Portland, 1st of May, 2009

Irwin Hodson Press Announces Their Climate Neutral Printing Certification.
How does it feel to print climate neutrally? Innovative and responsible

Irwin Hodson Press can now offer its clients climate neutral print products. Hereby, all CO2-emissions evolving in the course of a print job will be calculated and neutralized by emission certificates from acknowledged climate protection projects. For Irwin Hodson Press, the possibility to print climate neutrally was yet another step in a broad sustainability strategy. Thereby the focus will continue to be on additional long-term development of the company’s internal environment philosophy and the diminution of the impacts on the climate.

From the carbon footprint to a climate neutral print product
Due to a large sense of responsibility, it is important for Irwin Hodson Press to keep the entry of environmentally relevant greenhouse gases as low as possible. In a printing plant CO2-emissions evolve in the course of the usage of energy, transports, paper, inks, coatings and other factors. The ClimatePartner California Inc. has calculated all the emerging CO2-emissions for the whole company [carbon footprint] and presents guidance for the reduction of emissions by means of the results. With an individualized emission calculator Irwin Hodson Press can report to their client the amount of emissions produced per print project. As an additional service, the emissions can be neutralized by investing in high quality emission-reduction-certificates from acknowledged climate protection projects.  Therefore every brochure, catalog, poster, etc can be printed climate neutrally.

Environmental responsibility – no longer a foreign word
Irwin Hodson Press has been a role model for environmentally responsible activities in the region for a long time.  “We’re not only FSC-certified and participate at the PGE – campaign “Save more, matter more”, but we also support the usage and establishment of renewable energies in Oregon”, says Ken Kozol, Vice President of manufacturing.  Furthermore, the ambitious company has decided to participate in the Climate Leaders-program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which aims at the development of sustainable climate protection strategies from and for enterprises. Also, they have installed the lowest VOC printing process available and offer clients bio-renewable coatings. Therefore the employment of highly efficient and environmentally friendly technologies for the printing plant is self-evident for Irwin Hodson Press. The printing plant is very ambitious to pass the environmental engagement to the employees who are encouraged to carpool, use public transport or ride bicycles to work.

Writing on the wall
“We are proud of our sustained engagement and want to pass this down to our clients”, explains Ken Kozol proudly. “With ClimatePartner we have found a competent resource.” “We are happy to see that Irwin Hodson Press has recognized the value and advocates so actively. ClimatePartner has already gained broad expert knowledge on the European and German market on the topic “sustainable media production” and is a quality leader in voluntary climate protection in the printing industry”, says Katharina Riess, ClimatePartner California Inc.

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For further information please contact:
Climate Partner California, Inc.
730 Montgomery Street
94111 San Francisco, CA
Phone +1 42 42 28 42 27
California@climatepartner.com

ClimatePartner avows itself to be a strategy advisory and application developer in climate protection. With more than 300 consultancy projects for more than 150 clients, ClimatePartner has gained expert knowledge in the topics climate protection and sustainability in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and the USA within only three years. ClimatePartner develops solutions, which are characterized by their integration into the business models of its clients and are thereby scalable, whereby they contribute to an effective climate protection at the same time.  The headquarters of the company are in Munich, Germany. ClimatePartner California is located San Francisco.

Printcasting is a first of its kind online tool that assists users in dynamically creating customized newspapers and magazines comprised of information gathered from local news sources such as blogs, newsletters, news organizations, user content, and other Contributors.  Creating your own publication is as simple as adding the elements you want included in your publication through the easy to use Printcasting.com interface.  Without having to hire a team of editors, graphic artists, or authors you will be able to create your own, professional publication for distribution.

Publishers will also be able to allow Advertisers to place targeted advertisements in their publications and, in the future, receive a portion of revenue generated from those advertisements.  Publications created by the user may then be available for print, download, and distribution to Subscribers.

I wrote about the years-ago-created RSS to print application FeedJournal and it’s potential for a digital newspaper application last year, so Printcasting’s claim to be the “first of its kind” in this realm isn’t necessarily true, what is unique though is their attempt to monetize the resulting product with a simple ad creation tool (among other things).

Printcasting is a Knight News Challenge winner and their website is inviting so I decided to give it a try for Metaprinter.  I want to emphasize that the Printcasting site was in open Beta / preview mode when I did this so don’t judge too harshly.

