Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog - Printing and Production

USA Today partners with local paper to launch Trinidad and Tobago edition

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:24:00 -0600

USA Today and Trinidad & Tobago's Newsday have entered into partnership and together launched the Trinidad and Tobago edition of USA Today, T&T's Newsday reported.

The first Trinidad and Tobago edition of the USA Today was printed yesterday in the El Socorro Pressroom and distributed to attendees at an event created around the new partnership. The new edition will be distributed directly to subscribers from Monday to Friday and also be made available at airports, airlines, hotels and several other sales outlets throughout the country, said Therese Mills, CEO and editor in-chief of T&T's Newsday.

Financial Times moves magazine printing operations to UK

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:19:38 -0600

St Ives Web, the magazine printing division of St Ives plc, has secured a contract to print the Financial Times lifestyle magazine, How to Spend It, along with several others to be announced later in the year, Print Week reported.

The printing operations of the fortnightly title, which has a with a print run of 450,000, will be moved from Eastern Europe to the company's Peterborough site in the United Kingdom. The site also prints The Economist and Time Out magazines.

UK television series moves into print

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:18:36 -0600

Future Publishing Group has teamed up with British broadcaster Channel Five and producer North One Television to launch a print edition of television programme The Gadget Show, World Screen reported.

The UK publisher will launch The Gadget Show Magazine in April, according to a press relase. The 132-page title will feature a retrospective on the ultimate gear from 2009, and developments of the future, with editorials from The Gadget Show's on-air team.

Globe and Mail to publish special Sunday editions for Olympics

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:27:02 -0600

The Globe and Mail will publish three special Sunday editions for the British Columbia market to provide more coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, making it the only seven-day newspaper in the region, MarketingMag reported Friday.

The special editions will be published Feb. 14, 21 and 28. They will be delivered to subscribers, sold at more than 1,000 retail outlets in Vancouver, Whistler and Victoria, and be available to the rest of Canada as an online e-edition.

Chicago Tribune, LA Times cut print size

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:55:12 -0600

To save on print production costs and to streamline operations, Tribune Co. papers the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are rolling out changes this week and next. The LA Times today launched LATExtra, a new section that includes local and California coverage, as well as late-breaking news. It has also trimmed an inch off its print version, and is now 11 inches wide, LA Times Blogs reported today.

The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, will also trim an inch from the width of its newspaper beginning Monday, according to MediaPost.

L.A. Times sells print run to WSJ

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:41:16 -0600

The deadline for the Los Angeles Times front page has been moved up five or more hours, to 6 p.m., because the Times is closing its Orange County printing plant and has sold its print run time slot at the remaining plant to the Wall Street Journal, Sharon Waxman reported for The Wrap yesterday. The Tribune Co.-owned Times print run used to be 11 p.m. and midnight.

Because of the change, breaking news will now appear in another section of the paper, and 80 people from the pressroom will be laid off. Eddy Hartenstein, publisher of the Times, wrote in a memo to staff that the change is being made to "further streamline our operations and reduce print production costs."

Looking ahead: Strategies for 2010

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:45:21 -0600

Most people in the newspaper industry are not sad to see 2009 come to a close. This year, the global recession hit hard and difficult lessons were learned, but looking ahead to 2010, newspapers are planning ways to hit back.

Shaping the Future of the Newspaper has studied trends and talked to experts, and created a list of important strategies for 2010.

1. Targeted audiences. In addition to the "general purpose" newspaper, the future of the newspaper industry will require newspaper companies to create a portfolio of targeted print and digital products for a variety of audiences based on age, gender, location, socio-economic status, ethnicity and interest group.

Hearst opts out by developing its own news platform for handheld devices

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:53:30 -0600

Hearst Corp. apparently tired of waiting for the tech world to produce an electronic delivery software suitable for its many publications. So, it spent the last two years developing Skiff, a platform of its own which is set to start selling in mid-2010, The Wall Street Journal today reported.

