PRESSMAKERS' FUTURE PRESENT

The six companies still active in the U.S. rotary-press market plan to demonstrate new technologies this year, representatives said during Friday's final session. But while future gear waits to be seen, touched and heard, press manufacturers addressed existing issues raised by an earlier panel of newspaper-industry executives. Among them: project support for installation, parts availability and the shape of the industry.

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INSTALLATION ROUNDUP
REVEALS COMMON ISSUES

During the first half of a two-part Press & Materials session on printing issues and answers, a slew of production executives shared tales of press installations. Individual experiences varied, but common themes emerged as executives looked back at headaches suffered and lessons learned.

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TRAINING GENERATES BUZZ

Finding, training and keeping good press operators and apprentices remains one of the industry's biggest headaches. But during the SuperConference's final buzz session Friday morning, the consensus was that extensive training, including some college-level work, was helping keep good people.

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INCISION DECISIONS ACCELERATE

Moves to 50-inch web widths gathered steam in 1999 and will gain even more momentum this year, a panel of newspaper production managers predicted Thursday. "The theory that the pace is accelerating is accurate," says Robert Palermini, manager for publishing technology at the Chicago Tribune, who led the Press & Materials segment panel. "I think in the future we’ll be seeing an increasing number of conversions."

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VENDOR PARTNERSHIPS:
WALKING THE WALK

Newspapers often talk the talk about wanting closer relationships with their suppliers. According to at least one of those suppliers, the St. Petersburg Times also walks the walk. Its vendor meetings, which unite suppliers and line workers to tackle common problems, are based upon a simple concept: Since offset printing relies so heavily on the interaction of a variety of materials -- ink, paper, chemistry, blankets and newsprint, not to mention the printing press itself -- why not bring together the same mix of suppliers and see how they work together?

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CTP: EARNING RESPECT

Computer-to-plate technology converts reported that they gained quality, cut costs and got promised results from newly installed equipment. "I’m not going to stand here and say it’s been great fun and you can just plug and play," said Jimmy Morton of The Dallas Morning News. Perhaps not, but at newspapers big and small, panelists at a Thursday afternoon session said CTP is slowly but surely proving itself.

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NEW TOOLS TACKLE OLD PROBLEMS

Press & Materials segment attendees were wowed Thursday morning by an encore presentation of e-book developments. But they also welcomed discussion of new solutions for more traditional press problems, including precision color controls common on sheetfed press systems and a new system promising to eliminate the paper dust in web press operations.

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DOTMATIC CALIBRATION

Greg Imhoff used a simple rubber ball to illustrate a complicated, even controversial concept behind a classic calibration procedure. By asking an assistant to bounce the ball on the floor, he sought to show attendees the microscopic flaw hidden within newspapers’ densitometer use.

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MEET THE NEW BOSS

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Maybe at most newspaper operations, but not at Interweb Ontario, the Mississauga-based printer of The Globe and Mail. In its shop, there are no bosses. Everyone’s a member of a team that oversees one of five key areas. How does this “self-managed organization” work? Simply put, it requires top-notch personnel.

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JOIN THE (COLOR) CLUB

While deadlines have passed, it’s never too late to start trying to meet the standards required to join the International Newspaper Color Quality Club, said Tom Croteau, NAA's newly named senior vice president for technology.

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NARROWING THE WINDOW
FROM IDEA TO INK

Carolyn Vesper Bivens kicked off the SuperConference Press & Materials segment by stating a simple goal -- to give her advertisers the flexibility to “change an ad on the newsstand.” Well, perhaps not, USA Today’s associate publisher and senior vice president for advertising admitted during her Thursday morning keynote speech. “But that’s a goal.... and the time between idea and ink is narrowing.”

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BEST PRACTICES: TWO FROM TWO

Maintenance Manager Jorge Pineda and Mechanical Technicians Walter Romero and Juan Carlos Galindo of Guatemalan publisher Prensa Libre S.A. were recognized for not one, but two outstanding press innovations. The first solves the ubiquitous fan-out problem on tower presses (see image at right), the second an irritating and costly parts problem on automatic web pasters.

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Browse the Press & Materials segment schedule