With the news from Chicago last week of a 7th buyout and layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, my colleagues’ and myself are feeling uneasy once again. Since the pressroom voted in favor of the Teamsters/GCC (January 6th, 2007) the pressroom employees are ineligible to take this poorly funded offer.
Yet, a few of my Tribune Boss’ attempt to poke fun at us pressmen with their comments that the pressroom employees shot themselves in the foot by voting for union representation, and my response to them is, “If this latest buyout is such a tremendous offer, why don’t you take it”.
On Monday the downsizing at the Times was made official by David Hiller, with 100 to 150 Times employees bought out or laid off. So when the press operators were told that same day that we would be replaced or gotten rid off if we did not adhere to one thing or another, the timing could not be worse with the latest bad news from Chicago.
With tensions high and moral low among the workers the use of diplomacy at this time is suggested, by this I mean, If you want to tell me to go to hell, do so in a manner that I’ll look forward to the trip.
What brought this on were the two roller wraps last week on one particular press, but does management question the experts (The Press Operators), no they don’t, they assume the wraps occurred because we are taking short cuts. When I started my press last week we discovered a roller and plate wrap (newsprint in the rollers and on the plates) on unit A-9 at the 13 side, level B, near position.
The very next day David Joe and crew ran the same press, and after running 40,000 to 50,000 copies, stopped the press to replace updated plates (replates) and when they restarted the press they had a roller and plate wrap, in exactly the same position as we experienced.
This tells me the newsprint either peeled out at this location or the newsprint separated (newsprint is made up of two sheets pressed together) because the magenta ink is extremely tacky. With sonic detectors you may wonder why the press did not come to a stop with the newsprint absent, there are no detectors on the outside pages of the sheets; they only monitor the two middle pages of a web.
On Wednesday of this week I told my crew we were ordered by our pressroom manager to follow SOP’s (standard operating procedures) or I would be replaced. After struggling to engage the clutch on unit F-9, level B, we finally black boarded our press a bit after three in the afternoon, and while removing the used plates we found the couple at this unit would not move forward or reverse.
What had happened was the cleanup crew had left a towel in the roller train, which would have been discovered at one in the afternoon if we took a shortcut and removed the color plates while the reel changes were being made.
This SOP resulted in downtime for my printing press, the Machine Shop was called, and the crushed blankets had to be changed.
I’m constantly reminded I’m highly paid, so allowed me to do what you pay me for, run my printing press the most efficient way I see fit.
Taking my concerns to the senior vice-president of production resulted in a comment from him “Don’t get yourself in trouble Ed”, but I will be replaced, according to my pressroom manager, if I do not adhere to the SOP’s.
I’m at a loss here, which way do you gentlemen want it? Take shortcuts to expedite the press runs, or follow the SOP’s, and take a chance of impacting the following shift.
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2 comments:
Ed Name Names of who said "WE SHOT OUESELVES IN THE FOOT"
Ed... You might want to keep our head down....
Squeezing Money From Iron
By Jim Rosenberg and Mark Fitzgerald
senior editor and editor-at-large, respectively, at E&P.
Published: April 27, 2007 10:40 AM ET
NEW YORK An appealing aspect of realigning newspaper ownership into geographic clusters has been the opportunity to centralize production. Printing several titles at one plant can improve both efficiency and quality. More recently, retreating business has spurred production consolidation at big-city newspapers, neighboring community dailies, and large metro-area groups.
But consolidation is driven by more than just shrinking circulation and advertising. Where it matters, presses are faster. More important, product changeovers are sped by computer-to-plate output, automatic ink presetting from pre-press data, automatic press web-up, even on-the-fly page changing.
Had the bare metrics of the business remained unchanged since 1990, evolving production and packaging capabilities during that time might have fostered a gradual trend toward consolidation anyway. Extracting more and better output from capital equipment just makes sense.
But the model "has always been one of craft," with newspapers owning all their resources, says longtime industry consultant Chuck Blevins. "Since the '80s, some of that has been evolving away" to a new model, he adds: "Psychologically, publishers weren't willing to give up control. That's gone away."
