No signs of alien life in newspapers – Print21 magazine feature

Looking at the market penetration of digital presses in the newspaper sector could be likened to the search for alien life in the cosmos—some sightings but hardly any concrete evidence. In this month of the PANPA Future Forum, Andy McCourt (one of the speakers) looks at the current and future state-of-play of digital in the mighty newspaper printing market.

It’s 1993, I am in the UK and a Taiwanese gentleman has just opened a suitcase full of cash in front of us. Having never seen more than 30 crumpled fifty quid notes when Blues Traveller came in third at 150/1 in that year’s Derby, it was hard for me to estimate how much was in there but half a million would be underestimating. He wanted to buy the first digital full colour press ever to be exhibited at an international trade show—Ipex 93; not place an order, but to actually return to Taipei with one of the exhibition models.

Of course Indigo politely refused his offer and, during the passage of time, HP bought the entire company, although history does not record if it was paid for with suitcases of cash.

The point is, the potential impact of full colour digital on-demand printing was recognised by the sheetfed printing sector very early on, not just in Taiwan but pretty much universally. Many printers eagerly sought out new applications for this revolutionary technology that, within ten years, was to see offerings from Xeikon, Xerox, Canon, Ricoh, Kodak, Heidelberg, Konica Minolta and Agfa in both sheet and reel-fed configurations.

As with all pioneering roads, there were twists and turns along the way but today, digital sheetfed presses offering full-colour output in short runs represent the highest growth rate of press hardware installations globally and the highest CAGR in both number of pages printed and in the value-per-page. Lately, this has begun to include web-fed or continuous feed digital colour presses.

Seize the digital day

The sectors of our industry that have taken the carpe diem approach to digital and are benefiting from it include:

• B3/A3 sheetfed—digital is blitzing this market in both colour and mono. Virtually all colour printed by high-street printers in this format is now printed digitally on Ricohs, Canons, HP Indigos, Konica Minoltas, Xeroxes, Kodak Nexpresses and so on. Longer runs beyond digital’s economic scope tend to be outsourced to trade offset printers.
• Screen printing—a massive impact by digital here with wide and grand-format digital presses smashing screen printing’s domination of billboards and much of the point-of-sale market. Even screen’s forte—permanent product marking—is under attack with flatbed UV and LED-curing digital printers. Textile, glass and metal decoration remain strong for the screen process, however.
• Labels—see the last issue of Print21 for proof that the label-printing industry is undergoing a digital revolution. Short-
• run colour, economies of scale, labels printed close to product sources, variable print; these are all factors impacting on the change in label markets. Personalised wine is already available from McGuigan’s in the Hunter Valley!
• Books—for textbooks, education courses and read-for-pleasure, digital print is growing at an estimated 14 per cent CAGR (source: Caslon Research). Why? Because the business model is changing, not because printers wanted to substitute digital for offset production. Digital’s ability to print one or 1,001 copies for the same unit cost and avoid warehousing, multiple handling, remaindering and re-pulping is re-inventing the book printing business.
• Direct mail—the new breed of high-speed, full-colour, digital web presses have enabled savvy DM printers to eliminate offset ‘shells’ and take a white-paper approach to DM and essential mail. Add to this variable data and a ‘greener’ DM product, and you have an industry undergoing radical change as you read this.
• Newspapers—Missing In Action! Apart from a smattering of hybrid-approaches where Kodak’s S10 or S20 imprinting system is retrofitted to an existing offset web press to provide variable imprinting, barcodes etc, the newspaper media’s approach to digital production appears to be that if it can’t do 80,000 cph of a 96-page tabloid, it has no place.

The newspaper industry quite obviously represents a huge percentage of what gets printed and yet, out of the dozen-or-so digital newspaper printing sites globally, not one is with a newspaper publisher. These sites are either contract printers, direct mail houses adding newspapers to their output, or distribution firms such as the Miller Distribution conglomerate which, with interests in five digital newspaper press sites, is currently the world leader in this field. Why is this so?

Islands in the news stream

It’s a classic case of supply-and-demand. Miller and others such as Dubai’s Atlas Printing and Stroma in the UK, have homed in on a ready-to-buy expatriate local market that wants its home newspapers on the same day as they are published in London, Paris, New York or Sydney.

This market is prepared to pay a premium cover price and exists in numbers that are suited to the output capacity of digital presses.
However, I believe it would be a mistake for newspapers to believe that remote-site printing of domestic mastheads to serve an expatriate or transplanted readership is the only application for digital technology.

Already, RotOcéan on the French Island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean is personalising copies of Le Monde and Le Figaro including advertisements naming the subscriber in the headline. VW with its Toureg SUV has already taken advantage of this capability to personalise and, if it is successful in Réunion, it would be reasonable to expect the German auto giant to ask other newspapers if they can offer this service.

