Pacific Daily News Sets Milestone for US Newspapers

Digitalization has an impact on many areas of our society. Even the newspaper market is affected, but not only in a negative, but also in a positive way. New digital printing presses and processes offer publishers a more efficient and flexible workflow. This development has been getting the publishers of the Pacific Daily News to rethink their production processes. This daily published, morning edition newspaper of the territory of Guam is owned by the United States’ largest newspaper publisher Gannett Corporation. It delivers its readers latest news and stories from the island, the Pacific Rim region, the United States and the world. In the past, this newspaper was produced with an old offset printing press built in 1968, but this has changed recently.

Demographic Boom as Reason for a New Printing Press

At first sight, the small island Guam in the western pacific seems too small with 160.000 inhabitants to have a prosperous newspaper market. But thanks to a steady growth of the military personnel, the US territory is undergoing a demographic boom. Not only the growing population but also the increasing literacy rate is leading to a higher demand for printed news in this region. Hence, the publisher decided to buy a digital printing press. With this purchase, the Gannett Corporation is one of the first publishers to print its newspaper digitally. Thus they set a milestone for the newspaper market in the US and worldwide.

A Major Step Forward in Digital Print Technology

In order to determine which press would best fulfil the requirements, the publisher had to pay attention to several aspects. In their analysis, primarily the paging, the throughput and the circulation of the newspaper played an important role. As the new press is installed in a new facility in the Compadres Mall in Harmon, they also had to keep in mind the limitation of the pressroom. Taking all this into consideration, the KODAK Prosper 5000 XLi turned out to be the best suited and most effective digital print press. With the implemented Intelligent Print System (IPS) that helps to constantly monitor and evaluate the press operations by learning from the given input, this new press has great potential to become the most advanced inkjet printing press.

In general, one major advantage of digital inkjet printing machines is their flexibility. As digital presses enable direct data printing, much more flexibility in the cut-off length of the paper is given. This efficiency allows handling a variety of print jobs using the same paper size. Additionally, the reduction of waste makes digital web presses a more sustainable solution.

Rindraty Celes Limtiaco, president of the Pacific Daily News describes the new press as a “modern-day marvel” because its advantages are obvious: “The paper is more crisp, vibrant and ecologically palatable – there is barely any waste with a digital press.”

What do you think which innovations are about to come for the newspaper industry?