ENTERING THE MICROZONE

Bad news for the ill-prepared post-press department: Customers don’t just want sub-ZIP zoning -- they want address-specific delivery. Or, as the Houston Chronicle's Jack Stanley put it: "Full-run is dead. Truck zones are useless -- a way of kidding yourself that you’re doing something that isn’t full-run. ZIP codes don’t cut it. Partial/split ZIPs are for amateurs. Carrier routes are a stopgap." Panelists during a Wednesday session offered advice on how to take the next step toward microzoning, the Holy Grail of distribution.

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MAPPING OUT SUCCESS

Kevin Burke of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described a cross-functional preprint team’s two-year efforts to understand and improve work processes. The team learned early on that the newspaper needed to map out work processes, the steps detailing how each job is done so problem areas can be identified and corrected.

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CUSTOMER SERVICE:
THIS IS GOING TO BE BIG

Wednesday’s first post-press session was called "Listening and Responding to Our Customers." Accordingly, the session’s first speaker was a customer, Anthony M. Gasparro, vice president of advertising for The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Inc. of Montvale, N.J., who urged newspapers to tackle demographic and address-specific targeting. Other speakers touted NAA's Quality Improvement Program as a big step in answering just that concern.

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MAILROOM VENDORS: HERE AND NOW?

A panel of leading post-press suppliers wrapped up the Post-Press segment of the SuperConference Wednesday with an Industry Outlook, sharing their perspectives on the issues and trends shaping the future of their businesses as well as the newspaper industry. Rick Ruffino, vice president of technology for The Record in Hackensack, N.J., spoke for many when he repeatedly said he was more interested in what they were doing now.

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DAYTON'S CYBER-FLIGHT

The award for coolest presentation at this year’s SuperConference goes to Stan Richmond, vice president of operations for Cox Ohio Publishing in Dayton. You could almost hear people’s jaws dropping at Tuesday’s session on hot new technologies, as Richmond took his audience on a high-speed computerized tour of the Dayton Daily News’ Print Technology Center.

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MEASURING MAILROOM EFFECTIVENESS

A kinder, friendlier and more scientific model for production has taken America’s newspapers by storm. Now how do we measure the effectiveness of what we’ve done? Employee involvement, auditing and recordkeeping with purpose, aiming all refinements at treating customers better and ensuring cross-functional communications were all good ideas, panelists during a Wednesday session agreed. But their techniques are as varied as workers posting notes on a wall to an inspirational bronze American Indian statue in the lobby of a Virginia book printer.

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'3 Ms' GENERATE BUZZ

Post-press managers and suppliers shared simple ideas for solving complex problems at Wednesday morning's Buzz Breakfast. Ideas covered three areas deemed critical to mailroom success: materials, manning and methods.

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POST-PRESS RETENTION

During a workshop on retaining mailroom employees, John Disera, vice president of production at Copley Chicago Newspapers/Fox Valley Press Inc.in Plainfield, Ill., described a plan that slashed new-employee turnover 45 percent.

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SAFETY BOOSTS RETENTION

One little-discussed way to improve mailroom retention should already be a company goal -- namely, safety, speakers during a Tuesday post-press session told attendees.

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FLEXIBLE BACKSTOP HITS HOME RUN

Walt Shrewsbury, packaging manager of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was awarded Wednesday the TechNews Best Practices Award in post-press for devising a flexible backstop allowing the insertion of odd-size inserts.

[ See ALL WINNERS ]

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