"The platforms and devices that other people are building are not really appropriate for newspapers and magazines," Kenneth A. Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media was quoted Thursday by Apple Insider as saying. "We are going to create an entity by publishers for publishers."

Senor: Internet will not kill newspapers

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:53:18 -0600

"In an age of scrappy messages and information saturation - people want editorial criteria. We need to go from journalist to journANALYST," said Juan Senor, vice president of the International Media Consulting Group. He discussed the 2009 Global Report on Innovations in Newspapers. He then answered three main questions: What do people want from a newspaper in the 21st century, where is the money, and how do we get there?

Senor predicted that paper will always be around. Although it will never die, the business models and the content propositions have changed. "Complacency is the biggest threat to newspapers," said Senor. "What we're putting in these front pages is not relevant." Publications are repeating the same headlines on front pages and it is redundant. We need to have different ideas, he said.

Print investments create successes for Times of India, i, PANPA

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:37:59 -0600

Creating a good brand is done through leadership, Ravi Dhariwal, CEO of Bennet, Coleman & Co., which publishes The Times of India told this afternoon's session of the World Newspaper Congress in Hyderabad. Speakers discussed how their businesses make money, while remaining credible and effective and still incredibly popular - through print.

Dhariwal and his company have made The Times of India a brand rather than just a newspaper through extensive marketing and interactivity. Establishing The Times as a cheerleader for the country was a key part of this branding strategy, along with keeping it "virtually free" for everyone.

SFN: Reports and 'Future and Change' survey analysis

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:56 -0600

More than a dozen reports from 2008-2009 were presented and analyzed by Indian freelance journalist Sridala Swami from WAN-IFRA's Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project.

She detailed the relationship between growing technologies and monetization. Editorial content management systems can enhance quality, reduce costs, ease the use of blogging, social networking, and sharing. Newspapers by their nature already have print, and they also have access to online, so the real opportunity is to intergrate and "get a lot more bang for your buck."

François Nel, director of Journalism Leadership Programmes at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom. Photo: Brian Powers, Western Integrated Media

UK's Sun celebrates 40 years by spoofing Apple tablet

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:28:00 -0600

Poking a little fun at some late-coming high technology, The Sun newspaper today marked its 40th anniversary in continuous publication by posting several videos to its Web site highlighting the pioneering nature of its paper edition, Media Blog reported today.

One video demonstrates the high-tech nature of its pen-to-paper interface crossword puzzles, as well as its easy-to-disseminate pullout pages, a.k.a. file sharing, TechCrunch Europe today reported.

Multimedia newsroom: digital strategies

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:51:43 -0600

Dietmar Schantin, director at WAN-IFRA, spoke today about the integration of print and digital media. The interaction between the two is vital for future newspapers in order for them to stay successful.

All media is being used now to get the news out as quickly as possible. He explained the importance of each media and how it relates to and relies on another.

Coverage of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Hyderabad

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:09:02 -0600

Over the next few days, the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog will be providing extensive coverage of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors Forum, working with our sister publications, the Editors Weblog and the dedicated WAN-IFRA multimedia conference blog.

You can follow our coverage on Twitter @NewspaperWorld and @WANindia2009, using the hashtag #WANindia09, or on Facebook at the conference page.

Apple Tablet may be dead, yet Conde Nast soldiers on

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:33:51 -0600

Release of an electronic chalkboard from MacIntosh has been postponed so many times that PC World Thursday joined other gadget analysts in speculating that the much-anticipated product might be dead in the water. However, neither repeated design delays nor rumours that the project will ultimately be abandoned has stopped Conde Nast magazines from proceeding with development of Apple Tablet-compatible editions by pdf-maker Adobe, Mac Rumors said Saturday.

The Tablet's latest slow-up was attributed to a switch in subparts by DigiTimes on Thursday. Nevertheless, Conde Nast has prepared tablet-ready editions - for Apple, or its competitors - starting with a digital version of Wired, according to All Things Digital. To cement its commitment, Wired followed that report with a video published Saturday demonstrating the concept.