E-Media Tidbits

agfa.com SRDP presses like Agfa's Dotrix may open new ways for newspapers to make money and keep readers through customization.

Adapting to a changing news, information, and advertising economy means that newspapers must adapt the technology they use -- not just online, but for print editions too. Back in March 2007, Digital Deliverance founder Vin Crosbie and I pondered how technology that exists today could help news organizations deliver individualized print editions that would increase the relevance (and thus value) to print audiences. This could open new options for pricing and selling ads; helping print, online, and mobile channels work together better; and retaining (or even growing) readership.

In a recent discussion on Poynter's Online-News list, Crosbie elaborated further on printing technologies that can help make this possible. Here are some excerpts, published with his permission:

"A newspaper industry that can better match its content to each individual [print] reader's unique mix interests will have a more valuable product than today's 'same-to-all' editions. Unknown to almost all newspaper people who work with new media (and unknown even to the most newspaper people who work with print), it is now not only possible but economically practical for many newspapers, and soon most, to print a unique edition for each reader. The requirement is that most of today's newspapers will need to buy new presses.

"The press technology that does this is today known as Short Run Digital Printing (SRDP). Although the world's best-selling manufacturers of newspaper presses don't manufacture SRDP, presses, Kodak U.S.A., Océ of Belgium, Fuji Xerox in Japan, and Agfa in Germany do.

"Rather than use press plates, which must print the same edition for every reader, SRDP press are newspaper roll-fed inkjet printers. For example, Agfa's Dotrix duplex press can print 30,000 tabloid (A4) sized, four-color editions per hour (500 pages per minute). This newspaper press cost about one-quarter what a plated presses does and requires only a single person to run.

"Currently, the disadvantage is that inks for SRDP presses cost much more than those for plated presses. SRDP presses are now economical to purchase and operate only for daily newspapers of less than about 10,000 circulation -- although that number is expected to double within two years and continue climbing. This would make SRDP presses economical for about 400 of the 1,450 U.S. dailies today, and double that by 2010.

"According to The VASP Group, today in Portugal SRDP presses are used to print and distribute The Washington Post, Folha de Sao Paulo, Tribune de Geneve, The Evening Standard, and other papers at the same hour those editions are printed in their homes countries. Granted, these are traditional, non-individualized editions of those newspapers.

"However, I know of a broadsheet daily newspaper in London that this year has been using a SRDP press to deliver individual editions to each of 1,000 readers, as an experiment in customized content. The SRDP press is computer-controlled by a database that contains templates of newspaper pagelayouts and a database of each of those reader's preferences for content. This technology also can change the advertising in each copy to match the reader's gender, age, location, etc."

...This makes me think: What if, instead of relying on larger, centralized printing plants and expensive transportation networks for physical distribution of printed papers, newspapers (even big dailies) instead relied on much smaller, more geographically distributed printing plants closer to the papers' final destinations? With sharp increases in energy and gasoline prices projected for the foreseeable future, as well as mounting pressure on all industries (including newspapers) to cut carbon emissions, maybe the economics of more widely distributed printing and delivery systems might look even better -- while also offering the revenue opportunities of customized print editions.

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