NEWSPAPER PRESSES -- Pressing Issues

These business pressures have translated into an ever-greater need for flexibility on the production side. Newspaper plants can provide a competitive edge by enabling increased use of color, supporting more versioning of editions, pushing back ad deadlines and reducing newsprint consumption.

The trend in recent years of converting to printing 50" webs is a good example of the responsiveness being demanded of newspaper production operations. A survey done by the Newspaper Association of America in 2000 found that 145 newspapers had already made the conversion, with 144 additional papers committed to making the change and 127 more considering it. On the other side, only 137 news-papers said they were not considering converting to a 50" web.