'My Newspaper' means new role for editors

Most newspaper editors don't realize how much of their practice stems from a half millennium-old technological limitation that is ceasing to exist. Its disappearance later this decade will radically change how they do their jobs. Editors, and the journalism schools that teach their trade, haven't yet begun to address the issues of this change.

For centuries, the newspaper editor's job has been fundamentally defined by a simple limitation of the analog printing press. That device, no matter its size or complexity, can produce only one edition for all readers at a time.

In the half millennia since Johannes Gutenberg invented the analog press, this technological limitation has remained, despite advances from hand-driven letterpress to steam-powered cylindrical press plates to today's multi-unit offset lithographic colossuses.

An analog press requires a printing plate, the master from which all its printed copies are printed. A newspaper might produce regional "zoned" versions of an edition, but that simply means the press is re-plated with another master and its one edition is produced for all readers in that particular region. It would be impractical and fiscally ludicrous for a publisher to use an analog press to print a different edition customized for each reader's own individual interests.

The practical result of this press limitation is that the editor must include the stories of greatest mass interest, until the page space in that generic edition is filled. Once that space is filled, any remaining stories, photos, texts and documentation from reporters, wire services, syndicates and other legitimate sources are discarded, even if of interest to some or even one reader.

And, because only one edition is sent to all readers, the editor and her team can examine, select, edit and approve each story seen by all readers. Indeed, if the editor's function is to set the agenda for public discourse, that function arose as a by-product of this technological limitation of the analog press.

This is the practice familiar to today's newspaper editors. The technological limitation of the analog press (a similar limitation also is true for analog broadcast transmitters) has become such a fundamental circumstance of mass media that it's become almost forgotten. When we think of newspapers, we think of a common product for all, and newspaper editors have built their practices upon that foundation.

Unfortunately, that familiar foundation is both imperfect and about to disappear.

The Daily Me

Although most people probably share a few generic interests ('World Ends: News in Tomorrow Morning's Edition') and some people clearly do share some specific interests (such as the Middle East, bird watching, Chicago White Sox, or fashions in Milan), each and every person is a truly unique mix of generic and specific interests.

An editor who sends the same stories to all readers can satisfy a few generic interests and might chance to satisfy a few specific interests shared by some readers. But no newspaper edition printed today can satisfy the unique mix of generic and specific interests of each individual reader.

Most newspaper editors don't see that as a problem. Many choose to believe that all readers like to receive the same content or that it's the editor's role to choose what all readers must get — as if the practical results of a technological limitation were the people's choice or even natural.

But it is neither and is a precarious attitude to hold in a world where new media vehicles — both online and soon in print — are beginning to let readers more completely satisfy their own unique mixes of generic and individual interests.

The change that will allow newspaper readers to do that is already starting to be seen online and later this decade will be available in printed editions too.

The major reason why hundreds of millions of people became Web users was to find the specific interest information that they didn't receive in generic newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts. Satisfying that demand was what gave rise to Yahoo!, Google, and a million niche Web sites. It also is the prime reason why generic newspaper Web sites, almost all of which simply shovel online the generic editions they provide in print, don't rank among the top 20 sites that consumers use nationally or locally in the major markets.

The American online newspaper industry has only lately begun to combat that by launching personalized (a misnomer for individualized) Web sites. Many of these sites still do little more than offer each reader the ability to create a customized stock list or designate from which local airport they want weather reports, but still send each reader the same stories. But a handful of the more progressive online newspaper publishers (notably the Wall Street Journal Online) have begun to offer each reader the ability to match specific stories to their specific interests.

Individualized Web editions take the inventory of available stories flowing into the newsroom (from reporters, wire services, syndicates, etc.) and match those to each reader's interests as identified in a database. These editions use templated layouts that still send each reader the bulletin and urgent generic stories the editor wants every reader to receive, but then include that reader's specific interest stories, even specific stories that never appeared in the paper's newsprint edition.

Most newspaper editors today think that individualized editions are something confined only to the Web. That's true today but won't be later this decade. Advances in digital press technology are smashing the 'one edition for all' limitation of analog presses.

Publishers who attended the World Association of Newspapers 2000 annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro were given a tour of O Globo's mammoth new offset lithographic printing plant. But those who later attended the meetings' technical sessions heard IFRA Managing Director Gunther Bottcher state that they had seen perhaps the last such major offset newspaper printing facility ever to be built.

Bottcher described how roll-fed digital presses — basically giant color ink-jet printers that utilize no press plates — manufactured by Océ, Man Roland, Heidelberg, Xerox or other manufacturers are rapidly becoming feasible for newspaper production. Now capable of printing hundreds of full-color tabloid-format newspapers per minute, digital presses should reach newspaper offset press speeds later this decade.

User data

Why will newspapers switch from analog presses to digital presses? Two reasons.

First, capital savings. A digital press that can produce 10,000 copies per hour can cost about US $250,000. A 200,000-circulation daily newspaper would need to purchase at least 20 of them (plus a few more for redundancy). However, that $5 million capital expenditure is a huge savings over the $50 million to $75 million that an offset analog printing press of similar capacity costs. Moreover, some of the many digital presses can be deployed along major circulation routes to reduce edition delivery costs and time. Bottcher said that these savings should soon begin motivating publishers to switch to digital presses when their analog presses wear out.

Second, individualization. Because digital presses use no printing plates and their ink jets operate according to electronic impulses, they can be controlled by electronic databases, including databases containing information about each reader preference. This is already done today in commercial printing.. A simple example is when each recipient's name ('Dear Joe' is literal personalization) and postal address is printed on his intended copy.

If the database contains (1) sets of individualized edition layout templates; (2) each reader's choices of specific categories of story interests; and (3) the newspapers available inventory of stories from all sources, the technology exists to print an individualized newsprint edition for each reader.

The initial financial motivation to print individualized newsprint editions will be individualized advertising revenues. Advertisers will pay a higher CPM rate to reach readers who individually fit the demographic target of a product or services.

Moreover, in an era when newspapers are in general trying to become more relevant to readers, individualized story editions find relevance with each reader. These editions will still contain all the bulletin and urgent generic stories that the editor wants all readers to see, but each individual edition will contain stories of specific interest to each individual reader.

For such reasons, individualization will become the mainstream of newspaper publishing, both on the Web and in print. At the pace that digital press technology is advancing, we should see the first individualized newsprint editions being produced early in the second decade of this century, but maybe sooner.

What's an editor?

Publication of individualized editions in print and online will radically change the roles of newspaper editors.

When a newspaper's entire inventory of stories, photos, texts and documentation from reporters, wire services, syndicates and other legitimate sources are automatically flowed into as many possible editions as there are readers, no publication's editor or single team of editors can examine, edit and approve each story seen by every reader. That is, not without tripling or quintupling the staff, which is unlikely.

Instead, the editor and her team's role will become to examine, edit and approve the flow of stories. The copy flow team will:

• Ensure the quality of the sources and processes, rather than each of the stories themselves.

• Edit and approve not the data within each story, but the metadata — the data about the data — of this huge flow of stories to individual readers.

There long have been jokes about how the internal operations of producing a newspaper are a lot like making sausage. Well, like the inspectors in a sausage factory, the newspaper editors of the future won't be able to inspect each and every product consumed, but instead will have to ensure the quality of the production process.

Many of the editorial skills that will be necessary for this metadata editing (meta-editing) may be radically different from those to which contemporary editors are accustomed or taught in journalism schools.

Few editors, journalism professors, or publishers have yet thought through the editorial and marketing issues of individualized edition publishing, but soon will have to.

Links:
Nico Nickel Article Critique
Wall Street Journal Online