Ergonomics Repeal,
Then Revival?
Although a federal ergonomics standard has been squelched for the moment, state regulations and recommended standards from third-party groups still loom on the horizon.
President George W. Bush signed a Congressional resolution repealing the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s final ergonomics standard March 20.
The rule, which industry groups said was unduly burdensome and broad, would have required all businesses to establish an ergonomics program by Nov. 14 if an employee is injured by, or at risk for, a musculoskeletal disorder, such as carpal-tunnel syndrome or lower back pain (TechNews, January/February 2001, p. 32).
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” cautions Don Hensel, NAA environmental, health and safety serv-ices manager.
“Even though an OSHA regulation is no longer imminent, there are other standards to be concerned about,” he adds.
California and Washington, for instance, have state ergonomics standards. North Carolina had a regulation, Hensel says, but it was recently withdrawn.
Meanwhile, the National Safety Council in Itasca, Ill., and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists in Cincinnati are drafting standards addressing MSDs. These standards would be voluntary, says Hensel, but OSHA could reference them when drafting a new ergonomics regulation.
OSHA “could rewrite the rule, develop a voluntary standard or enforce good ergonomic practices through its General Duty Clause, as it does today,” observes Paul Boyle, NAA vice president of government affairs.
Bush alludes to continued work on the issue, noting in a statement that “together, we will pursue a comprehensive approach to ergonomics that addresses the concerns surrounding the ergonomics rule repealed today.”
So what should newspapers do in the meantime? Hensel urges executives to begin developing a written ergonomics program that:
- Tells employees how to report and identify MSDs
- Fosters employees and management working together to generate a plan and solution
- Evaluates each job, breaking it into components and identifying and fixing any parts that could lead to an MSD
- Trains workers to adjust their chairs or operate machinery correctly to prevent MSDs
- Provides access to medical care when someone is injured on the job.
Once a program is in place, it should be periodically reviewed and updated,
Hensel says. 
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Signode’s
StrapperA 50-Inch Majority?
It’s far from official, but the 50-inch printing web may soon be the prevailing size among U.S. dailies.
When NAA surveyed newspapers last year, the 554 responding dailies were almost perfectly divided into quarters: Some 26.4 percent had already converted to 50-inch webs, 26 percent were committed to converting, 22.9 percent were considering conversion, and the remaining 24.7 percent were not planning a change (TechNews, September/October 2000, p. 30).
By year’s end, more than 95 percent of respondents that were committed to converting had already done so, bringing the total percentage of 50-inch papers among the survey group to around 52 percent–“a marginal majority,” says NAA Senior Vice President of Technology Tom Croteau. In addition, more than 65 percent of the papers that were initially considering conversions have since decided to make the switch.
But that may be just the beginning. Particularly in Canada, where the
50-inch move first began a half-decade ago, there’s talk of the possibility
of moving to 48- or 49-inch printing webs. Here we go again!
TechNews, Up Against the WallFive TechNews posters, each bringing a key operational area to life with vivid, easy-to-understand illustrations, are now available through NAA’s fulfillment center.
From Newsprint Web to World Wide Web (item 10090) shows how newspapers are extending their brands into the online world and explores how their Internet strategy relates to the traditional printed newspaper. Meet the Press Tech-nologies (item 10067) details the principles of newspaper printing, using a cut-away view of a four-high color tower for reference. The poster compares and contrasts the three major printing methods and explores future technologies. Technology Timeline (item 60037) traces innovations in newspaper technology from Gutenberg to the World Wide Web, and offers predictions of key events through the year 2015. TechNews’ inaugural poster, Less Is More (item 60036) illustrates the entire scope of newspaper production, highlighting how such cutting-edge technologies as digital cameras, computer-to-plate, shaftless presses and strapless bundling promise to eliminate steps in the process. Posters cost $4.50 each for members; $9 for
nonmembers; quantity discounts are available. To order, call (800)
651-4622, and reference code TECH. |
Pictured
at right, Editorial Evolution (item 10100) details the many changes
in the way news makes its way to the printed page. Three illustrated
panels explore in detail the major phases of newspaper production
in the past century–hot metal, cold type and pagination–and
a fourth depicts newspapers’ multimedia future.‘E-City’ Plant
Tops New Facilities
In a world of one-paper towns and dwindling PM flags, Hawaii seems an unlikely place for a newspaper war. But following the dissolution of a 39-year-old joint operating agreement, The Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin are competing head-to-head, each offering morning and afternoon editions.
