7. Customized print editions
(NOTE: This post is part of a series. Series index.)
Believe it or not, the technology for this already exists. News industry analyst Vin Crosbie explained it this way recently in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog…
“A newspaper industry that can better match its content to each individual [print] reader’s unique mix interests will have a more valuable product than today’s ‘same-to-all’ editions. Unknown to almost all newspaper people who work with new media (and unknown even to the most newspaper people who work with print), it is now not only possible but economically practical for many newspapers, and soon most, to print a unique edition for each reader. The requirement is that most of today’s newspapers will need to buy new presses.
“The press technology that does this is today known as Short Run Digital Printing (SRDP). Although the world’s best-selling manufacturers of newspaper presses don’t manufacture SRDP, presses, Kodak U.S.A., Océ of Belgium, Fuji Xerox in Japan, and Agfa in Germany do.
“Rather than use press plates, which must print the same edition for every reader, SRDP press are newspaper roll-fed inkjet printers. For example, Agfa’s Dotrix duplex press can print 30,000 tabloid (A4) sized, four-color editions per hour (500 pages per minute). This newspaper press cost about one-quarter what a plated presses does and requires only a single person to run.
“Currently, the disadvantage is that inks for SRDP presses cost much more than those for plated presses. SRDP presses are now economical to purchase and operate only for daily newspapers of less than about 10,000 circulation—although that number is expected to double within two years and continue climbing. This would make SRDP presses economical for about 400 of the 1,450 U.S. dailies today, and double that by 2010.
“According to The VASP Group, today in Portugal SRDP presses are used to print and distribute The Washington Post, Folha de Sao Paulo, Tribune de Geneve, The Evening Standard, and other papers at the same hour those editions are printed in their homes countries. Granted, these are traditional, non-individualized editions of those newspapers.
“However, I know of a broadsheet daily newspaper in London that this year has been using a SRDP press to deliver individual editions to each of 1,000 readers, as an experiment in customized content. The SRDP press is computer-controlled by a database that contains templates of newspaper page
layouts and a database of each of those reader’s preferences for content. This technology also can change the advertising in each copy to match the reader’s gender, age, location, etc.”
...Now think about this kind of technology’s ability to enhance how you package and present content to currently underserved communities.
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