by Karen Doss

A technical newsprint steering group comprising representatives from NAA, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and the American Forest & Paper Association is proposing that an acrylic newsprint-shaded tile serve as a reference for producing newsprint and matching shades. According to Bill Hee, newsprint manager at The New York Times and a member of the steering group, finding a single acceptable newsprint shade is a top concern of both newsprint manufacturers and newspapers.

“If you look at newsprint samples separately, it’s difficult to notice differences in shading,” says Ruth Bohner, NAA’s director of production materials. “But if you look at many pieces together, you start seeing differences.”

Newsprint samples may vary in shades of pink or green and be dark or light; recycled paper also may have tiny speckles. Newspapers have their own preferred shading and send measured specifications to the mills. For every preferred shade, a set of three parameters—lightness, red/green measure and yellow/blueness portion—are each assigned numbers. The newsprint manufacturer then matches the numbers to produce the desired shade. The problem, however, is that newspaper labs and paper mills may have different machinery, and the instruments may be calibrated differently.

“Mills produce color according to the request, but the machinery is different,” Bohner says. “So the newspapers don’t always get the color they expected.”

To get around this problem, committee members decided to develop a newsprint-shaded, 2-inch-by-2-inch, matte-finished acrylic tile as a common reference point. Samples of newsprint from mills located in the northeastern, southern and western United States were evaluated to help determine the initial shade of the reference tile. Before it can be used in a production environment, the tile must be tested, as it is currently unknown whether all mills can cost-effectively produce newsprint that will match its shade.

Acrylic tiles are preferable to actual newsprint swatches because they are more durable and easy to mass produce, according to John D’Alessandro, NAA production-materials assistant manager. Once the committee receives the tile samples, they will take at least a month to test them.

Why is newsprint shade important? “To get everyone on the same page, no pun intended,” says D’Alessandro. “We want pages to look much the same for consistency.”

Dale Stisser, processing manager at NORPAC, adds that uniform shading is important for accurate advertising reproduction. Having received complaints from advertisers and publishers alike, he sees a trend toward a single newsprint shade.

“If John Deere runs a national ad, it needs to have the same green color in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune,” he says. “We need to make sure the brightness, shade and opacity are consistent from region to region.”

Doss is a free-lance writer based in Bridgewater, Va. E-mail, kdoss@bridgewater.edu; phone, (540) 828-5720.

Pressline Services Inc. began conversion work in February. Four presses in the paper’s northwestern St. Louis County plant were converted to 52 inches in July. Two presses at its downtown plant were operational Aug. 10. The two-inch change should pay for itself within 11 months.

While some newspapers have purchased new presses with 50-inch webs, the Post-Dispatch decided that would be too narrow. Because of its long cutoff, the Post-Dispatch opted for 52 inches to make the paper look proportional.

Plate changes were made “by simply changing some parameters when processing the negative,” says Jim Gore, Pressline’s general manager. The image area is reduced anomorphically from side to side, but not top to bottom.

“If it would have gone any smoother, it would have been scary,” adds pressroom superintendent Terry Head. “Everything went perfectly.”

TechNews Volume 4, Number 6: November/December 1998

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