America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference Exhibit Report

Stay Tuned to this post for continuous updates for all 3 days

There are 99 exhibitors at the 2009 America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference down from roughly 120 last year. The intimate atmosphere makes it feel more buzzy than mediaXchange though.

I Spoke with:

Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune, will do a full interview with him tomorrow.

Jonathan “Sandy” Theophilakos – AFL web printing Is bringing two new press lines on line in at their young Secaucus NJ facility. The first this month and the other in May. When asked why Sandy said, “we see an opportunity for demand”. Is a big NJ newspaper going to outsource? he wouldn’t say. The Presses are DGM full color towers that will allow for full color back to back printing of a 64page tab. They also have 20-1 inserting capabilities for those new lines.

David Moreland – Manugraph DGM said those new press lines are created by adding 8 DGM 440 color towers and 2 DGM 1240 Folders to 12 existing DGM units and 4 existing DGM folders. When asked about business, David reiterated that USA sales are slow and mostly to outsourcing outfits like AFL. On the international stage, David says business is brisk in India and Latin American countries.

Robert G. Garver is a Freelance Movie Reviewer looking to get syndicated. Catch him wandering around or visit bobatthemovies.com

Stopped by the Newspapers & Technology booth to say hello to publisher Mary Van Meter and ran into Nikolay Malyarov from NewspaperDirect makers of PressDisplay.com. Nikolay said the recently signed up the Guardian, which is really worth mentioning because they are well known in the industry for originally pumping lots of money into developing their own e-edition. They finally realized they needed even more money to continue adding new functionality in it “so they came to us as we could offer them a great product at no cost”. (Publisher pay nothing for the service) He also said they just signed up their 1000th customer and that business is great. Amazing. When I first interviewed them last year they had 700 some subrcibers, now ~1010! That’s fast growth.

Paul Willis at Kodak – He’s here talking about their Kodak Prinergy Evo workflow system. Among other things, the system saves on CMY ink consumption through Under Color Removal (UCR). The RIP can use standard AM or FM (stochastic) ink laydown as well, increasing the look of printed products.

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America East Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference Exhibit Report