Zap Your Tear Sheets
by Christopher J. Feola
We’re all digital now, from the reporters’ clattering keyboards to the paginators’ huge, glowing monitors. We go direct to digital pages, and soon to digital plates, producing mountains of neatly folded newspapers that arrive still warm at the trucks.
Then we tear ads out one-by-one and mail tear sheets off to our advertisers.
Smacks of the archaic, doesn’t it?
Sooner or later, computers will reach into every nook and cranny of our lives, or so the story goes. Why wouldn’t a digital destiny overtake the humble tear sheet?
"Electronic tear sheets are a fast, consistent method of providing publication-performance and positioning information," agrees John W. Iobst, NAA vice president of technical research. "Newspapers can build the process into their electronic-publication environment."
One company trying to bring the tear sheet into the 21st Century is CE Engineering of Loomis, Calif. Its Tear Tracker service replaces all those torn-out pages with a searchable CD-ROM of page scans. Along with current Tear Tracker clients, including The Ventura County (Calif.) Star and the Houston Chronicle, at least 50 newspapers are considering the service for 2000, company officials say.
Tear Tracker provides third-party verification to advertisers, says John Ferra, CE’s general manager. It links page scans with the newspaper’s billing-information database, so electronic tear sheets are attached to searchable data including the advertiser, order number, ad size, number of tears requested, contact person and run date.
For publishers, that means a break from the grind of pulling tear sheets. "Most newspapers print extra copies of the newspaper and pull their tear sheets on a daily basis," says Ferra. "They also pay a premium in postage by sending them out every day. [Tear Tracker] alleviates the pressure to perform the task daily. It provides an entire archive of the newspaper that can be searched and retrieved in an organized fashion."
Ferra says CE has identified 19 areas of savings within a newspaper organization.
Still, "the perception at many newspapers is that advertisers won’t accept electronic tear sheets," Ferra admits. In reality, CE’s experience has proven just the opposite. "The newspapers using this service from us and those that do not share many of the same advertisers"–including JC Penney, Macy’s, Montgomery Ward, Circuit City–"and on and on it goes," Ferra says.
"A well-implemented electronic tear-sheet process should increase advertiser satisfaction," Iobst argues. "Combined with a shorter billing cycle and electronic funds transfer, a newspaper should be able to reduce receivables and have a better cash flow."
A number of work-flow challenges do exist, Iobst cautions, including "capturing the request, communicating the requirements to the production area, and distributing the information."
Feola is senior editor for information commerce and technology at Belo Interactive Media. E-mail, cfeola@belo.com.