Naples, Fla.-based Blevins adds that beyond business conditions and market changes, technology advances have played a role in -- but not caused -- that change. "In some cases, it's just pure cost avoidance," he says, noting that although new equipment can do much more for the money, its cost is prohibitive for some. So when the time comes for a new press, it's time to consider partnering, maybe even outsourcing.
"I think you'll have a lot more of this," says Blevins, adding that multiple plants become "less rational" with lower circulations and faster presses.
But the longer-term downside, he continues, may be that "if you do these consolidations, you make it harder to sell the paper" -- if it lacks its own production plant and is separated from combined purchasing power.
Blevins cites William Dean Singleton as a leader in rationalizing production resources. This month, the California Newspapers Partnership (majority-owned by Singleton's MediaNews Group) turns over to the larger San Jose Mercury News the 25,0000-copy press runs of the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, late of Ottaway and CNHI.
Blaming falling ad revenue, a Sentinel report in March quoted Publisher Dave Regan saying that although the move "will make us more profitable ... it's a sad way to make the paper better." The change will cost 10 jobs in the pressroom and 23 in the mailroom. Some may find work in San Jose's pressroom. CNP stands to save approximately $1 million annually. According to Mercury News Publisher and CNP President George Riggs, further savings may come from relocating to smaller downtown quarters.
Rather than the supporting technologies, Blevins maintains, "it's just the pure pressures of economics driving this." Consolidation, in his view, is economically driven and technologically enabled: "It so happened that there was a business need at the same time that technology made it possible."
Big enablers, Blevins continues, include direct-to-plate output, which also eliminates film misregister and processing time; communications technologies, automatic register-control and press-presetting systems, which cut time and improve quality; and advanced press controls from a remote console, requiring only "a couple of people driving the press."
The latest presses are very fast, but "high speed in many cases is unused," Blevins says, pointing out that it usually only benefits long runs. An exception to this would be a need to print multiple dailies in rapid succession, which is done by one family-owned group in Ohio. Faster presses may allow for later deadlines, but without more work they sit idle longer, and any automation that contributes to speed also "requires more people to maintain it," Blevins cautions.
More papers from fewer plants
Among the alternatives to one plant producing only one newspaper, consolidation sits somewhere between outsourcing to a commercial printer and becoming a commercial printer.
Papers of all sizes have succeeded in producing commercial work. In the 1990s, five separately and independently owned central-Ohio dailies formed Premier Printing to produce their own titles and commercial jobs -- probably the only such arrangement in the U.S. A cluster in all but ownership, the Premier partnership was "really a reflection of the personalities of the people who got together," Blevins observes.
Consolidation more likely will occur at an existing site rather than at a new jointly owned facility. And with few independently owned dailies left, how many are close enough to support a separate print site?
Clearly not all pressrooms will be in a position to use downtime to print others' work. Except for one regular customer or occasional jobs, commercial work requires not only suitable equipment and execution, but usually also operation as its own business.
A plant that instead takes on all of its own paper's production or that of a sister paper will likely deal with fewer changes to ink density settings and paper roll sizes. It may negotiate better pricing for larger quantities of ink, paper, and plates. And it may not need commercially competitive UV curing, heatset drying, trimming, stitching, or gluing.
Which is not to say there cannot be upgrades. While one paper can benefit at the outset from another's systems, both benefit when a parent company invests savings in better equipment. The same is true at major metros that upgrade one plant before closing another.
Twenty years ago, The Dallas Morning News was among the first to scale back to a single suburban plant. Although it contemplated a second, it also was among the first to pull back, adding a press to its Plano plant and designating the new South Dallas plant for Sunday packaging and possibly its commercial printing affiliate.
Just last year, North Jersey Media Group ended printing at its Hackensack, N.J., headquarters, moving all production to its newly enlarged Rockaway plant, which, among other enhancements, added an advanced press to its single- and doublewide capacity to handle its own daily and weekly titles and considerable contract print work.
Since Dallas' distribution decamped to Plano, other big-city dailies did much the same. In 2000, the Seattle Times Co. moved all printing to its Bothell plant. Two other joint operating agencies -- Detroit's in 2005 and Denver's this year -- set up single print sites. Last year the Los Angeles Times closed its Valley plant and the the San Francisco Chronicle awarded Transcontinental its printing after 2008. Each had long operated three production plants.
