NICC’s EIO Rolls Out of Beta
The
NICC is open for business. With more than 1,125 newspapers and advertising
agencies on board, the new, Internet-based Electronic Insertion Orders
ad-transaction service provided by NAA’s NICC subsidiary formally
moved out of beta Jan. 8.
Intended to simplify the process of placing multimarket ad buys in newspapers, NICC’s EIO requires only "a willingness to accept ads, an Internet connection and a Web browser," says M. Blake Barker, NICC president and general manager. Advertisers use the online service to plan and place advertising, eliminating the arduous task of juggling a host of forms and a Rolodex full of contacts. NICC also sends advertisers consolidated invoices and tear sheets on behalf of participating newspapers.
Beta-testing of the service began in October, with The Dallas Morning News; Naples (Fla.) Daily News; News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.; Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.; The Tribune in Mesa, Ariz.; and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association participating. Feedback brought up "nothing substantial" in terms of operational issues, says Barker, though NICC "will continue to evolve the technology from the newspaper and advertiser standpoint."
For instance, the service will transition to Extensible Markup Language, providing "the hooks that can tie into legacy systems" to further streamline the process, according to Barker.
EIO uses a secure-socket-layer server to ensure security, and at launch will support the Internet Explorer browser on Windows-based computers. Support for IE on the Mac and Netscape Navigator on both Macs and PCs will follow shortly, Barker adds.
The service is free for advertisers; participating newspapers pay 1 percent
of the value of each ad placed, with a $75 maximum per ad. For more information,
visit www.nicc.net or contact Barker.
E-mail, barkb@naa.org; phone, (703)
902-1692. 
Tribune’s Cash-Free ATM
To link its far-flung broadcast, print and new-media operations, Tribune Co. of Chicago is building a high-speed data network. AT&T will build the companywide network using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology, a private high-speed packet networking protocol that can carry voice, data and video. Tribune will be among the first companies to use the technology’s multicast capabilities, which take high-bandwidth information from a single ATM "virtual circuit" and simultaneously transmit it to multiple locations.
"The high-speed network will give us the flexibility to instantaneously share content across our media businesses and swiftly transmit high-quality video programming at a cheaper rate than satellite transmission," says Jeff R. Scherb, Tribune’s senior vice president and chief technology officer.
In other words, all 22 of Tribune’s television stations could tap into the network to simultaneously broadcast breaking-news coverage. Programming for several stations also could be operated from a central location and transmitted to broadcasting facilities elsewhere, as Tribune already does with an Albany, N.Y., station that’s largely run out of the offices of its Boston affiliate.
AT&T is marketing ATM networking to media organizations and other high-bandwidth users. Tribune officials say their decision to take the plunge was accelerated by the company’s acquisition of Times Mirror Co. last year.
"Since [the] acquisition, Tribune has greatly enhanced the national
scale and scope of our major-market multimedia businesses," says
Scherb. "[The network] clearly is the building block to cost-effectively
and efficiently compete in the digital future."
Triple-Wide Press
On Drawing Board
Leveraging the gapless technology introduced on its Mainstream printing press, Heidelberg Web Systems will now offer publishers a triple-wide press.
"The newspaper industry has long envisioned the potential benefits of triple-width production," says Bob Brown, president of the Dover, N.H., company.
Chief among those benefits, argue Heidelberg officials, are speed and savings. By printing with a two-page-around by six-page-across plate-cylinder configuration, Heidelberg’s new Tristream will deliver 50 percent more pages than a conventional double-wide press. That productivity boost could help newspapers reduce towers and pasters by one-third, reducing the cost and size of a press line. The wider configuration also would shorten and simplify web leads, Heidelberg executives say.
Unlike the straight-format Mainstream, the Tristream will be capable of printing up to 80,000 copies per hour in straight-run mode, or 40,000 cph collect. By eliminating vibration where blanket gaps meet, Heidelberg’s gapless-blanket technology "allows us to operate one-by-four and two-by-six plate cylinders at very high speeds," says technical-sales specialist Peter Walczak.
A wider web also means greater potential for fan out caused by excessive water absorption, so Heidelberg developed a closed-loop system that automatically compensates. Officials claim the system reduces fan out in a four-high Tristream tower to the level of a typical four-high single-width tower.
The press can be configured with up to three formers across each level and up to three former levels, providing web leads for up to nine sections in straight-run production, or up to six sections per level collect.
Since its introduction at Drupa, Heidelberg’s Mainstream press has won a seven-press installation order from a British newspaper group, a move officials say bodes well for their foray into triples.