To
compete, Advertiser parent Gannett Pacific is building a new, $70 million
production facility on an 11.6-acre site in the Kapolei “e-city,”
a planned urban center that hopes to rival downtown Honolulu by offering
a state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure. “This gives
us the ability to build one of the most technologically advanced printing
facilities in the country,” says President and Publisher Mike Fisch.
The subsidiary of Gannett Co. in Arlington, Va., plans to spend $40.6
million on new offset printing presses and other equipment and move about
400 jobs to the new facility, scheduled to open in early 2004. Business
and news offices will remain in Honolulu.
Back on the mainland, the Omaha World-Herald’s $125 million, three-building construction project is nearing completion. Considered an early spark to the $1 billion of development now under way in Omaha’s downtown, the five-story Freedom Center (pictured) will go online in September. It is connected by underground tunnel to a material-storage center featuring an automated newsprint-handling system. An adjacent 580-stall parking garage was completed last year.
In Nova Scotia, The Halifax Herald Ltd. purchased a shaftless WIFAG OF 370 press. The Swiss-built press will be installed at a greenfield facility in Halifax. Meanwhile, a defunct, 120,000-square-foot steel factory will be renovated to house a new production center and new presses for The Intelligencer of Wheeling, W. Va.
And Internet surfers can get a girder-by-girder look at construction
of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s new 448,750- square-foot production
center and warehouse, which will include three shaftless KBA presses.
Since groundbreaking last summer, construction on the $106.6 million project
has been updated every minute on the paper’s “presscam”
(www.jsonline.com/general/presscam).
In BriefDigital Technology International of Springville, Utah, partnered with Norfolk, Va.-based InfiNet to offer its publishing systems using the application-service-provider model. Cox Newspapers Inc. of Atlanta has long used DTI’s systems across a wide-area network (TechNews, March/April 2001, p. 8), and “some of the same cost-saving benefits...will be made possible through InfiNet’s database-hosting model,” says CEO Don Oldham. Atex Media Solutions of Bedford, Mass., also partnered with InfiNet to offer its PrestigeWeb online-publishing system as an ASP. Bowater Inc. of Greenville, S.C., and other newsprint manufacturers continued taking downtime through the spring. With its purchase of Alliance Forest Products, Bowater gains a new recycled-newsprint mill in Alabama–and decides to convert an existing newsprint machine at its Catawba, S.C., mill to coated papers. In late February, the Los Angeles Times’ food section went live on its NewsDesk system from CCI Europe of Denmark. With installation of what has been dubbed the world’s largest editorial system–more than 1,200 seats–on schedule, the Times is expected to completely switch over to CCI by the end of next summer. Some 85 percent of respondents to a computer-security study detected security breaches last year, with 64 percent experiencing financial losses totaling at least $378 million, according to a survey by the Computer Security Institute of San Francisco and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Seventy percent of respondents cited the Internet as the point of attack, compared with 59 percent last year. Italian editorial-system developer Tera signed a distribution agreement with Autologic Information International of Thousand Oaks, Calif., which will sell Tera products with its own production and output systems. The end goal is to more closely integrate production tracking, company officials say. Likewise, CCI Europe partnered with German production-system developer Pape & Partner International to develop a two-way Extensible Markup Language-based interface between the two companies’ systems. The Canadian Pulp and Paper Association of Montreal changed its name to Forest Products Association of Canada and turned its Pulp and Paper Products Council into a separate entity. The New York Times partnered with NewsStand Inc. of Austin, which will offer electronic “single-copy” editions that closely mirror the layout of the printed Times. The Austin American-Statesman is also testing the technology; Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. calls the subscription-based system “the missing link” between print and online. With online-advertising rates continuing to fall, New York Times Digital is testing a variety of other premium paid services, though its core content will remain free. But the Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin plans to cut off free access to its Web site to nonsubscribers completely. Danish editorial-systems developer SaxoTech merged with Norweigan WebPlan AS. The companies have worked together since 1999, offering Web-publishing systems in place at The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, and several other U.S. customers. Call it wishful thinking, but a then-trainee
reporter at the weekly Solihull News in England claims to
have invented the concept of word processing after a long lunch
break in 1960. But Morris Price and his coworkers quickly realized
that “such devices would exist only late in our lives, if ever,
and would never be entrusted to newspaper hacks,” he recalls
on his World Wide Web site (www.angelfire.com/ab/mo/wordpro.html).
Naturally, Price overlooked patenting the idea, observing “that
combination of visionary thinking and sheer unworldliness [that]
characterizes most reporters [and] helps to explain why so few become
rich.” |