The Washington Post and The Arizona Republic still print at two suburban locations each.
Atlanta's single suburban site
From Dallas to Detroit, Hackensack to Honolulu, many big dailies print outside cities. Following this trend, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution will close its downtown Fulton plant in two years and print only at its Norcross plant, in Gwinnett County.
Until just a few years ago, Cox Newspapers separately published the morning Constitution and evening Journal. "That probably was part of it," Operations Director Richard Hawes says of the two-plant strategy, which dates from the industry's boom days of the mid-1980s. But also, Hawes says, "because of the size of the papers, they required collect runs three or four days a week."
That consolidation is part of a major restructuring that will affect the number, size, and focus of sections and zoned editions. Along with product and production changes, management will curtail 5% of circulation when it ends delivery in areas with relatively few subscribers, limited advertiser interest, and what Publisher John Mellott described as distribution costs as high as $5 per 50-cent copy (E&P Online, Feb. 22). The company will not disclose projected savings.
In production, 98 jobs either will be eliminated or moved to Norcross, Mellott said in February. While the plan includes cutting positions and products, it also calls for investing $12 million in a new classified advertising system and $30 million to simplify production and supply more color at Norcross.
The Norcross and Fulton pressrooms have four mid-1980s, 27- couple TKS presses apiece, each with a satellite color unit and five half-decks. None of Fulton's units (on older Goss reelstands), however, will go to Norcross. Instead, the Cox flagship intends to add two color towers to each of three presses. (Two TKS ColorTop 7000CD towers were added to the fourth press in 2001 to print The New York Times.)
Last month, MAN Roland, TKS, and Goss International were still bidding for the contract. Hawes says Fulton's old iron is of no use to the group's other large dailies, which have newer presses. While there are no plans yet for the plant, "after printing ceases," Hawes says, prepress and production administration will continue there.
Consolidation was among multiple scenarios Hawes evaluated as a consultant for the AJC three years ago. With the paper for about a year now, he spent six years with DesignAlliance (later absorbed by McClier/ Austin-Aecom) after working 22 years at The Washington Post.
A 48-page edition in four sections, with 20 full-color pages, is "the most colorful paper we can print with the press configuration we have today," says Hawes.
While bigger Friday and Sunday editions run collect, in the past year the other days' editions have been printed in straight mode on only three presses. Friday and Sunday, says Hawes, "we typically run all eight presses" -- the AJC on seven and, on the fourth Norcross press after the New York Times is off, a zoned Gwinnett County edition of the AJC.
By itself, eliminating circulation to outlying areas would do little to support consolidation, because that early run accounts for only 25,000 copies from one or two presses, and well before the main, midnight run. "Another reason why it's advantageous" to print at Norcross, Hawes says, it that "all inserting takes place there." Fulton handles only ROP copies.
The color towers, along with a third-level former, Hawes notes, will enable Norcross to produce 72-page editions in six sections, with up to 32 full-color pages. With one plant producing the entire distribution, there still will be adequate time for maintenance and even a new product, if one is created, according to Hawes.
"Even in this consolidated world, presses are still only used about 80% of the time," he says, "including two eight-hour maintenance shifts in a given week."
Consolidation won't affect New York Times national edition printing in Norcross, and the Times Co. is banking on there being no problems with its home market editions when it consolidates its own production.
Closing shop in Jersey -- again
When Times printing ends next spring in Edison, N.J., the plant will be sublet, its 16-year-old Goss Colorliners sold, and more than 200 workers paid severance.
The move will mark a second departure from the Garden State. In 1993, the Times shuttered its Carlstadt offset plant. It also will mark a 60,000-square-foot expansion and upgrade of the 11-year-old College Point plant in Queens , N.Y, as well as a web-width reduction to 48 inches.
But the move to one, more productive plant will save $30 million annually. Add savings from a slimmer web and the figure hits $42 million, according to published statements by top Times Co. executives. (The company also was facing $50 million in capital investments in Edison over the next 10 years.) Getting to that $42 million per year, however, requires investing $150 million.