Step 1. Definitely watch this instructional video before doing anything.

Printcast Your Blog from Dan Pacheco on Vimeo.

Step 2. Publish your blog and tweak the layout.

I had a problem with this part in that I wanted to use my Metaprinter logo in the header.  No problem with the upload but the Printcasting interface commands the blog Title and Tagline on, there’s no way to remove them from the header.  I got around this by resizing my header logo smaller and turning the text to white.  If you look closely though you can see the white type cutting into the bottom of the words “news media” in the screen capture below.  Not a huge deal but maybe in the future they will allow publishers to turn off the text in these locations.  Here’s a closeup of how the header looked before I tweaked it.

Step 3. Done!

When you are completely done a screen pops up giving you the option to email up to 100 people a link to your new Printcast and also gives you the embed codes for several different widgets like the one below.

How does the completed product look?  Pretty good except I didn’t expect the PDF to cut off my articles (I’m not that wordy am I?).  When they reach a certain word count (I guess), an automatically created tinyurl is placed at the end of the offending article and redirects the reader to the Printcasting site to complete reading the article.  Also all my hyperlinks in my articles are dropped which I can understand if the product is destined for print, but they’re dropped everywhere, the pdf version, the magazine view, and the quick read view.  Hyperlinks are a huge part of blogging, sometimes being unable to link out makes an article less usefull to the point of uselessness.    Here’s the PDF if you want to see how it turned out.

Step 4. Advertising

Just for kicks I started putting together an advertisement to see how easy it was and I am happy to report that the experience is pretty straightforward and intuitive.

What did I like?

• The entire process was straightforward and intuitive.
• I like the idea of being able to offer my readers a print version of my blog.
• Creating an advertisement was easy.
• I might be able to sell advertising on my printcast.

What didn’t I like?

• Not being able to turn off the Title and Tagline text in the header.
• My hyperlinks disappearing everywhere.
• My blog posts being cut off despite using only 5 pages in my pdf.
• Not being able to read the small text in  “magazine view” despite zooming in and viewing on a 24″ monitor.
• Not knowing what ads will appear in my printcast.

What I’m not sure about.

• #25 in the Terms of Use says Printcasting is for California Use Only.  um… can you explain this layman terms?  What am I, as an out of stater, opening my self up to here?
• Specifically, how is advertising revenue shared?
• How can I sell ad space on my printcast?

I hope to get someone from Printcasting or Bakersfield.com to respond in the comments section to clarify my issues.   What I’d like to see in the future is a paid feature where publishers can eliminate all ads from their printcast or select which ones appear / add their own.   If I can get the above problems corrected and gain control over the ad space or eliminate it altogether I might consider Printcasting as the print solution for Metaprinter.

UPDATE:

See Printcasting creator Dan Pacheco’s response below and check out his new post about revenue streams at MediaShift Idea Lab

Circulation Under 25,000:
First place – The Coast Star, Manasquan NJ | owned by starnewsgroup
Second Place – The Ocean Star, Manasquan NJ | owned by starnewsgroup
Third Place – The News-Item, Shamokin PA | owned by timesshamrockcommunications

Circulation 25,000-50,000:
First place – The Village Daily Sun, Villages FL | owned by The Villages Media Group
Second Place – The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre PA | owned by The Wilkes-Barre Publishing Company
Third Place – Muskegon Chronicle, Muskegon MI | owned by Advance Publications

Circulation 50,000-100,000:
First place – The Kalamazoo Gazette, Kalamazoo MI | owned by Advance Publications
Second Place – The Times-Tribune, Scranton PA | owned by Times-Shamrock Communications
Third Place – Rockford Register Star, Rockford IL | owned by GateHouse Media, Inc.

Circulation Over 100,000:
First place – The Record, Rockaway NJ | owned by North Jersey Media Group
Second Place – The Grand Rapids Press, Grand Rapids, MI | owned by Advance Publications
Third Place – The Wall Street Journal, South Brunswick NJ | owned by News Corp.

Best of Show:

The Kalamazoo Gazette, Kalamazoo MI | owned by Advance Publications

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.

