He'd never recognize the place now.
Three months after the paper put into operation the last of its three new presses, the Daily News of 2010 bears no resemblance to its 1950s counterpart. Sure, the paper is still a tabloid, but that's where the similarities end.
"We're creating attractive products for our advertisers and our customers, and we now have better print quality, preprinted sections and the ability to insert daily," said Chris Baker, the Daily News' vice president of manufacturing, of the project that transformed the paper's operations.
Instead of the black-and-white presses that anchored the Daily News in the 1950s, the paper is now being produced by three triplewide Commander CT presses from Koenig & Bauer AG.
Color and cutoff control is managed by a QIPC system.
Color everywhere
The machines, configured as 15 towers and 120 couples, are engineered to produce full color on every page. The Daily News was the first North American newspaper to purchase the 90,000-copy-per-hour machines, which were initially introduced by KBA in 2006.
The press model is specifically built for operations that produce newspapers and semi-commercial work. The press stands at a compact 12 feet, 9 inches high for easy placement and features oil-free towers that split down the middle to allow operators easy access. An undershot film inking unit - with three form rollers - can handle a wide variety of inks, from heatset and UV to hybrid and conventional.
"I believe in the future of the Daily News; that's why I am making this significant investment," Mort Zuckerman, the paper's chairman and publisher, said in a statement when he first announced the upgrade in early 2008.
"When the presses are fully operational, the print quality of the Daily News will be head and shoulders above the competition and equal to any newspaper in the world. This will solidify our leadership in the New York market, reinforce our position as the country's leading tabloid and raise the bar on newspaper production in the United States," he said.
Split into sections
To get the most flexibility out of the press foundation, the Daily News arranged the press as three sections, with each section sporting five reelstands, five towers, two ribbon stitchers and a KF-7 folder. Each section can generate up to 120 pages (straight) in full color.
The 75-inch-wide presses - printing six pages across - sport a 20-inch cutoff. They are not engineered to accommodate any change in web width, Baker said.
Six press consoles, running EAE software, incorporate job scheduling and press presetting. The software is integrated with a specially designed roll-handling system from Finland-based Pesmel that manages the delivery of newsprint to the presses, Baker said.
The six-high storage system is equipped with two stacker cranes to ensure continuous delivery of newsprint to the press.
Newsprint inventory control and logistics is managed by another Finnish vendor, Protacon.
KBA, meantime, supplied two roll strip stations and two Eco Splice automatic splice preparation robots. The vendor also equipped the machines with its PlateTronic plate changers, RollerTronic roller locks and NipTronic cylinder bearings.
Scanning capabilities
Baldwin Technology Co. Inc. supplied web vacuum systems and blanket washers on all 15 reelstands while Technotrans provided dumpwater mixing units, equipped with remote management capabilities.
Finally, the Daily News tapped Q.I. Press Controls to install its mRC color registration and cutoff control technology. The vendor supplied 49 scanners across the 15 towers and three folders to monitor color and cutoff, respectively.
The installation uses QIPC's micro register marks; the associated scanners can capture the marks at a rate of 40 samples per second.
US Ink provided both color and black ink. Baker said the Daily News has left provisions to add UV curing or heatset capability to the presses if needed.
The Daily News previously beefed up its prepress in 2007, installing three Krause LS Jet 300 violet systems with BlueFin processors.
The three lines, which each generate up to 300 single-page Fujifilm LP-NNV plates per hour, are linked to an associated Nela Evolution punch bender. Nela also installed a multiposition plate sortation system from which press operators retrieve the plates for placement onto the press. Each line parallels a specific section of the press and is dedicated to that section, allowing for quick plating and replating.
"We are very happy to be part of this press project and be able to provide the link between prepress and press," said Jürgen Gruber, Nela's director of sales.
The system is orchestrated by Krause/Wobe workflow software that meshes with EAE's production planning and press presetting app.
Lane Palmer, vice president of newspaper sales at Fujifilm North America Corp., said the Daily News' deployment of the Krause/Fuji technology helped the company secure installations at other large metros, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
"Newspapers saw that these systems could do the job," he said.
Packaging upgrade
Well before the Daily News flipped the switch on its three presses, the paper in 2008 and 2009 put into production its new Ferag-anchored mailroom. Ferag, through its North American partnership with Goss International, provided six MultiSert inserting lines with associated RollStream, gripper conveyor and DiscPool buffering systems to support the Daily News' move to insert circulars and other preprints in its daily editions.
The postpress system is connected to the presses via three Ferag press grippers. All inserting operations are overseen and tracked by a Ferag integrated process control system, which dovetails with the Daily News' existing advertising and circulation software.
"The integration of daily inserting into the Daily News' existing operation was successful and based on the great cooperation between Ferag and the Daily News," said Joe Colletti, president and CEO of Ferag Americas. Colletti said the system can be further expanded, if needed, with online trimming, polybagging and quarter folding.
The Daily News earmarked 38,000 square feet in its existing Liberty View production plant in Jersey City, N.J., to accommodate the new equipment.
Now that the Daily News' new equipment is up and running, John Polizano, the paper's senior vice president of advertising, said the paper is now looking at ways to increase its value to advertisers.
"We are constantly working with them to develop better and different ways to get their message to the customer," he said. "We have been able to expand our partnership with existing advertisers and have also attracted new advertisers" as a result of the new presses and inserting equipment.
By Chuck Moozakis Editor in Chief
http://www.newsandtech.com/news/article_b909f0fc-221f-11df-a9de-001cc4c002e0.html
Standing out
In the hypercompetitive New York market, the new equipment has also helped further differentiate the Daily News from rival papers, especially the New York Post, which is in the midst of its own press upgrade project (see News & Tech, November 2009).
The Daily News has, in fact, widened its weekday lead over the Post to more than 40,000 copies, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in January. The Daily News, ABC said, distributed 573,051 copies each day in the 12 months through last September. The Post's circulation totaled 532,484.
The new foundation will also allow the Daily News to examine adding commercial printing to its menu of services, Baker said. "We continue to look for options that would allow us to increase the utilization of our investment."
