A strong economy and relatively stable prices spiked newsprint consumption 2.2 percent in 1998, according to year-end statistics released by NAA.

U.S. daily newspapers consumed 9.3 million metric tons in 1998, up from 9.1 million the year before, according to Association figures. Healthy year-end advertising growth boosted December consumption 4.7 percent over the same period in 1997.

Consumption growth continues as paper mills curtail even the meager increases in newsprint-production capacity seen over the past decade. The American Forest & Paper Association predicts North American newsprint capacity will remain flat over the next three years as conversions to groundwood paper grades offfset efficiency gains elsewhere.

Recent events bear out AF&PA's prediction. Abitibi Consolidated Inc. plans to shutter one of two newsprint machines at its Chandler, Quebec, mill, trimming annual production capacity by 110,000 metric tons. And Bowater Inc. announced plans to cut newsprint production by 35,000 metric tons at another Quebec mill during 1999.

For the past decade, newsprint capacity grew by an average 2 percent annually, according to AF&PA, which predicts zero production growth through 2001.

A recent study reported in E-Media Weekly says media professionals waste an average of nearly three minutes tracking down every file they reuse.

Enter one new solution to the age-old problem: Baseview's Production ManagerPro ad-tracking software, which tracks all components of a newspaper ad, keeping images and other associated components together as it moves through the production process. Whether stored on a network or a computer's hard drive, related items are displayed on the same "shelf," making files easy to find. Auditing features allow managers to track the time spent per user, per ad.

The system can store both the high- and low-resolution versions of ads, work with various open pre-press interfaces and create Portable Document Format files. Integrated with Baseview's AdManagerPro, Production ManagerPro can be customized to work with other business systems, say executives with the Ann Arbor, Mich., company.

Growing quality demands drove two significant midwinter press orders. To replace a press dating back to the early 1950s, the Omaha World-Herald ordered a 99-couple shaftless offset press from German press maker MAN Roland Inc. The new press is part of a production-facility expansion on a four-block downtown site expected to be complete by mid-2001.

Publisher John Gottschalk says quality drove the decision. "Our production facility and equipment are all choices we have made to achieve world-class quality standards for our papers and advertisers. With this selection we expect to be one of the finest-quality printed newspapers in the world."

The 18-reel, 250 foot-long press line will feature three folders, an automated color-register system and servo-controlled motors for each printing couple.

Meanwhile, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch opted to bolster its color-printing capabilities by ordering four ColorTop 6000 towers from TKS Inc. Scheduled to be delivered before this winter's critical holiday-advertising period, the towers will be added to four existing TKS presslines. They feature digital inking, as well as infeed and outfeed rollers for superior tension.

"We just found that we were running too much back-to-back four-color work and tying up press capacity," says Del Varney, director of production operations.

Morris Communications Corp. will install editorial and ad-management systems from Digital Technology International at several of its dailies. Over a three-year period, the suite of software from the Orem, Utah, company will be installed at eight of Morris' 31 dailies, including its largest paper, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. At seven of the eight papers, DT's systems will replace the Morris Publishing System, a self-designed editorial product that led Morris from mainframe to desktop systems in 1984-85.

"The Morris Publishing System has served us well for nearly 15 years," says President Will Morris. "We wanted a world-class system to take us into the new millennium."

The move comes following the dissolution of an earlier agreement between Morris and Danish software developer Saxotech (TechNews, November/December 1998, p. 27). Since then, Saxotech has sold an editorial-production system to the Daily Sentinel in Rome, N.Y., and opened a U.S. office in suburban Washington, D.C.

"We finally found a cross-platform solution that was full-featured, forward-looking, flexible, easy to maintain and, above all, user-friendly," says Daily Sentinel Publisher Stephen B. Waters.

The Quark Killer cometh. After years of speculation, a last-ditch takeover attempt and a not-so-secret preview at NAA's 1999 Newspaper Operations Super Conference, Adobe Systems Inc. has taken the wraps off InDesign, its long-anticipated challenge to Quark Inc.'s dominance in the high-end page-design market.

Code-named K2 during development, InDesign features tight integration with such other Adobe products as Photoshop and Illustrator. It also supports files initially created in Quark, PageMaker and Adobe's Portable Document Format. The $699 application is built using a modular code base that allows third-party developers to add features and build custom-publishing applications (see What Next, p. 34).

Among the first newspaper vendors with plans to integrate InDesign into their systems are: Baseview Products Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich.; Digital Technology Inter-national of Orem, Utah; Managing Editor Inc. of Jenkintown, Pa.; and System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento. Suppliers touted InDesign's object-oriented interface and the newspaper industry's familiarity with other Adobe products.

Quark, meanwhile, isn't taking the Adobe challenge lightly. Along with improving its customer-service operations, the privately held Denver company launched a separate marketing company that will integrate its core QuarkXPress and Quark Publishing System products with third-party software to provide end-to-end publishing solutions (see coverage of Quark's recent moves on p. 26).

TechNews Volume 5, Number 2: March/April 1999

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