Newspaper Workflow Ideal For Varied Print Demands

Polkadots Software has had its Newsflo Lite automated newspaper production workflow selected by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc (CNHI).

Polkadots Software has had its Newsflo Lite automated newspaper production workflow selected by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc (CNHI).

To date, Polkadots' Newsflo has been installed at two CNHI locations - the Pharos Press of Logansport and South Georgia Media Group, a division of CNHI Newspapers, in Valdosta (USA).

CNHI selected Newsflo Lite, as part of the Southern Lithoplate CTP Alliance Solution, along with Screen PTR News 2000 CTPs and Southern Lithoplate's Viper 830 CTP plates.

Tom Shafer, CNHI's corporate vice president of production, who made the choice along with the South Georgia Media Group and Pharos Press said: "Dollar-for-dollar, the Newsflo Lite made perfect sense.

Too often suppliers tend to oversell what's really needed.

This one listened and got it right.

We put a lot of varying sized products through these two facilities and quite simply, the package works." Both sites took advantage of Polkadots' remote technical assistance and opted for internet-based installation and training for its Newsflo Lite systems.

The installations were accomplished simultaneously on pre-configured hardware and the training was handled in three days, thanks to the claimed simplicity of Newsflo Lite, the easy pace of web-based training and the knowledgeable trainers involved, said Polkadots.

Rich Cox, pre-press manager at the Pharos Press, commented: "Honestly we were a little sceptical about learning a new process and new system through only web training.

We had not heard of Polkadots before and we weren't sure what to expect." The Pharos Press prints five dailies, four weeklies and the supplements, as well as commercial printing jobs.

Cox went on to say: "Everything went perfectly, we had several internet training sessions, as well as some help in building a few templates to get started.

Our CTP was installed on October 23 and we were in full production by October 25.

Every now and then we might have a question or need something and all we need to do is ask and we get it." Vince Cribb, vice president of production at South Georgia Media Group, commented: "We have been through two other installations for similar products.

One worked fairly well but lacked the features and sophistication of Newsflo; the other was, for lack of better words - a nightmare." Cribb added: "After about 12 hours of training I realised that Newsflo was designed to work like the press and everything made perfect, logical sense.

From then on, working with Newsflo has just come naturally.

We print two daily papers here as well as 17 weeklies, plus speciality products, we also print for 60 commercial customers - all using Newsflo." And he continued: "This is about the most problem free system I have ever seen.

We had our CTP installed on October 23 and we started producing 100 per cent of our work with Newsflo on October 24, we have not used anything else since then.

Newsflo is the slickest software I have ever used." CNHI, formed in 1997 with corporate headquarters located in Birmingham is the parent company for daily, weekly and semi-weekly newspapers published in more than 200 communities throughout the United States.

CNHI has grown steadily to become one of the nation's largest publishers of community newspapers, web sites and niche publications.

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