BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ

In a lively Pre-Press Buzz Breakfast Tuesday morning, discussion centered on two breaking technology issues -- digital advertising and the industry’s march to a 50-inch web.

As attendees munched on muffins and fruit, two facilitators passed microphones from table to table. Some attendees requested the mic to ask questions, others to answer, and still others to do both.

In answering a question on how newspapers are handling ads that arrive by e-mail, John McKinney of The Oregonian in Portland told the story of an ad that arrived with the words "the home of uncaring service" in the lower left corner. Another ad, from a different customer, arrived carrying the words, "the home of bad-ass service." Neither advertiser nor the newspaper noticed either instance of digital graffiti, and both found their way into the printed product.

"Both ads came to us at the last minute," said McKinney. "We need to build in a process where we send a final proof to the advertiser."

Most attendees responding to the question do accept e-mail ads, but only as a last resort, preferring ad-delivery services such as AP’s Adsend and their own FTP sites on the World Wide Web.

Some papers, however, are taking a stand against e-mailed ads. The San Francisco Newspaper Agency will accept only one ad via e-mail; after that, the customer must switch to another delivery method or the ad is refused.

The Los Angeles Times will require all ads to arrive via Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) by the end of 2000. Some attendees, however, cautioned that PDF is not a magic bullet. In particular, some are experiencing problems with version 4.0 of Adobe’s popular Acrobat software.

"Acrobat 4.0 causes our system to hang periodically," said one attendee.

"All color separations have the same density, and you get gray pictures," reported another. "We are fluctuating between Acrobat 3 and Acrobat 4."

Attendees seemed divided over whether to edit the color of incoming ads for optimal reproduction on press.

Said Paul Lynch of the Chicago Tribune, "We used to let it go on automatic pilot, but the colors were dark, muddy, terrible. Now we edit all color, and we haven’t had one complaint."

Responded Portland’s McKinney, "We don’t edit incoming color unless it’s an imminent disaster. Advertisers will look at editorial color and say, ‘Your color looks good; how come ours doesn’t?’ You can convince them that something happened on their end."

In responding to a question on whether NAA is going to change standard advertising units to accommodate 50-inch webs, Senior Vice President of Technology Tom Croteau said, "The current SAU is designed for a 13-3/4 inch page width. We have a dilemma—you can’t have two standards."

Accordingly, Croteau said that the current goal is not to set a new standard, but simply to reach a consensus on critical dimensions among newspapers that have moved, or plan to move, to 50 inches.

-Clark Robinson