Morris, Saxotech Split
by Heidi Ernst
After about 10 months of testing the Saxopress Publishing System, Morris Communications Corp. and Saxotech on Oct. 15 ended their business ties, which once included plans for Morris to market the system to other U.S. papers.“Changing business needs during the past year for both companies prompted the decision to end our relationship,” Dan Doughtie, Morris Computer Services’ Saxotech project director, said in a press release.
Saxotech of Aalborg, Denmark, and Morris, headquartered in Augusta, Ga., have both shied away from defining “changing business needs” in detail, but Doughtie has said that Saxotech still has a good product and that the decision was strictly business. Werner Elhauge, co-founder, director and chief technology officer of Saxotech, notes that the two companies have a good relationship that his firm would like to continue.
The Saxopress test reached the features desk and part of sports at Morris’ flagship paper, The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, before it was terminated. A flat-file version ran from March through mid-September, and a database version picked up through the October announcement. In addition, a flat-file version of the system was used from June through October at Morris’ twice-weekly Columbia County (Ga.) News-Times.
One feature that drew Morris to Saxopress was the system’s platform independence. Because it uses the same data on both Macintosh and Windows NT platforms, newspapers can use Macs or PCs—or both—in every phase of production. Doughtie also cited the integration of layout, images and text to allow “drop-and-drag” publishing, and the ability to competently handle automated image processing and agate (“One of best I’ve seen so far,” he says). But the teams encountered delays correcting and tuning the software and found that more changes—and in some cases, more permanent changes—were needed (among them, resolving some cross-platform issues and “Americanizing” the system, including a language change from Danish to English and related fixes of such features as American spell-checking).
The December 1997 press release that announced the test with the “possibility of installing the system in [Morris] newspaper properties” also said that Morris was “offered U.S. distribution rights.” Within about six months, Saxotech decided to market Saxopress itself after “observations and feedback from the American market,” says Elhauge. Saxotech is currently recruiting staff for its new Maryland-based U.S. subsidiary, where it will sell software that’s now “ready for the American newspaper market,” says Elhauge.
The Daily Sentinel in Rome, N.Y., is showing preliminary interest, primarily for the system’s “functionality, as well as integrated Internet and cross-platform capabilities,” according to Publisher Stephen Waters. Launched in 1992, Saxotech now lists 52 companies as clients, most in Europe.
As for Morris’ next step, a search team is combing through a short list of vendors. The company’s holdings in 20 states and England include 31 dailies and seven nondailies, among other mostly media outlets. Of those papers, eight use the Morris Publishing editorial system, and about 20 others use Baseview. “We want to strengthen our ability to share resources and give employees the ability to move from property to property so they don’t have to relearn [a system] when they arrive,” says Doughtie. Part of that new system will most likely include some of the modular Saxopress applications. The termination of the business relationship, adds Doughtie, “doesn’t change the fact that they’ve got some pieces we find quite useful.”
Ernst is a Flushing, N.Y., free-lance writer. E-mail, heidi_ernst@timeinc.com; phone, (212) 522-7437.
Color Quality Club Welcomes New Members
Nearly 170 newspapers worldwide applied for entry into the NAA/IFRA International Newspaper Color Quality Club, submitting printed test pages and photos for evaluation.Only 36 made the grade.
“The newspapers selected are doing an extraordinary job of printing color. They truly are examples of excellence,” comments Eric Wolferman, NAA senior vice president of technology. “As technology continues to improve, we expect membership in the INCQC to grow along with it.”
The following newspapers earned two-year club memberships.
North America: Chicago Tribune; The Plain Dealer, Cleveland; The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch; The Evansville (Ind.) Courier; Los Angeles Times; Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser; The New York Times; Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y.; Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press; The Tampa Tribune; The Toronto Star.
Europe: Oberösterreichische Nach-richten, Linz, Austria; Het Belang Van Limburg, Brussels, Belgium; Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen, Denmark; Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, Finland; Die Woche in Hamburg, Frankfurter Rundschau in Frankfurt, Main Echo in Aschaffenburg, Schwäbische Post in Aalen, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in Essen, and Westfälische Rundschau in Dortmund, Germany; Morgunbladid, Reykjavik, Iceland; Aftenposten, Oslo, Norway; Delo, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Basler Zeitung in Basel, Blick in Zurich, Brückenbauer in Zurich, Le Matin in Lausanne, St. Galler Tagblatt in St. Gallen, and Schaffhauser Nachrichten in Schaffhausen, Switzerland; Yorkshire Post Newspapers Ltd. in Leeds, Leicester Mercury, Evening Herald and Western Morning News in Plymouth and Herald Express in Torquay, United Kingdom.
Latin America: La Nacion, San Jose, Costa Rica.
Evaluation included a colorimetric evaluation of a printed target, visual evaluation of overall quality, and an evaluation of a published general interest photo conducted by a panel of seven independent newspaper-quality experts from the United States and Europe. Newspapers earning more than 225 of 300 possible points were awarded club membership.
The awards were presented in October at the IFRA Congress and Expo in Lyons, France. Recognition ceremonies also will be held during NAA’s Newspaper Operations SuperConference, Jan. 10-15, 1999, in Orlando. Applications for future club membership will be available in 1999.