Everything's Different Now
The pre-press section of the NEXPO floor tends to get top heavy. This year it overflowed, largely in response to what observers term the most significant advances in editorial-system technology in recent years.
A challenger in the desktop-publishing world made waves and spilled show-goers into the aisles. Meanwhile, newspaper-specific suppliers moved out of lock step, offering at least three distinctly different views of future editorial systems.
"Some suppliers committed millions to building software from scratch, while others bet on [Adobe Systems Inc.'s] InDesign," observed San Francisco industry consultant David M. Cole. "Nobody's branded by the proprietary label anymore."
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| Epigraphics offered a wordsmith take on clip art; tools suggesting phrases or headlines. |
The days when every editorial system slavishly offered Microsoft Word as an editing tool and QuarkXPress as a layout tool are over. The notable absence of Apple Computer Inc. and Microsoft Corp., both having touted systems using these ubiquitous tools in recent years, only served to emphasize the shift. The gradual drift from off-the-shelf software actually began several years ago on the high end, with suppliers such as CCI Europe of Kennesaw, Ga., and Unisys of Blue Bell, Pa. Their practice of offering specialized tools using standard hardware now has become more widespread.
The worst-kept secret of the past two years, InDesign received its first wide industry viewing. Even Gary Cosimini, Adobe's top newspaper-industry executive, expressed surprise at the extent to which newspaper suppliers embraced "an unfinished product" that even its strongest proponents concede runs "neck and neck with Quark" in many ways.
But InDesign's modular design and San Jose-based Adobe's decision to give third-party developers full access to 90 percent of its functionality have led at least a half-dozen newspaper-system developers to support the product, adding their own "proprietary" features in the process.
Quark appears ready to face the InDesign challenge. For the first time ever, the Denver company will allow newspaper-specific vendors to more fully integrate its products. System Integrators Inc. became the first vendor to gain access to Quark's long-secret hyphenation-and-justification parameters through an agreement allowing the Sacramento company to integrate Quark's CopyDesk software; Quark Chief Executive Officer Fred Ebrahimi hinted that similar agreements with other suppliers may surface.
"Up until [the SII agreement], nobody in the newspaper industry had a dialogue with Quark," Cole observed.
And don't discount the "well-established Quark base," added Elizabeth A. Sholar, vice president of technology and production at The Globe and Mail in Toronto. "If [InDesign] does nothing else but light Quark up and get them a little more user-friendly, we shouldn't hand over Fort Knox" and switch to a new product.
"I hope Quark gets better, and InDesign gets better," Sholar added.
New choices among off-the-shelf products drive three dramatically different approaches to newspaper-specific editorial systems. Each breaks ranks from its parent company's past products-and from each other.
Atex Media Solutions of Bedford, Mass., returns to proprietary roots, developing a multimedia publishing system from the ground up that it intends to modify for different media companies. By contrast, Digital Technology International of Springville, Utah, threw away its own home-brewed pagination engine to integrate its suite of offerings with InDesign. "We're willing to bet the company on it," said President Jo Ann Froelich.
Meanwhile, SII shifts to "middleware," integrating groupware intranet-based solutions such as Lotus Notes with third-party software, including the customer's choice of Quark or InDesign. Its Insiight system is based on a Notes platform deployed more than a year ago at Associated Newspapers in London.
"Insiight's architecture is a framework to let users access best-of-breed applications directly from their desktops," said SII President and CEO Frank Washington. "These applications now become building blocks assembled into a complete publishing platform."
All three systems include support for Extensible Markup Language, a formatting structure that separates content from markup, and adds power and punch to editorial databases (see story, p. S11). Atex's Omnex system, for instance, uses an "insertion model" comparable to the electronic ad-building process. Different components of a single story can be modified and directed into different zoned editions or onto the Internet. The insertion, not the actual story, handles formatting and typography.
"It's exploiting XML and not just being buzzword compliant," quipped Jeffrey Litvak, Atex senior project manager.
With a suddenly reinvigorated field of editorial suppliers, watch for still more evolution.
SII's intranet push validates earlier groupware systems sold by a handful of suppliers, including NewsEngin Inc. of St. Louis and DeskNet Inc. of New York City. Assisted-layout tools, such as those offered by DT and Cybergraphic Inc. of Burlington, Mass., hint at further productivity gains (Presstime, July/August 1997, p. 37). And the continuing trend toward remote, Internet-based access (NEXPO Review, July/August 1998, p. S14) took another step forward as Danish developer Saxotech Inc. touted an enhanced, Java-based tool allowing page composition-yes, page composition-using nothing but a World Wide Web browser. NewsView Solutions of Horsham, Pa., merged Web access and editorial-budgeting software, developing an Internet-based assignment-tracking module that can even notify staffers in the field via cell phone or pager.
Now the onus shifts. Newspaper managers must develop strategies that look beyond such tools as cost savers. Technology "won't solve all your problems...but can offer unexpected, very real benefits over and above the day-to-day production of pages," observed J. Duncan Suss, The Boston Herald's publishing-systems specialist (see story, p. S18).
Strategize, Then Paginate
Sure, pagination often leads to cost savings. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
"In almost every instance, pagination will pay for itself with reduced staffing costs," Allen J. Mailman said during a session on strategic pagination. "But we've noticed other advantages to pagination, computer-to-plate and digital-layout technology currently being overlooked," added the Journal Register Co.'s senior vice president of technology, based in Trenton, N.J.
As pagination becomes commonplace, newspaper technologists must consider it just another tool serving larger, companywide goals, added J. Duncan Suss, The Boston Herald's publishing-systems specialist. "The question is no longer, 'How does pagination help us reduce costs?'" he said. "Now it is, 'What strategic advantages can we achieve because we are paginated?'"
Consider The Advocate in Newark, Ohio, where multiple editions drove pagination. "What helped us design our process was the need for our remote locations to share files, copy and even similar editorial pages," said Kenneth Shelby, the 22,170-circulation evening daily's vice president of operations. "Pagination allows us to centralize our sports coverage with one [editorial] team. We print in three different shops, so we wanted to increase our press time and efficiency. Now we largely focus on layout in the remote offices and on printing in the press shops."
An all-digital environment-with Adobe Portable Document Format files transmitted to remote offices and press sites-allowed the Advocate to increase profitability and quality.
"Simply put, we're creating a much better product," Shelby said. "It's very exciting to hear at the end of each day that we don't limit our sales or production staff in any way."
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, managers at the 200,162-circulation El Nuevo Dia found that pagination allowed the introduction of a new product. Operating in a highly competitive market, executives realized an untapped opportunity. They wanted to launch a paper aimed at a younger audience, but the staff didn't have the time to produce the more colorful product with outdated systems.
"We knew we had enough press time to do it if we could just streamline our page design," said Vice President of Information Systems Gustavo Cordova. Pagination "allowed us to accomplish our design goals as well as get both papers printed on the same press each night."
El Nuevo Dia made the transition in four months, fully paginating the existing paper and the new product. "We obviously have some reduced costs," Cordova said. "Our next goal will be to paginate our advertising too and then become an entirely digital paper."
While pocketbook issues often remain pagination's biggest selling point, careful planning taps its true benefits, Suss emphasized. "We need to create a mind-set of looking for benefits in pagination different and better than those presented by the vendors."