Digital newspaper printing is up and running around the world, but most printers are not publishers, writes Peter Coleman. Is digital newspaper printing at a tipping point or in the ‘chicken-and-egg’ dilemma of a product before its time? As always, the answer probably depends on the question, or to be precise, the definition of digital newspaper printing and the markets for which it is intended. Key applications such as remote printing of newspapers for niche markets such as travellers and homesick ex-pats are up and running. Expensive yes, but productivity and price will improve with technology and competition. Volume, generated perhaps by the opportunity to print multiple titles, digitally-collating the newspapers for each specific outlet or delivery point, can also improve the viability of what otherwise be a marginal project. Personalised newspapers – like the magazines in the Time Inc. experiment, and variable data-driven brochures for that matter – are another proposition, where ‘viability’ is a marketing equation calculated around response rates and the profit margins on advertised product. And as in all the arguments for digital printing as an alternative to offset, there’s a break point at which it’s cheaper to print a short-run edition digitally than on a web press; The problem is that none of the vendors will yet disclose where that point is. The best clue is that Spanish contract newspaper printer Incodavilla now reckons it can make money printing copies of the Barcelona dailies on an inkjet web, rather than plating up one of its manroland Uniset offset presses for the job. For the rest, you’ll need to talk to the marketing department: Could you sell more advertising with a hyperlocal edition (as Chicago’s ‘Triblocal’ does), charge more for it if the paper was personalised to reflect the interests of a ‘market of one’ ... or just sell more newspapers, if they didn’t have to be airlifted or trucked for hours. Often the only way to find out is to try it, but the odds of success improve with the increased productivity of the technology involved. The Triblocal experiment of the ‘Chicago Tribune’ – launched on a package of Kodak software and Versamark inkjet hardware – is a qualified but well documented success, but its real profitability is less well known. Publishers suggests that the experiment has been more successful in building circulation than advertising sales, but this may be to do with demographics. What began as a hyperlocal citizen journalism website in April 2007, quickly developed a network of print editions distributed on Thursdays with the parent ‘Tribune’. They combine photos, stories and other contents posted by readers with content from Triblocal’s own editorial staff and of course, ultra-local advertising. From the initial couple of editions, the Chicagoland operation now serves 65 suburbs with print and online coverage, and plans for 2009 provide for 13 new zones and more than 50 websites throughout the north, northwest and near west suburbs. And while production of the zoned editions – with circulations of between 10,000-20,000 copies – has gone back to offset, newer inkjet technology may change that. As increasingly-desperate newspapers in the USA cast around for the ‘silver bullet’ which will solve their publishing woes, a variety of digital formats are being trialled as they are in Europe and elsewhere. Print in some form is a component in a personalised newspaper to be trialled by the privately-owned MediaNews Group, which has titles in California, the Rocky Mountains and Northeast regions. Initially however, its ‘I-News’ – the I stands unhappily for ‘individuated’ – will deliver a mix of customised and targeted newspaper content to subscribers via their home computers. Like the ‘Detroit Free Press’ and ‘Detroit News’, it is opting to concentrating home delivery on the days when multiple inserts make it worthwhile, and fill the gaps with an online alternative. Printer technology and the pricing model are as yet unannounced. More immediately, Los Angeles-based O’Neil Data Systems, which has the world’s first installation of the HP inkjet web press shown at DRUPA, is looking at microzoning for the ‘Investor’s Business Daily’, which belongs to a sister company. Publishing variable data in its news “could ultimately lead to more relevant and higher-value personalised editorial content and advertising,” the publisher says. In Europe, there have been a couple of newspaper experiments, with more to come. In Switzerland, Swiss Post launched a pilot edition of what it called ‘PersonalNews’ last December, based on an emailed PDF containing customised pages from participating newspapers it sent to 1200 recipients. Printed versions were supplied free to the first 100 people to register, but a second stage will be electronic-only. Swiss Post, which creates the personalised version using German Syntops software, says a print edition remains the ultimate goal. Further north, a financial newspaper produced for premium rail passengers is being relaunched. In its original format, ‘Handelsblatt News am Abend’ was printed at 14 Océ-equipped digital sites within 90 minutes of the editorial deadline, with many of the 20,000 copies going to first-class passengers on DB’s intercity expresses. Océ’s Robert Koeckeis says the company is also equipment supplier for a start-up in Berlin called ‘niiu.de’ to produce customised newspapers overnight. The idea is that you can log into the website up to 2 pm the day before, to select pages – from the six or seven sections in each of about 30 newspaper titles – you want to be in your morning paper tomorrow. The 24-page product will also automatically include content from your social networking sites. “Everything is linked to the internet,” he says, “with the first and last pages personalised from the internet.” First editions were scheduled for September 1, and will reach 5000 readers, many of whom are students who will participate in market research as a focus group. Copies come off a 150metres/minute Jetstream 2200, and will be delivered through a system owned by German publishers. Individual publishers receive royalties for the pages used, while ‘niiu.de’ gets the advertising revenue and cover price proceeds. Again it’s only a pilot project and there’s an expectation that if the launch is a success, the concept will be sold. Among the magazine ideas being tested is a biweekly from the publishers of ‘Time’: During its current ten-week trial, readers got to customise content, selecting from five of eight participating publications including ‘Time’, ‘Sports Illustrated’, ‘Food & Wine’, ‘Real Simple’, ‘Money’, ‘In Style’, ‘Golf’ and ‘Travel Leisure’. For 31,000 subscribers, the combination of content was effectively a printed RSS feed ... a 36-page mash-up of possible permutations, backed by a personalised marketing message. All the ads were for the new Lexus RX sports utility, but the sale message was also tailored to reflect readers’ specific interests. Again an online version was offered, and its future unconfirmed. The more