Helping to nearly double productivity are new printing and packaging systems from suppliers of College Point's existing systems.
The Times considered rebuilding and using two Colorliners from Edison, but College Point has only one extra press pad. Expansion for another would require driving more piles into the poor subsoil, sending cost well above that already needed to enlarge the mailroom, according to Production Vice President Tom Lombardo.
The decision was made to minimize building costs and optimize production investment. Its centerpiece will be a 12-tower, shaftless-drive, 85,000-impression-per-hour Global Colorliner with semi-automatic plate loading, improved tension controls, and a double-capacity 2:5:5 jaw folder.
Goss also is converting the older presses to 48 inches and has six months' exclusive marketing rights to Edison's presses.
Meanwhile, upgrades are progressing at College Point, where pile-driving neared completion last month for the post-press expansion slated to be ready for operation by late October. The plant is to take over all production a year from now.
All the Colorliners will be fitted with Baldwin blanket-cleaning systems. To handle higher output, Muller Martini buffer-storage and inserting will expand with four double wind/ unwind stations, three 20:2 inserters, and control software. Post-press operations also get 11 new tie lines with Quipp stackers, six Schur palletizers, and Cannon Equipment/HK Systems bundle conveyors.
With one plant, reliability becomes critical. Adding two diesel-powered generators to the four already there "will cover everything in the building," says Lombardo.
As groups often do, the Times Co. will share leftovers. In this case, a New York Times Regional Media Group daily inherits a Harris 1472P inserter from Edison.
Carolinas combo
Joining another just like it, the 1472P will serve a simpler consolidation. Early this month, production of the 18,576-circulation Hendersonville, N.C., Times-News, its two weeklies, and monthly magazine moves about 50 miles to the 45,390-circulation Spartanburg, S.C., Herald-Journal's plant.
Nothing says that only production of national and regional papers can ignore state boundaries. Gannett Co. will print the Stamford and Greenwich, Conn., dailies it recently purchased from Tribune Co. at the The Journal News, in nearby White Plains, N.Y., which once printed editions under 10 different flags.
Serious discussion of consolidation in Spartanburg was under way within weeks of Mary Jacobus becoming president of the Times regional group last October. "We will be adding to the Spartanburg pressroom and mailroom staff," she says. "We're still working on how many hours we need on the different shifts."
Unlike publicized savings from New York Times consolidation, executives offer no estimate for Spartanburg. Jacobus says only, "We don't report the regional papers individually."
The consolidation will cost 35 full- and part-time Times-News jobs. Those let go, according to Publisher Ruth Birge, can apply to work at the Herald-Journal. She told the Times-News that its equipment's age and need for better printing and more inserting were behind the change.
Calling Hendersonville's 1961 Goss Urbanite "very old equipment," Jacobus says the singlewide's seven units and deck "certainly will not" be reused in the group. Among the oldest Urbanites around, it incorporates units once used by The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News, another Times Co. daily.
By moving onto Spartanburg's eight-unit doublewide Goss Headliner Offset, says Jacobus, the Times-News gains "better page capacity," more color, and "improved print quality" to meet advertisers' demand for color and provide it on four section fronts daily. In the mailroom it will get "more inserting capability" than is available on its old Muller Martini 227.
The Herald-Journal recently began printing the Times-News' big real-estate section, Jacobus says, "and that's been going really well."
The consolidated environment also can justify for the two papers more technology improvements "than if it was just one paper," says Jacobus. So besides press and post-press upgrades, the Times-News will benefit from Spartanburg's Agfa Advantage violet CTP installation last year, along with Presteligence workflow management to handle multiple products and files moving between Hendersonville and Spartanburg over two dedicated lines. "We have the Web as backup [because] Presteligence can be a Web-based application," says Production Technologies Director Bob Urillo, based in Norfolk, Va., at the Times Co.'s Shared Services Center.
The two pressrooms have run collect to print entire editions in one run. Hereafter, Urillo says, the papers will be run straight, with four to six topical sections daily. Sections with earlier deadlines will print first and be inserted with preprinted ads. "Then we will run the sports and main news sections for each, back-to-back," says Jacobus.