"The acknowledged advantages of triple-width production, the successful
demonstration of a gapless newspaper press and the endorsement of that
technology...have created a lot of interest," Walczak says.
Chicagoland Papers Expand
Two Chicagoland dailies are planning major expansions to their production facilities.
The Chicago Tribune will expand its 700,000-square-foot Freedom Center production center (TechNews, September/October 1999, p. 16) and build a new facility across the street devoted solely to Sunday packaging (pictured below). Over the next two years, the project will cost more than $100 million.
"Freedom Center was a newspaper operation innovation model when it was built almost 20 years ago," says Dick Malone, the paper’s senior vice president of operations and technology. "It’s time to make another significant investment...so we can continue to be the market leader 20 years from now."
Already home to 1,500 employees, Freedom Center will gain two stories and 120,000 additional square feet to accommodate packaging, storage and transportation logistics. An automated palletizing system developed by Schur Packaging Systems of Denmark that includes Quipp stackers and Dynaric tyers will be the largest installation of its kind at a U.S. newspaper. All told, some 2.3 miles of Ferag gripper conveyors will run through the plant once the expansion is complete.
The new, 115,000-square-foot building across Chicago Avenue from Freedom Center will replace a leased Sunday-inserting facility in Chicago’s Near West Side. The size of the Sunday product prompted officials to select collating equipment instead of inserters to help reduce production time (see story, p. 29).
Meanwhile, Paddock Publications of Arlington Heights, Ill., plans to build a 165,000-square-foot production center in Schaumburg (pictured above). The publisher of the Daily Herald also has ordered two presses from MAN Roland Inc. of Westmont, Ill., each capable of printing 48 pages. Equipment at the paper’s existing printing facility will be reconfigured as a third 48-page press. Currently, the paper is only capable of printing a 32-page live run.
Designed with features reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie
School of architecture, the 600-foot-long building "will grow naturally
from its site on the Illinois prairie," says Publisher Daniel E.
Baumann. "We believe it will be an important architectural feature
along a busy highway."
In BriefGiven just 120 days to build a production system from scratch before its Nov. 22 launch, the newly independent San Francisco Examiner selected a one-vendor, turnkey solution from Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., and its Baseview Products Inc. subsidiary. Atex Media Solutions of Bedford, Mass., halted development of its Omnex content-management system in favor of its Prestige product. It will also close its Omnex Technologies Inc. subsidiary. Pressing matters: The Star Tribune in Minneapolis is joining the 50-inch charge, converting to the narrower printing width in April. As part of a new 165,000-square-foot downtown facility project, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel purchased two 70,000 copy-per-hour presses from MAN Roland Inc. of Westmont, Ill. To be installed in a single press line, the 96-couple Regioman’s one-plate-around design will allow the News-Sentinel to cut plate usage in half and print up to 48 pages of color. And Tribune Publishing Co. of Columbia, Mo., selected a 48-unit Universal 45 press from Goss Graphic Systems Inc. of Westmont, Ill., to print the Columbia Tribune and The New York Times. PressPoint, a pioneer in print-on-demand publishing, has closed its doors. E-paper gets closer. Gyricon Media, newly spun off from Xerox Corp. of Palo Alto, Calif., will develop paper-thin screens, initially for in-store advertising. Two existing players, E Ink Corp. of Cambridge Mass., and Lucent Technologies of Murray Hill, N.J., jointly demonstrated working prototypes of a display built using printed plastic circuits. And Philips Electronics NV of Amsterdam created a stamp-sized plastic screen, which it plans to grow to portable-newspaper size. Along with releasing version 6.0 of its eponymous Photoshop application, Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose is developing a set of "network publishing" tools to provide common standards and systems for multimedia publishing. Meanwhile, at Adobe rival Quark, founder Tim Gill stepped down as chief technology officer to pursue philanthropic interests. The International Press Telecommunications Council formally released the first production-ready version of its NewsML multimedia markup language (TechNews, September/October 2000, p. 22). And the Internet-scanner concept (TechNews,
November/December
2000, p. 21) has reached new highs (or lows, depending on how
much of a Luddite and/or caffeine junkie you are). Digimarc Inc.
of Tualatin, Ore., is adding Java to... well, java, placing its
scannable digital watermarks on coffee cups. The rationale? While
skeptics may mock the notion of sitting down with a newspaper in
front of the family PC, few people dare face their computer without
a cup of coffee in hand. |