World Association of News Publishers


The Separation of Publishing and Printing

The Separation of Publishing and Printing

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Summary

The newspaper publisher, as an “all in one” company that includes all organisational units necessary to create and produce a newspaper, while still predominant, is no longer the rule. More and more publishers examine their organisation set-up and analyse what should belong to their core competence and what should not. This increasingly leads to the decision to separate print production from the publishing business. The separation is carried out in different ways. The main versions are > establishment of a profit centre, which is owned by the publisher and acts on his behalf > creation of a joint venture production company of different newspaper publishers > print production is done by a third party This trend is strengthened by market and external factors. The revenues of publishers are under pressure and investments in production facilities are very expensive. Besides the issue of new investments, the economic pressure makes it inevitable for many publishers to reduce their operating costs and trim their organisations. Therefore one option is to change the organisational set up of the print production. If the newspaper core product does not achieve a sufficient level of utilisation of the printing capacities, then it becomes even more important to consider taking a different approach to production. The improved performance of printing presses as well as the more favourable conditions for marketing concepts such as distributed printing will also influence the re-think of how production should be organised in the future. The newspaper medium is dynamic. As a consequence of the demands of readers and advertising customers as well as new technical developments, the newspaper product is changing. Format changes, lower page counts, shrinking circulations, late editorial deadlines, more colourful, almost magazine-like newspapers are just the most prominent trends, which have defined new requirements for the production workflow at several newspapers. The research project conducted by the Québec Institute of Graphic Communications (ICGQ) is case study orientated and analyses different models for the separation of publishing and print production. > The production is integrated into the publishing company as a cost centre. > Publishing companies organise their production facilities as an own profit-orientated company that has to refinance itself to an huge extent on the market. > Different newspaper publishers own and operate a joint production facility. > Newspaper production is done by a third party contract printer. ]


Date:
2006-12-21
Language:
English
Type:
IFRA Special Report
Number:
03.2006
Author:
Vézina, Michel
Cooperating Institutes:
Québec Institute of Graphic Communications (ICGQ)

Author

Jochen Litzinger's picture

Jochen Litzinger

Date

2006-12-21 00:00

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