]]> http://blog.metaprinter.com/2009/04/america-east-newspaper-operations-and-technology-conference-exhibit-report/feed/ 0 http://blog.metaprinter.com/2008/11/calligraphy-to-press-and-you-thought-setting-type-was-tough/ http://blog.metaprinter.com/2008/11/calligraphy-to-press-and-you-thought-setting-type-was-tough/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:22:56 +0000 Robert Ivan http://metaprinter.com/?p=606 Continue reading →]]>  

  

From ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.

“The Musalman is probably the last handwritten newspaper in the world and has been operational since 1927. Here is their story”.  A film by by Premjit Ramachandran.  Shows these artisans laying out newspaper pages BY HAND, I thought a linotype machine was tough!.  Clicking the images will take you to the videos.

——————————————————————Now how cool would it be for a mainstream American newspaper to have just one page in their paper laid out in such a way?  OR make the content in the printed newspaper so different from their website that it didn’t matter that it took all day to lay out an entire newspaper.  Come to think of it.  Isn’t this how newspapers should be looking at the utility of their printed product, going forward?  

The current print product is untenable.  Newspapers either must transition to digital print (to publish breaking news and variable data).

OR

Newspapers must publish content that is not time sensitive.  Perhaps go to 3 or 4 day a week print publishing schedule and focus on in depth news coverage or long form journalism that works well in print.

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One of the most overlooked mechanical components resulting in paster failure is the floating roller and floating roller bellofram cylinder.  Here I will go through the theory and components, then highlight how to troubleshoot and resolve the problems.

Theory

1. The Floating Roller maintains the tension setting on a running web during paste cycle.  If your full roll reel tension is set to run at 30kg’s then the floating roller’s job is to maintain that setting throughout the paste cycle. Why does reel tension fluctuate during paste cycle?

• Reel arms index to paste position
• Old Roll wind at core (tight, loose)
• Brush impact trauma
• Slight speed mismatch at brush contact
• New Roll out of round
• Reel arms index home

2. How does the floating roller maintain the setting?  The roller is a freely spinning pipe roller attached to a linkage with swings in an arc.  See the image below.

Components

The component which controls the movement within that arc is the floating roller bellofram cylinder.  A schematic of the cylinder is shown below.  The rod would be attached to the floating roller linkage.  Notice that air can only flow out the vent when the diaphragm is leaking.  This is important because it is a telltale sign of failure.

The bellofram will look something like the photo below which is from a Mitsubishi MHI press.  You can also see a shock absorber on the other side of the linkage.  As the name implies this acts to absorb shock.  It rarely fails, but a telltale sign is oil leaking out of the cartridge.  If you are curious, that green thing on the left side is the Hi/Lo clutch activated by the dancing roller and driving the infeed roller.

Troubleshooting

I have put together a powerpoint presentation for the troubleshooting portion of this post.  There is just too much data to upload to the site.  Click on the image below to proceed and let me know if this is helpful.

Click for Floating Roller Troubleshooting PowerPoint

As you can see, the floating roller and its related components play a major role in maintaining web tension during the paste cycle.  Components that have failed or are failing will result in a noticable increase in paster failures.  It can be suggested from this presentation that a simple check for air leaks at the bellofram vent can be an inexensive preventative maintenance item.  I hope this helps minimize your paster failures and saves you time and money.   Cheers!

This post covers troubleshooting and resolving newspaper web wrinkles. Wrinkles are a major cause of waste, delay, and customer complaints. I have created two powerpoint slides to highlight the differences. First, there are two types of web that can be found on a newspaper web.

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1. diaganol wrinkles

As the names imply, diagonal wrinkles run diagonal to the running web. They are caused by rollers being out of tram or out of parallel. The most common problem on an offset web press is a compensator roller that jumped a tooth and is now crooked. The easiest way to determine if this is the case is to us a tape measure or piece of string to measure the distance from one roller to the next. Do this on the OP side and Drive side of the roller. The measurements should be exactly the same. If not, tram the roller.

2. machine direction wrinkles.

Machine direction wrinkles in the same direction as the running web. These are usually caused by tension (too high or too low) problems OR dirty pipe rollers. The wrinkles will originate from the problem area so just trace them back to where they are coming from.