"Delivery times will be fully accommodated" for Hendersonville, she adds. One truck will haul the daily press run to Hendersonville, where the mailroom will stage the product, and carriers will combine each copy's two physical parts containing the various sections, according to Urillo, who says the Times-News' former pressroom will be used for general storage.
'One step at a time'
The McClatchy Co. also publishes Carolina dailies for which geography also puts the only likely consolidation across the state line. Operations Vice President Lynn Dickerson tells E&P that as far as moving production of The Herald in Rock Hill, S.C., to The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, "we are looking at whether it makes sense down the road. Right now it doesn't seem to, but things change."
Citing the papers' "very good relationship," Dickerson adds that while not trying to find savings in news or advertising, "we are looking for synergies in distribution."
At the Times Co., what look like the only other candidates are in Florida, where, says Jacobus, "we have not taken a hard look at print consolidation." About 40 miles apart in adjacent counties, The Gainesville Sun and Ocala Star-Banner circulate roughly 45,000 copies each, run Goss HO presses (Gainesville was the model's first buyer), and offer commercial printing.
They also have a history of collaboration, sharing work on big jobs, as well as people, technical skills, paper and parts, Ocala Publisher Bruce Gaultney told E&P a few years ago, calling the production directors "a model of cooperation."
So why fix what isn't broken? As Gaultney remarked, for several years the sites have demonstrated "cluster thinking," including servicing each other's delivery routes, accommodating advertisers that want to be in both papers, and cross-selling "where it makes sense for the customer."
Production is only one area of a wide-ranging expense-reduction initiative. So when it comes to closing pressrooms, the company is "moving one step at a time," says Jacobus. "It's been 20 years since we did this," she adds, referring to when Thibodaux Daily Comet printing moved to The Courier, in Houma, in a neighboring Louisiana parish.
A capital idea
Almost the same distance apart as the Times Co.'s pair but facing substantially greater winter transportation challenges, Wyoming Newspaper Group's Cheyenne flagship began printing its Laramie sister paper exactly a year ago. One year from now, both papers will print on a new press.
The family-owned group of five dailies had printed the 5,286-circulation Laramie Daily Boomerang on a six-unit Goss Community. Today it rolls off the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle's Urbanite. Publishing 15,667 copies from the capital, the state's second-largest daily circulates in southeast Wyoming and parts of western Nebraska.
Narrowed to 12 inches, the Boomerang now has more color, new features, and changed sections. Further redesign awaits the new press. Last year, Publisher Don Black informed readers that rising demand for color and limited capacity occasioned as many as four press runs per night, with subsequent assembly into a complete edition, whereas Cheyenne puts more color into only one or two runs. And, as Tribune-Eagle Production Director James K. Thompson tells E&P, his plant can insert in a fraction of the time Laramie required.
Cheyenne also converted to CTP, installing a Screen thermal platesetter imaging Southern Lithoplate plates registered in a Nela automatic optical punch/bender. A second imager will go in when the new press arrives. A workflow relying on Polkadots Software, Presteligence and ProImage systems, aids in producing two dailies.
Thompson sees improved quality from screen resolution increasing to 100 lines on the Urbanite and able to reach at least to 120 lines on a new press.
To accommodate a second daily, new equipment and any new commercial work, half the company's $14 million modernization investment is going into a 16,000-square-foot plant expansion designed by Cleveland-based Forum Architects. A rail spur for newsprint delivery helped keep the operation downtown. Construction begins this spring on what the local development authority called "one of the largest reinvestments in recent years." The company employs approximately 100 full- and 30 part-timers in Cheyenne.
The press hall will house the upgrade's centerpiece and costliest component -- a MAN Roland Uniset 75 singlewide press configured as three four-high towers with folder and quarterfolder. "We're actually going to run it as a 3-by-2," says Thompson, meaning the two-around press will print three pages across its cylinders (also possible on the existing Urbanite). No decision was made on web width, but Thompson says it may be as low as 48 inches. They're scheduled to be on edition by mid-spring 2008.
Wyoming Newspapers had the benefit of observing the press maker's installation work in Denver and seeing The Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune's installed Uniset, which also prints three pages across.