variable content, the more complex the software needed to drive such products, but the idea isn’t new: It’s many years since Agfa was showing samples of a brochure for genetically-modified grain which ‘warmed’ farmer prospects with images of a header of the right colour and other personalised detail... and there have been many such since. By leveraging a list of preferences a reader may have registered on a website – or which nay have been accumulated elsewhere – a publisher is technically able to deliver a magazine or newspaper in which everything is of interest to the reader, and advertisements are also calculated to grab their attention. Websites and RSS feeds do this all the time, of course, but to generate elegant (or even functional) pages of content automatically is a big ask, and the advice is to take it one step at a time, especially in the current economic climate. There are two ways of ‘testing the water’: One is to install the digital printing hardware needed for short-run digital printing – which is typically the same as that required for ‘one-to-one’ customised editions – and the other is to look at ways of personalising offset-printed editions. Kodak has been working with manroland to develop systems based on the Versamark continuous inkjet technology it acquired from Scitex, and in June launched a new mono printhead based on its new Stream technology, which can be fitted to high-speed newspaper presses. What you do with it will depend on the applications you have in mind, and whether the delivery system downstream is capable of putting a personalised edition into each letterbox. Realistically, you’re more likely to want microzoned, rather than personalised editions for the moment, and while a ten-centimetre swathe down a web may seem limiting, it’s a start. There’s also the opportunity of digitally printing complete supplements for a specific suburb or locality, inserting and tagging the product in the mailroom. Idle time on the digital press isn’t very likely at current press speeds, but could be used to produce personalised marketing pieces for circulation development, or commercial work. Nor are publisher-owned digital print facilities necessarily the best or only business model. Consolidating resources makes huge sense in many remote printing applications. Some of those already operating – such as those which print newspapers for holidaymakers in Portugal – are distributor or printer, rather than publisher owned. Equally, the idea of imprinting microzoned content on a conventional newspaper press becomes far more workable if you can share the cost of say, four inkjet heads on a press to print a couple of broadsheet pages of ultralocal news and advertising (or four tabloid ones) in an edition. The more you think about it ... the more opportunities there are. It’s one to talk out with your colleagues: Like so many before it, digital inkjet is an enabling technology and if you’ve grown up in a web-offset environment, its potential may not be immediately obvious. Kevin Joyce, Kodak’s worldwide sales and marketing vice president for digital printing solutions, sees three main newspaper applications for the company in digital printing. Apart from the ‘distribute and print’ and microzonong applications, Kodak is already involved in imprinting variable data on the web on high speed web-offset presses. After working with manroland on the use of its Versamark continuous inkjet heads, the company now has a high-speed implementation of its Stream technology – now branded Kodak Prosper – ready for market, which it showed at China Print in May. The monochrome S10 head has a print width of 105.6 mm and uses fade-resistant pigment-based inks, printing at 600 dpi at up to 305 metres/minute. Now Kodak is looking for sites to take on first implementations of this – known as the S10 Imprinting System – and a full colour machine which will be available for installations early next year. Expect the announcement of an Australian site following Joyce’s visit and another by Kodak chief marketing officer Jeff Hayzlett in June. Joyce says China is an interesting market for the company because it has both the need for technology which can bring its national newspapers to remote areas, and the means to deliver it. In Germany and the USA too, the post office is positioned to be a service provider, able to deliver personalised newspapers to individuals. Australia’s geography and the presence of large players are among factors which make it a key market in the region, along with Japan and China. Kodak is ready to offer a “helping hand” to early adopters, providing assistance with marketing and in a range of other areas, providing resources for cstomers and end-users: “We have that in Europe and North America,” Joyce says. “You have to do this to accelerate the adoption of digital. Selling the product is not even half the job.” Newspaper applications are likely to follow, aafter transaction and promotional print (transpromo), direct mail and books are established markets for the technology. Then the insert/catalogue market will target high quality catalogues as a replacement for bulk direct mail. “There’s an expectation that all this will happen within five years, with the market at a ‘tipping point’”, he says. Joyce, who was president of Creo America when it was acquired by Kodak, helped kick off the Chicago Tribune’s ‘Triblocal’ project in his role as Kodak’s North America managing director. “The reverse publishing model worked there, but still needs to be refined to make it more integrated and easier to adapt,” he says. “With the collapse of the industry there are people looking for new integrated products (which combine print and internet) and the reduction of the industry forces a change of model. “Newspapers just need to get creative,” he says. “It’s been said that ‘print is not the issue, and newspapers are not dead’ but I don’t know of any newspaper that will be able to survive simply as print.” There’s a lot of interest in the cost-per-copy equation, and Joyce is as careful as any to avoid quoting specific costs. The company uses the term ‘offset class’ to represent technical equality – productivity, reliability and quality – but he won’t be drawn on comparisons in cost. gx Hunkeler can’t wait for payoff At PacPrint, Patrick Lehmann, Asia Pacific sales director for Hunkeler, told GXpress he was keen to see digital newspaper printing take off. The company developed the news finishing system – which cuts, collates and folds consecutive page pairs into newspapers – nine years ago, and still dominates online and offline markets. Lehmann says the market has been “quite slow” despite the optimism of the company and its founder, who backed the substantial investment in the project. A cooperation with folder maker MBO (replacing the Stahl folder on early versions) provides the opportunity to increase product sizes from 12 to 24 sheets, equivalent to a 96-page newspaper, while versions now handle webs up to 660 mm wide. During off-peak time the system can handle brochures and book signatures.