On Sept. 25-26, 37 of the industry's top color-reproduction experts gathered in Reston, Va., to begin working on a singularly ambitious goal: "To achieve consistent, accurate, high-quality color reproduction throughout the newspaper industry."
The NAA Newspaper Color Reproduction Quality Task Force assembled in response to advertisers' complaints about the quality of their color ads. Gail Champagne, vice president of automotive sales for the Newspaper National Network, illustrated the problem by presenting tearsheets from several different newspapers of a Chrysler Corp. ad. A supposedly red Dodge Stratus showed up "in colors that range from pink to brown," Champagne said, "and their green-car campaign was even worse than the red!"
The task force, chaired by Paul Lynch of the Chicago Tribune, later divided into four teams:
A separate but related NAA initiative, Partners-2000, will address the overall business relationship between advertisers and newspapers. Reproduction quality is but one of 11 quality criteria that Partners-2000 will examine. Other criteria include account-executive service, accuracy, positioning and communication. The Color Reproduction Task Force will continually update Partners-2000 on its progress.
The next meeting of the Color Reproduction Task Force will take place on Jan. 11 in Orlando, Fla., just prior to NAA's Newspaper Operations SuperConference. Anyone wishing to participate on the task force should contact Eric Wolferman, NAA's senior vice president of technology, by e-mail, wolfe@naa.org or call (703) 648-1183.
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