Backgrounder on GXpress

Code zero: Printed 2D links 'coming, ready or not'
Technololgy and market acceptance are at a point where printed 2D codes could take off, writes Peter Coleman

‘Daily’ that isn’t demonstrates a publishing opportunity as rivals battle at PANPA
Delegates at next week’s PANPA Future Forum are being teased with the concept of personalised daily newspaper production through a ‘PANPA Digital Daily’ which is neither daily, nor even printed in Australia.

Fiji decree condemned; 'will lead to Fiji Times closure'
Having defended press freedom to the death, News Limited’s daily ‘Fiji Times’ appears set to pay the ultimate price. Chairman and chief executive John Hartigan says the paper – one of the oldest and most respected in the world – will close as a result of the Fiji government’s Media Industry Development Decree.

Outsourcing on the agenda as the top brass parley in Canberra
School's back at the 'big house' in Canberra today, and the top brass of Fairfax, News and WAN have been in town with an agenda of their own... but what about the outsourcing issue close to the heart of one of them? (writes Peter Coleman)

Job's almost over for Hayzlett… but what would George have done?
He was ever the wild card, his four-year brief to 'cause tension' at a time when the staid company was facing its greatest crisis. Now Eastman Kodak and chief marketing officer and graphic communications group vice president Jeff Hayzlett are together no more, the latter leaving at the end of May “to pursue personal projects”.

Noise warning as PBL settles down to negotiating print prices
Expect a surfeit of noise, as PBL moves into negotiation mode after officially abandoning plans to set up an Australian print plant for its ACP Magazines (writes Peter Coleman).

Is ‘USA Today’ newspaper, US newspapers today?
Can iPad really take you new places? The weekend ‘USA Today’ lifestyle feature poses a good question: Because it depends on where you’re coming from… and where you want to end up (writes Peter Coleman).

Roots of a Telegraphic transfer
Famous for one of the first integrated multimedia newsrooms in the world, the UK’s Telegraph Media Group nonetheless has its roots firmly planted in print.

Format ideas that mark a top newspaper
Form and function combine in the sections of Portuguese newspaper ‘i’, which will collect the European Newspaper Award in April of this year.

Publisher enthusiasm puts developers on call for iPad readers
Amid the rush to provide the newspaper industry’s first iPad apps, one connectivity question is unanswered and, we think, unasked: Will it make phone calls, writes Peter Coleman.

Formats and processes work well for competitive UK market
Back barely in time to get the November print edition to press, I’ve been lucky enough to spend most of a month looking around parts of the industry in Europe (writes Peter Coleman).

Super plants for a future in print
Visionary technology and a new manufacturing ‘culture of excellence’ distinguish the new super print sites which promise a real future for newspapers. Peter Coleman looks at three sites which fit the bill: Newsprinters Broxbourne, INM Newry and the newly-commissioned Transcontinental Northern California plant in San Francisco

Finkbeiner’s manroland: Strong enough to bend

Strong enough to survive alone, manroland is nonetheless looking for partners with which to plan a future without Heidelberg. That’s the message from the German web press maker’s chairman, Gerd Finkbeiner in an interview with ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ newspaper last week.
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Stopping giveaways? But where do you stop…
PANPA (or is that NPA) chief executive Mark Hollands has weighed into the issue of targeted complimentary copies, suggesting that “chasing circulation as if their commercial survival counted on it” … “wasn’t much of a strategy, anyway”, writes Peter Coleman.

Print publishers 'innovating as fast as digital' says WAN-Ifra
The success of innovative newspaper publishers including Korean daily ‘JoongAng Ilbo’, with its new Berliner print operation, Portugal’s ‘I’ – hailed as a reinvention of the newspaper in the digital age – and Czech hyperlocal publishing project ‘Nase Adresa’ (or ‘Our Address’) is examined in two new WAN-Ifra reports.

Is that ‘deal’ really off? Not all the IfraExpo talk is about technology
If you believe that IfraExpo is about new technology releases and new order announcements, this year’s Vienna show had both – including two new plate transport systems – liberally laced with a kind of pragmatic wonder that things in the supply industry weren’t worse. But the buzz around the halls centred around another story which has to do with how bad things are: The ‘are they, aren’t they’ saga of a mooted merger between German press makers Heidelberg and manroland, writes Peter Coleman.

PANPA speaker Wills goes back to a giveaway
Forget what you heard when Doug Wills visited PANPA’s Future Forum a couple of weeks back; all bets are off with his ‘London Evening Standard’ opting to bid for a share of the city’s free newspaper market, writes Peter Coleman in London.

