems, news workers should be given global Internet access.

John VanBeekum, a former photographer and systems editor at The Miami Herald, projects the notion of the mobile news gatherer into the field.

“On breaking news, the longer you stay close to the scene, the fresher the news will be,” says VanBeekum. “This benefits paper publications by feeding news up to the deadline, and it benefits instant-access media by continually updating the story.” That means all-digital tools for every news sourceÐemployees, free-lancers or wire-service employeesÐin the field, in the office or on the Internet.

Cooper also would make sure that photographers develop skill in digital still and video photography.

“Video cameras for newspapers? They’re a good tool. If you’re going to be on the Web, they give you good value, and there’s just the innate [appeal] of having the moving pictures.”

Though cameras that produce stills and video are available, the resolution probably isn’t good enough for professional work. “They’re actually using two cameras in places like [Florida’s] Tampa [Tribune], and that may be the answer at this moment.”

ADVERTISING
When Harris’ Cooper talks about advertising, he starts from this point: “In today’s world, you don’t need to own everything.”

Specifically, Cooper points to the outsourcing of display-advertising makeup by a number of U.S. papers including those in the New York tri-state area, Southern California and the San Francisco Examiner. With more display-ad makeup handled by advertising agencies and advertisers, the final few ads now can be built by others.

Still, advertising places a big obstacle on the road to purely digital workflow. It’s always that last display ad that seems to hold the operation back.

Gray wouldn’t “turn away business” to keep the operation totally digital and cites an experience from South America to illustrate the ease of converting analog to digital: While at El Universal in Caracas, Venezuela, a couple of years ago, he watched customers come into the advertising department with nothing more than a business card to make up display ads. They’d open a three-ring binder and pick one of eight typesetting formats. The staff would scan the business card and make up the ad in front of the customer.

In an all-digital universe, ads created outside enter the workflow via an extranet or other electronic port, then wend their way to pages through the central system. The panelists mostly agree that to make up display advertising, all that is needed is a page-layout application such as QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign. The biggest hurdle for The Clean Slate was moving proofing from paper to screen. “Proofing should be all electronic,” says Cooper, “but that will be a hard habit to break.”

Many panelists note with glee that The Clean Slate would have no historical issues about pricing. As they are painfully aware, classified-advertising rates at most newspapers remain complex. Different classifications, run schedules and geographical zones merit different prices.

“If you could have a simple ad-rate structure, most newspapers could outsource classified advertising,” says Cooper.

He cites the features that AdStar.com brings to affiliated newspapers as one example of how outsourcing could work. AdStar maintains Web sites for placing newspaper classified advertising both on the Web and in print.

PRE-PRESS
Years ago, composing rooms of analog newspapers held big boards ablaze with light bulbs. Each represented a page and, if memory holds, all the bulbs were switched on at the beginning of an edition. Each was turned off as its representative page went to engraving.

That system provided an analog way of tracking page flow. An all-digital newspaper requires an all-digital page minder.

In this new world, “an editor or a production executive will check the status of a page through the Web or wireless,” predicts Al Brunner, president of Autologic Information International Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Citing European and North American examples such as the Reno Gazette-Journal, Brunner says that today’s systems can track page files all the way down to the press. Bar codes on the pages and bar-code readers at the plate processors allow managers to follow pages through platemaking, plate processing, and punching and bending. “At that point, a press person sees that it’s a decent plate, bar codes it and accepts the plate.”

Brunner suggests that tracking plates to the press raises employee morale by giving the workers who can’t leave until the last page is on the press a sense of control. With an online database that tracks pages, these workers can monitor progress and, when the last plate is bar-coded for the press, go home without waiting for an all-clear from the pressroom.

This scenario depends upon automated plate-processing and handling, of course. Brunner and most panelists assume that The Clean Slate would use computer-to-plate technologies rather than film.

Plate-pricing economics keep most North American newspapers from shifting to CTP, says Brunner. Still, a new paper with no relationships with plate suppliers would probably get CTP material at roughly the same cost as materials and processing of film-exposed plates.

On the horizon: the digital press (see Bytes Meet Metal).

KEEP MOVING ON
Discussing an all-digital newspaper made most panelists voluble and upbeat. But what policies would get an all-digital newspaper flying—and keep it current?

• NewsEngin’s Mosley suggested creating a standing technology committee for the newsroom. Why not for the entire plant?

• Mosley also suggested periodic outside technology audits to ensure workers are using the latest technologies in the best way. Integrating these technologies over time could bring the all-digital vision to life.

• Landau says that a new newspaper should “choose an application platform first, and choose it carefully.” An “application platform” establishes a “software foundation” for all applications. “We would deploy a platform that doesn’t force the staff to take sides in the Wintel-Mac debate.”

• Cooper points out that while it’s “nice to be digital,” an operation needs personnel. “You have to have somebody to notice that something has stopped working.” An all-digital paper could “starve itself” if understaffed, so plan accordingly.

Who knowsÐthose employees may one day instruct machines by voice to speed work along, much as Oppedahl pretended to use his phone to retrieve news.

Back at the restaurant, Oppedahl suggests that while in the recent past, newspapers had only one productÐink-on-paperÐtoday’s all-digital technology has given us four: print, Internet, wireless and, as he says, “aural,” or the two-way voice-recognition technology that he hypothetically demonstrated. Because of the advantages of an all-digital newspaper, Oppedahl predicts, “this is all going to be doable very, very soon.”