Wyoming Newspapers hopes to sell the Urbanite, and is currently working with some prospective buyers of the Boomerang's Community, says Thompson, whose father, Laramie's former mechanical superintendent, selected the press 35 years ago. Laramie's plant also has drawn interest.
The typically 20- to 36-page Tribune-Eagle now hits the limit for color Friday through Sunday, according to Marketing and Operations Vice President Scott Walker. "Each year this trend starts earlier," he said when the press purchase was announced.
Cheyenne's 30,000-cph Urbanite can put color on eight pages of a 32-page paper. The 75,000-cph Uniset can print a 36-page paper with color on all pages. Other advantages -- control and adjustment from a console and newsprint roll changes that do not interrupt printing -- save time, cut start-up waste, and improve quality.
'A decision before Nexpo'
The new press, according to Walker, also will support an expanded commercial printing business, which includes sheetfed work and produces shoppers, college textbooks, and other materials.
Printing three pages across provides the capacity of another tower -- money for which can instead be spent to relieve production bottlenecks in other areas. For post-press, says Thompson, Cheyenne is evaluating vendors for total packaging and distribution, right through to truck loading: "Our intention is to have a decision on that before Nexpo." [Ed. Note: This article was originally written for E&P's April print issue, which was released before Nexpo.]’’
But already the Boomerang can avail itself of better inserting and more color and pages. "They can do multiple sections in one run now," says Thompson. And staffing or scheduling, he says, "hasn't been a problem," with the Tribune-Eagle on press an hour later and some distribution shuffled around. "It hasn't cost us a lot of extra hours or a lot of extra people," he adds, noting that the change is more noticeable in the mailroom.
In the first winter since consolidating production, sending files from Laramie was a little easier some days than sending newspapers back. "We have a fiber-optic connection to the Boomerang," says Thompson, over which PDF files print to Cheyenne.
Citing few winter closures of Interstate 80 during early morning hours, and a longer alternative route almost always open, Boomerang Publisher Don Black last summer anticipated no delivery problems.
Since then, "we've had some challenges," Thompson reports. "We've only had the road close on us at distribution time twice." Copies got out in the early morning on both occasions, but deliveries were late. And while timely distribution was accomplished on other bad-weather days, Thompson knows "it doesn't take a lot of snow when you've got 40-mile-per-hour winds."
Rethinking inking, groupwide
As the Copley Press and Pulitzer chains began selling off dailies and weeklies in the Chicago market during the late 1980s, the company then known as Hollinger International gobbled them up. With F. David Radler running the papers from his Chicago Sun-Times publisher's office, former Hollinger Chairman Conrad Black built a formidable super-cluster that followed Lake Michigan's western shoreline in a huge crescent from the Wisconsin border to suburbs in Indiana.
"They tore this company apart, but [the cluster] turned out strategically to be nearly perfect in the market," says Rick Surkamer, newly appointed operations vice president for what has been renamed the Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (STMG). "The only piece missing was the northwest," he adds, referring to suburbs and exurbs dominated by the Paddock family's Daily Herald and partly by the Shaw family's dailies.
Radler and Black may well be regarded as "crazy," and not just for allegedly plundering Hollinger. In managing the whole group, Radler broke another law, the one that says marketing, manufacturing, and distribution should be consolidated in clusters. Instead, he encouraged the dailies and weeklies to compete against each other. Each daily and weekly group held on not only to its sales force and back office, but also its press.
In his downtown office, Surkamer jumps from his chair to map on a dry-erase board the past and present of Chicagoland newspaper press capacity. Of the dozen printing sites (or 14, if you count The Wall Street Journal's dedicated press in Naperville and a small commercial press that prints some newspapers), six belonged to Hollinger.
Now there are three.
In late January, Post-Tribune printing ended at its Gary, Ind., plant and started up at the Sun-Times' Ashland Avenue site, just west of downtown Chicago. Last year, the Daily Southtown press, which at one time contracted to print USA Today and The New York Times, was dismantled and divided between two of the other three STMG sites. The Naperville Sun's press was shut down earlier.