Pictured: Andy McCourt

Few would disagree with the fact that newspapers are having a hard time of it all over the developed world. Much of the pain has been self-inflicted. The closure of News International’s News of the World over illegal phone hacking has implications for newspapers far beyond the UK.

The integrity of ‘red-top’ scandal sheets has been under scrutiny for some years but the NotW scandal delivered an unexpected knock-out blow. Each time such papers publish photos of a politician with his pants down or a rock star with funny white powder down their shirt, circulations go up and the anti-investigative journalism lobby has had to eat humble pie. With NotW, the humble pie, as well as a custard pie, was (almost) all on the publishers. The highest-circulating Sunday newspaper in the world had to close and the reputation of newspapers has been irreparably damaged.

Throughout the Western world, newspapers appear to be disenfranchising their position with communities. They have all but lost the under 25s, perhaps with the exception of freesheets such as ‘MX’ which I see dozens of high school students reading on trains. Community newspapers fare better because of their close ties to councils, local businesses and a measurable delivery system.

Journalists fall below sex workers

To be blunt, management of content and journalism is failing. It is all very well to brag about ‘making or breaking govern­ments’ by a news organisation pledging its allegiance to one side or another, but when the integrity of an entire profession is called into question, the influence is seriously compromised. By the way, in a recent Reader’s Digest survey, journalists ranked 40th in ‘trusted professions’—out of 45. Sex workers were one spot ahead and, predictably, politicians were last.

But how does this relate to digital news­-paper production? The answer is that agile, multi-site digital production of shorter-run news type publications opens up a whole new world of marketing and targeted readership opportunities. In fact, the control of such initiatives should probably be more under the influence of the marketing department than the production gurus who do such a marvellous job of mega-sites geared towards mass media runs but can not get enthused about a press that is pushed to produce 10,000 48-page tabloids in a five-hour press run.

Of course several digital newspaper presses in sites close to markets can up the nightly production run considerably but the game is not about numbers—it is about reaching targeted audiences with news, opinion, information and, of course, advertising.

Ever wondered why community newspapers such as Cumberland and Leader still have many pages of classifieds —the ‘rivers of gold’ that have been washed away from the big dailies? It’s because they are reaching known, targeted audiences.

A digitally-printed newspaper with a targeted subscriber audience of 5,000 can be more powerful than a 200,000 print run mass daily—if those 5,000 are the right subscribers.

Another way in which mass newspapers alienate even those who loyally subscribe to them for home-delivery is the disrespectful way in which they arrive—as a too-tightly shrink-wrapped log tossed carelessly out of a van onto the, often wet, grass which then capillaries its moisture into the product.

During rainy spells, it can become a soggy mess fit only for the recycling bin. Even if dry, once the nasty, clingy epidermis is shed, the paper inside is so curled that the only way to read it comfortably is to iron it flat! Newspapers, this is your pride and joy, your product; the fruit of carefully-planned and engineered Chulloras or Port Melbournes. And you tolerate it being partly destroyed right at the point where the customer receives it? The solution has been around for years. Flat wrap the things please!!

Screen is no protection

To many newspaper executives, the term ‘digital’ means newspaper content that is delivered directly to an e-Reader, iPad, computer screen or mobile device. That newspapers are still important is evidenced by the audiences that newspaper websites attract. Despite all the criticism, surveys and shenanigans, newspapers are still trusted to bring accurate information to people.

The problem is, if it is not on paper, not enough people want to pay for it and not enough advertising space is available. Pay walls have been tried but their success is underwhelming. Most newspapers give mobile content away for free but build a valuable marketing database they can perhaps use in the future.

News content to screen displays will, of course, grow but there is a clear case for a mixed media approach to delivering newspapers. Digital newspaper presses enable variable data and this means they can become hybrid direct-marketing tools for advertisers.

All advertisers know that well-executed direct marketing delivers greater returns than mass media advertising —what if this were achieved in the daily newspaper? Already a newspaper group in the north of England is trying this but with a digital imprinting device—the Kodak S10 —fitted to an offset press. CN Newspapers in Cumbria believes that unique coupon offers can be printed and redemption rates tracked and measured with barcodes. Did someone say ‘News-Promo’?

So where to for digital newspapers?

One thing is beyond reasonable doubt and that is that digital printing is eventually going to affect newspapers in the same way it has affected every other sector of the graphic arts industry. This means it is not going to take over but will become a force unto itself and perhaps attract non-core operators such as Europe’s Miller Distributing Group which leverages the content and mastheads to reach new audiences. It may even spark new titles for focused interest groups and communities.

Change is a hard taskmaster and the nature of digital web presses probably means they belong in office-IT environments and not in the massive web offset temples of high production. A marketing-driven approach will define the new products that digital promises.

Of one thing I am sure: it is unwise for newspapers to ignore digital print in the hope it will go away—it won’t. I am reminded of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ words:

“Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”