Best of friends, PANPA and TNW move in together
They've both proved the common good of the newspaper industry is more important than inter-group rivalries: now they're moving in together, writes Peter Coleman.

WAN-IFRA sets show agenda for Ifra Expo 2009 in Vienna
Newspaper industry suppliers are rising to the challenge of difficult times, and will be an innovative force at Ifra Expo 2009 (Vienna October 12–15 October), organisers say.

Digital newspapers: Reverse osmosis
Digital newspaper printing is up and running around the world, but most printers are not publishers, writes Peter Coleman.

Peter Kuisle: ‘Merge plants’ to avoid US debacle
All eyes are on the Transmag/SF Chronicle experiment, manroland sales vice president Peter Kuisle tells editor Peter Coleman.

Heidelberg and manroland: More talk about talks
Merger talks between German press makers Heidelberg and manroland are closer and taking place “at the highest level and with sincerity”, according to German newspaper ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ yesterday.

Overcapacity an understatement as PBL pushes on with heatset plant
With PMP shareholders licking their wounds after what the media has dubbed the 'year that saw credibility junked', worse may be to come for the catalogue and magazine printer. And perhaps, the Australian heatset web sector as a whole, writes Peter Coleman.

Is it just about dead trees, and will pruning 'PANPA' bring it new life?
It’s not just the traditional three-day PANPA conference that’s for the chop this year … the organisation’s name is also set for the surgeon’s knife, writes Peter Coleman.

When ‘druck’ comes to shove: Pressure for a Heidelberg-manroland merger
The speculation emerged last Friday (July 24), significantly the day following Heidelberg’s annual meeting in Mannheim, Germany: First the ‘Platow’ stockmarket newsletter and then German financial newspaper ‘Handelsblatt’ reported “intense negotiations” into a merger between the sheetfed press maker and manroland. And the word from inside is that it may happen “quicker than we expect”, writes Peter Coleman.

Is a time-warped postie monopoly the biggest threat to print?
Australia Post is celebrating its 200th anniversary … but have mail users anything to celebrate, writes Peter Coleman.

PMP's 'pulp fiction' mess changes gear with ACCC admission
What a mess! The PMP letterbox delivery fraud dubbed ‘pulp fiction’ by the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ when it broke the story earlier this year, has moved up a gear with the company admitting its deceit to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, writes Peter Coleman.

‘Debt-free’ KBA bemoans banks’ lending practices and looks to growth
Reporting to the company’s eighty-fourth annual meeting, new KBA president and chief executive Helge Hansen reported “too few” large web press projects despite increasing its market share to a claimed 50 per cent, and a substantial lift in sheetfed orders.

Timely text mining comes to the aid of 'swine flu' fighters
Systems software developer Nstein says its text mining engine is playing a part in the early warning of swine flu, with the Global Public Health Intelligence Network relying on its semantic technology.

Fighting for market share on Australia’s Central Coast: It's not over yet
When Fairfax Media’s Central Coast free newspaper, the ‘Sun Weekly’ folded a couple of weeks back, there was talk that the closure marked the end of the territorial war between News Limited and the publisher. But it’s more likely only the end of the current skirmish (writes Peter Coleman).

The Mexican wave to publishing emancipation awarded a DRUPA nod
It’s a pretty specific topic: Mexican women’s periodicals at the turn of the 20th century … and it’s where some of the cash ploughed into the DRUPA city of Düsseldorf every four years is being channelled.

Time to scrap obsolete subs? Not quite...
Outsourcing of subediting and layout by major publishers – among them Australia’s Fairfax Media and APN News & Media – created its own minor outrage: Now UK-based media commentator Roy Greenslade has raised the question of whether we need subs at all, writes Peter Coleman.

Bolza-Schünemann resigns: Helge Hansen to steer KBA through heavy weather
With two of the world’s biggest press manufacturers reeling from the economic downturn, KBA president and chief executive Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann has resigned, leaving only one member of the founding family still on the board.

Lines in the sand: MAN Ferrostaal's Markus Haefeli talks about trading in a changed market
Pushing hard into the consumables market may be the best decision MAN Ferrostaal Australia managing director Markus Haefeli has take, writes Peter Coleman.

Tread softly: Help and inspiration for green publishers
Statistics have become suspect: Every time a new piece of research appears, there are cynics who looks to see which vested interest has paid for it.

manroland evolves to direct Asia-Pacific presence
An end to the global agency agreements between manroland and MAN Ferrostaal has been on the cards from the moment the German pressmaker was floated as an independent company, separate from the broader interests of the MAN group, which still owns MAN Ferrostaal (writes Peter Coleman).