That’s it. Hope this helps.  Monday’s topic – BelloFram Cylinders and their application in for Floating and Dancing rollers.

What can be done with such a piece of equipment you might ask? Well, Editor & Publisher summed it up nicely as such:

“Possibilities include: newspaper products other than the core daily edition; moving late-breaking news out from a national paper’s newsroom and page-assembly hub to remote print sites to augment the main print runs; production of larger papers’ local sections at distribution centers rather than trucking them from central plants, reducing their cost, stretching their deadlines and creating more advertising opportunities at lower price; production of the local paper with a national or nearby metro daily, or the weekly addition of a certain section of the larger paper to the local paper for certain subscribers.”   Editor&Publisher

To see and hear the press running check out this YouTube video here and below:

No quiet room needed for this bad boy and a far stretch from the presses I am used to working on.

Then again, this type of equipment can print 70k to 90k impressions per hour, which is 12 webs at roughly 2,100 to 2,700 feet per minute given a 22″ cutoff. This is 60 times faster than the HP.

Just for fun lets say you are printing a 96-page Black Friday newspaper on the TKS press above. You would need 12 webs running at 70k impressions per hour for 5 hours to print 350,000 newspapers.The same job on the HP would require 24 HP Inkjet Web Presses running 25 hours! or 120 HP Inkjet Web Presses running 5 hours! Moore’s Law, if it applies here loosely, suggests that the HP will be able to print a complete newspaper as fast as the offset web presses in 12 years. See you in 2020.

RELATED:

Metaprinter Offers a New, Innovative, Digital Newspaper Business Model – Infinite Zoning
This model uses the HP Inkjet Web Press to print infinitely customizable newspaper inserts. In late 2008 this idea was pitched to The Washington Post and Tribune, however they felt going to a pure online play was more in-line with their long term goals.

UPDATE:

This story got picked up by the Newspaper Association of America’s magazine Presstime. Click to read the article. Thanks for the heads-up Pete!

March 23, 2009 Océ aims new digital press squarely at newspapers http://tinyurl.com/d3c7ap

Held in Kansas City, Missouri, the 2007 ING Annual Conference was the first ING event I have attended. Let me start off by saying that I was pleasantly surprised by the smooth program, the issues discussed, the tour of the Kansas City Star plant, and the turnout from vendors and publishing companies. Due to time constraints I was only able to attend Wednesday September 19th. Much happened on this day though, so all was not lost. I’ll lead you through the program as it occurred on Wednesday. I am paraphrasing so don’t assume the following is verbatim.

The Conference opens and quickly gets down to business. On Wednesday morning the topic of discussion was “publishing challenges in Kansas City (Kansas City Star)”.

President and Publisher Mac Tully begins with the market challenges and trends emphasizing that newspapers have a very difficult future ahead but that we are not as bad off as television (I guess that is a positive). In their efforts to embrace change within the newspaper industry Mr. Tully went on to mention the redesign of the newspaper and the completion of their new 199 million dollar printing plant. He also expressed his opinion that newspapers are factual and fair media channels which serve as “watchdogs” for their community. He also emphasized the idea that “total readership” and not circulation should define their reach, a reach he stated which is bigger than that of Television (in their geographic area I am assuming). It was a feel good speach which was met with applause.

Peter Ricker VP Advertising focused his presentation on ROI, ROP advertising, simplifying the advertising rates and procedures, and the increase in color capacity at the new plant.

C. Christian VP Circulation explained how the paper handled the redesign and the completion of their new printing facility. Both of these projects are huge undertakings and for them to occur and come on line on the same day is an amazing feat of planning and teamwork. The campaign theme was “Brighter, Bolder, Better” and it was used to emphasize the increase in color capacity, the redesign, and the new plant. Starting in March of 2006 the KC Star first told its employees, and then conducted TV and radio interviews, followed by speaking engagements. These continued along with heavy print and online promotions until June of 2006 when the new paper was printed on the new presses. The total print readership is now higher than that of 1999-2000 levels.