Put in motion by group Publisher and COO John Cruickshank, the Post-Tribune press sell-off was the final element in a complex production consolidation at what today is known as the Sun-Times News Group (STNG, pronounced "sting"). "You can call it consolidation, but in many ways it was really centralization," says STMG CEO Cyrus Freidheim Jr. The group centralized distribution, financial controls, sales, and even some editorial. Freidheim said centralizing may have gone too far, and in recent weeks the group decentralized a little in advertising, circulation, and, especially, editorial.
But Freidheim doesn't regret the full-court press to consolidate, vowing never to return to "when we had, in effect, a whole bunch of different industries in Chicago."
With six Goss Global Newsliners and two Goss Universal 70s, the Ashland Avenue plant has absorbed most of the consolidation, in a transformation symbolizing STNG's new approach. The $120 million greenfield plant was intended to be almost solely for Sun-Times production when it finally came on line in November 2001.
That focus changed in the last year, when its annual volume rose from about 2.7 million pages to 5.8 million now. In addition to the Post-Tribune, the presses run The Lake County News Sun in Waukegan, near the Wisconsin line; the six-day Naperville Sun, and the thrice-weekly Star newspapers, as well as total market coverage products and advance sections. Ashland also handles the papers' formerly outsourced TV books and shoppers that had been printed by the Daily Southtown, in south-suburban Tinley Park.
"You see that gigantic line that seems to go on forever, folder after folder," Surkamer says of the Ashland plant. "You walk past one and there's the Waukegan News-Sun, then you see three folders with the Sun-Times going, and setting up next to it are two folders with the Post-Tribune."
Consolidating Gary made balance-sheet sense for financially strapped STMG. "You would spend $20 million for a press alone, plus another $10 million to $15 million for the envelope around it," Surkamer says. "So the cost is $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, to do what we've done in a month -- and [a new plant] would have had a two-year lead time."
The Post-Tribune is now brighter, with more and better color and "ecstatic" reader and advertiser reaction, he adds.
Like Ashland, the Fox Valley plant, in southwest suburban Plainfield, is a workhorse, printing The Herald News of Joliet, The Beacon News of Aurora, The Courier News of Elgin, and the Daily Southtown.
But unlike Ashland, Fox Valley is no latecomer to consolidation. Built in the mid-1980s by Copley, the plant printed a variety of dailies, and handled the many community papers (including the nation's first weekly named after a ZIP code) the chain launched as a housing boom transformed Fox River Valley demographics.
Now, only north suburban Glenview's Pioneer Press plant operates under the old Hollinger model, remaining dedicated to the dozens of weeklies largely because they are all trimmed and stitched tabloids.
Surkamer's chief contribution to consolidation -- nearly complete when he arrived in February -- is implementing production values learned on the Chicago Tribune's fast track. He enrolled in the Trib's operations training program and left a decade later as manufacturing and operations director.
The key principle he instills is the Tribune mantra of measure once, measure again, and share the results with everyone in the chain. "If we just quantify the right things, then we'll be all right," he says.
And the most important measurement is time. At the Tribune, he says, "every minute was considered as valuable as money." By correctly managing time, a paper not only creates efficiencies, but literally finds press capacity it didn't know it had, he preaches.
Production managers are adopting a different kind of proprietary relationship with the paper and press. Surkamer describes it this way: "I don't own a press -- I own time on the press."
Fond of drawing lessons from other industries, Surkamer compares the production consolidation and coming circulation restructuring to Toyota's entrance into the U.S. market. The car maker introduced just one model to one market, California, then slowly expanded its line and market area.
So STNG now ponders where to roll out sub-ZIP code or even carrier-route zoning.
Long after Post-Tribune offices moved to suburban Merrillville, Ind., shuttering the Gary plant was the final step in press consolidation. But will it be the final element in Chicagoland consolidation generally?
"I don't know. How many presses does Chicago need?" Surkamer asks rhetorically. With the stroke of a pen to the map drawn on a dry-erase board, he crosses out the Shaw plant, which handles five medium-circulation dailies. Then he X's out The Wall Street Journal's dedicated Naperville press. "Who's going to be next to consolidate? Can a publisher really afford to run his or her own presses anymore?"
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