They want it but can't fund it: An 'undervalued' INM resigns itself to not selling its APN share
Wanting to buy APN News & Media is one thing; being able to come up with the asking price perhaps another, writes Peter Coleman.

The system's in London, the subs in Sydney: How live editorial production is going global
Live global editorial production became a demonstrable reality when a team in Sydney started producing pages for London’s ‘Daily Telegraph’ this week, writes Peter Coleman.

Dry run: Painstaking attention in Lokeren makes a winner of waterless
Waterless printing: Choose it – as Belgian publisher De Persgroep uncompromisingly did – for superior print quality and its low environmental footprint ... or dismiss it as some have, as an idea too far ahead of its time.

At FD Hoekstra Boom, guts and technology turn tragedy to triumph
In many respects the human story behind Dutch contract printer FD Hoekstra Boom is at least as remarkable as the technology it employs, writes Peter Coleman.

Murdoch, Fairfax, Stokes and the passion for publishing
Forget David Kirk, for the moment at least: He’s yesterday’s news. It would however, be good to see the former rugby star rise again in a publishing industry to which he has shown he has much to contribute.
by Peter Coleman

APN: INM finds a cash alternative attractive
Irish media conglomerate Independent News & Media is looking at its options again in the love-hate saga of its ownership of Australia’s APN News & Media, writes Peter Coleman.

American pie: A 'yee-aha' moment
Off the Beltway and down the interstate to Nashville, Peter Coleman finds a different perspective on America’s publishing dilemma

American pie: Web chickens cross road
Suppose your website drove the newspaper, instead of the other way around? Social networking, information and even trivia have become key content for two US publishers who took time to listen to what their audience was talking about online.

American pie: Case histories, comment ... and why we're not the USA
An imposing new edifice now stands in Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. But is it Newseum or museum; memorial to the newspaper industry’s past glories or signal of hope for the future?

Fire eaters: A PANPA retrospective from our print edition
Newspaper publishing was never less than a tough job ... but apparently one someone has to do. And only weeks into his new leadership role at PANPA, Mark Hollands must also have wondered what he had taken on.

Still building: Digital and print priorities in IPMG renewal
As IPMG works on plans for a new print plant while creating a digital future for itself, Peter Coleman traces the Hannan group’s history

Fairfax takes an 'opportunity' for change
Stand by for a bumpy ride: The point is approaching at which the lean financial management which made Rural Press a darling of investors and financial analysts collides with the once-grand edifice which was Fairfax, writes Peter Coleman.

Victoria's towers of strength
Demand for colour advertising - and a healthy economy in rural Victoria - has seen three independent newspaper publishers install tower upgrades to their Goss Community presses.

Bulletin makeover heralds new start for PANPA
A revamped tabloid magazine is a cornerstone in the rebuilding of PANPA’s sense of community, under new chief executive Mark Hollands, writes Peter Coleman.

Publish Asia: Indians chase an affluent young female
Headlines to stories about the takeover of Jaguar by Indian carmaker Tata bring home the difference between Associated Newspapers’ ‘Mail Today’ joint venture in the subcontinent and the local broadsheets.

Publish Asia: Dominating the 'me-space'
Ifra Newsplex director Dietmar Schantin believes the immediate future is in integrated mobile, online, broadcast and print media information streams: “People want to be integrated,” he says

Publish Asia: Betting on a future
It was oddly symbolic: bustling Macau, now dependent on revenue from tourism and gambling, trying to find space and time for its heritage-listed past, writes Peter Coleman. The former Portuguese trading port – now part of China – was the venue for a Publish Asia conference in which ‘traditional’ newspaper publishing topics vied with the urgency of new revenue stream from online and mobile.

Nexpo brings ideas on change for those ready to tackle it
Maybe it’s a generational difference: Change is something our kids take for granted but with which their elders often have difficulty in coming to terms. And Nexpo and the NAA/ASNE convention which it accompanied, were emphatically about change, writes Peter Coleman.

Nexpo: Orders for a few in quiet US show
Had Nexpo exhibitors saved the best for DRUPA, set to take place only a month later than the premier US newspaper show, held this year in Washington, Peter Coleman asks

DRUPA: Thanks a billion!
With more room and fewer visitors, DRUPA presented a real opportunity to do business ... and major vendors were more than happy with the results, writes Peter Coleman

Digital newspapers: Arriving on a jet-press
A decade after the DRUPA debut of high-speed inkjet, major vendors are finally ready to lead newspapers to a digital print revolution, writes Peter Coleman

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