Randy Waters VP Production spoke about the new plant and equipment. Expansion and retooling were not feasible construction from May 12, 2003 to June 2006. Some of the highlights: 4 KBA Commander presses consisting of 9 towers and 10 reel stands. 48″ web with 21.5″ cut-off. 80 pages straight 40 process color (48 pc on a 72 page run). 6 folders and 3 stitchers. (I thought this was a great feature allowing saddle stitching at press speed, think of the possibilities, TV guide, special sections, bringing advertising back from commercial shops, etc…) The paper handling was equally impressive. Using computer controlled cranes and conveyors; a human never touches the rolls of paper from the time they are delivered minimizing damage, error, and variation.

Break………….

When we returned the subject moved to photo toning. The following concepts and software programs were presented and discussed: Automated preflight and photo toning, OneVision’s Asura and InkSave, Morris DigitalWorks BluMunkee, and Agfa’s IntelliTune.

I was especially interested in the OneVision software. As the company states on their website, “PlugINKSAVEin is a Plugin for Asura and Asura Pro which has the ability to reduce a significant amount of ink”. It works by taking customers’ images and re-separates them to boost black ink usage and conserve expensive CMY inks. The software was reported to save 6 to 24% in ink usage. Imagine that your ink costs are 2million dollars a year, assuming a conservative 10% reduction in ink usage, one could save $200,000! Sounds like a no brainer to me. This could not have been timelier as Flint Ink and others have announced they are raising ink prices.

The last few hours at the conference was spent discussing the ING internship program and predictive maintenance but I was in and out for meetings so I won’t go into detail here. The ING website should have powerpoints of the presentations up soon.

Lastly, and the part I was most looking forward to, we headed to the new Kansas City Star newspaper printing plant. The plant utilizes four KBA Commander presses consisting of 9 towers and 10 reel stands each operating up to 80 IPH. Although quite tall, the presses were very nice and quiet. The glass walls of the plant were nice too, as most printing presses are housed in buildings with no windows. I was most impressed with two features of the plant. One, the folders have a saddle stitcher enabling the press to produce a bound tabloid format publication at press speed. Two, the paper roll storage, delivery, and loading is completely automated leaving little room for human error.

Looking to the future I wish the Kansas City Star my best and thank them for taking us on a tour. I hope that their expanded capabilities in the new plant enhance the publication and its reach into the community.

Most newspapers are printed on non-heatset offset web presses. These are large presses taking up a few hundred feet in length and usually two or three stories high. Here is a press by TKS. This is a press from MAN ROLAND. Here is another from GOSS.

Let’s begin by following the paper as it transforms from large 1800 lb. rolls to a completed newspaper. The newsprint rolls begin their transformation in a reel stand at the base of a printing unit. In this picture you can clearly see one roll of paper in a reel stand. There are usually two or three rolls of newsprint in one reel stand and one stand at the bottom of each printing unit. The TKS printing press above has ten printing units. The paper is pulled through the press and off the roll while the press is running as the roll expires it is pasted to the incoming roll and a new roll is now loaded into the reel stand. This is all done while the press is running so that it does not have to be shut down for more paper.

The paper travels out of the basement or reel room and through the printing unit. This can either be a mono (or black) unit or a color unit. The mono units are simple and print blanket to blanket applying black text to both sides of the newsprint at the same time. Color units are more complex. Most color sequences on offset litho printing will be CMYK although KCMY can also be used. The color can be printed back to back in a Tower configuration or on a satellite using a Common impression cylinder or CIC.

After the ink has been applied, slitters (circular cutting knives), angle bars, and former pans are used to position sheets in certain locations and to create the sections of the newspaper. Here is a great head on photo of a former pan. You can see how as the paper travels down, it gets folded in half (along the spine on a broadsheet, along the top and cut on a tabloid). Newspaper presses have 2 to 4 former pans and can create 2 to 8 sections with these.

Remember, the sheets are still long continuous sheets of newsprint at this point. But they are folded neatly into their sections in the proper order. The last step is for the paper to continue being pulled into the rotating folder and cut at exactly the correct moment. The jagged edge you see at the top and bottom of your newspaper is this cut. Moments after being cut a Tucker Blade forces the paper into a set of Folding Rollers and out of the folder onto a conveyor delivery system off to the mail room for packaging. That last trip through the Folding Rollers creates the fold everyone sees when the paper is sitting on the news stand.

TA DA! you now know (very crudely) how a newspaper is created on an offset lithographic press. If anyone would like clarifications on anything please email me or leave a comment.