Then and Now: Keyless offset
What people are saying about the state of the
newspaper industry:
"The Web, especially in the early days, is a text-dominated
medium. The natural response is to think editors could
simply move print stories into pixels and be done with it.
From the very beginning we called this "shovelware" and
"the daily dump," but the practice has persisted. If publish-
ers thought the Web was no different for content, how could
they possibly be expected to see online sales were different,
too? And this leads to my theory of the "Original Sin."
The Original Sin was? Failure to create separate business
units for online."
-- Howard Owens
http://www.howardowens.com/
"The thinking has to be: When times are good again, there
will be things that make money and things that either won't
or won't make very much. Cut those, get out, and use what's
left to rebuild. Thus, the Birmingham News, Mobile Register,
Syracuse Post-Standard and Kalamazoo Gazette sail on,
even though doubtless none of them is having a good year."
-- That's the Press, Baby
http://davisullblog.blogspot.com/
Musings
a lasT look
Brain Matter
Congratulations to Dan Geiser of Cedar
rapids, iowa, who was the first to submit "ace in the
hole" as the movie we were searching for in the october
brain matter contest. The 1951 movie starred kirk douglas
as the former big-city journalist now stuck at a small daily in
albuquerque, N.m., and his efforts to get back to the bright
lights of the big city. geiser received a spiffy News & Tech tote bag as his reward.
For this month: Name the elvis presley movie that featured a dancer, attired in a newspaper, who sang the
now-classic line, "increase my circulation" as she entertained her clientele.
Think you know the answer? if so, drop an e-mail to cmoozakis@newsandtech.com.
Cover image: Chuck Moozakis
Then
Handshakes all around and excitement was riding high
that winter day in 1999 when The Washington Post flipped
the switch on eight keyless offset presses manufactured by
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc.
It marked the end of a $250 million project that saw The
Post transform its production operations.
Post production executives had high hopes that the
presses would dramatically improve color and print quality,
and were equally enthusiastic about the machines' key-
less offset design. The Post -- along with the Dayton (Ohio)
Daily News and a growing number of other papers -- had
opted for keyless offset, which promised to sharply re-
duce start-up waste as well as allow publishers to produce
higher-quality newspapers with fewer press operators.
Now
As it turned out, The Post was the last paper to go on-
edition with a keyless offset press, and outside of Koenig &
Bauer's Cortina waterless press model, keyless offset has
made nary a ripple as newspapers and press suppliers opt
for alternative technologies.
"I'm absolutely disappointed that the technology didn't
gain traction," said Mike Clurman, The Post's vice president
of operations, in an interview with News & Tech in 2004.
Clurman was a guiding force behind the paper's choice of
keyless offset.
Keyless offset's benefits were readily apparent: ma-
chines would need little or no adjustment at startup, quality
would improve and staffing levels could be reduced.
But in reality, none of those promises turned out to be
as accurate as anticipated.
Although papers like
The Post, Daily News
and Las Vegas Review-
Journal are still
produced on keyless
offset presses, there
hasn't been a single
keyless offset press sold
in North America in the
last decade.
Instead, technologies
such as digital inking, ink
presetting apps and more so-
phisticated press control software
-- along with better-engineered offset
press printing units -- have all but squelched demand for
keyless offset.
Additionally, keyless backers had hoped the platform
would spell the end of having to use a separate dampening
solution, thanks to the anticipated development of a single
fluid that could produce a uniform ink film and simultane-
ously dampen the web.
But that magic elixir never did get concocted.
That leaves the Cortina, KBA's waterless and keyless
press that's gained a fair degree of traction. The vendor
has sold almost 20 of the press models since introducing
it in 2002, but all of the Cortinas thus far have been sold in
Europe.
As for U.S. newspapers, it's likely that keyless offset has
already marked its last deployment.
www.newsandtech.com
Newspapers & Technology November 2009 39

1 year ago The industry's
embrace of ever-
thinner newspapers
shows no sign of
abating, with the
first 42-inch-wide
broadsheet, the
Evansville (Ind.)
Courier & Press,
scheduled to debut
next year.
5 years ago EAE Ltd. jumps
into the U.S. press
drive replacement
market by landing
a $1.2 million
project from Belo
Corp. to replace
17-year-old DC
drive systems at
The Providence
(R.I.) Journal.
10 years ago Landmark
Communications
Inc. selects Digital
Technology
International
in a $12 million
contract to supply
NewsSpeed 5.0
prepress systems
across three of its
daily newspapers.
15 years ago The South Bend
(Ind.) Tribune
purchases a 20-unit
Koenig & Bauer
AG keyless color
offset web press.
20 years ago The San Diego
Union-Tribune files
an application for
a press permit in
order to comply
with revised
local regulations
governing
emissions of
Volatile Organic
Compounds.

re me mbe r


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