Full-Color Daily Pagination at Christian Science Monitor
A “News/Tech” article by Lawrence J. Goodrich in Editor & Publisher for September 26, 1992, describing how the Christian Science Monitor produced its 20-page weekday tabloid entirely on desktop systems, with full color on every page. Goodrich was publications editor of the Monitor.
The article traces the production chain: Scitex software and equipment for color separations and plotting negatives, and QuarkXPress on Macintosh II computers for layout and pagination, in place since January 1989. Slides from staffers, Agence France-Presse and photo agencies were scanned on Scitex scanners, while the electronic photo desk downloaded digital images from AFP and Reuters via PressLink, using PressLink Access, Adobe Photoshop and TOPS software on Mac IIcis. Artwork was created in Adobe Illustrator and sent over the network directly to makeup.
“Color is technologically as easy for us today as black-and-white,” says Monitor editor Richard J. Cattani. “It brings a sense of activity to the newspaper, and of equivalence to television and glossy magazines in visual veracity and impact.”
Goodrich also reports on the advertising case for color, quoting ad sales manager Nicholas Drinker:
“It’s a well-known fact that color sells more effectively than black-and-white.”
The piece details remote transmission from the Republican presidential nominating convention in Houston, where photographers scanned color negatives on site with a Nikon 3510AF film scanner into an Apple PowerBook 170 and sent images to Boston over AppleShare into a DEC VAX — about 40 minutes per uncompressed photo, resulting in 13 convention photos published. It also describes page-by-page deadlines, proofs in 15 to 20 minutes, release for color processing an hour after copy deadline, output on a Scitex Raystar plotter, and delivery to Gannett Co.’s Boston Offset plant in Norwood and, by satellite, to Gannett’s Phoenix Offset plant.
On paper stock — Abitibi-Price’s Premium 70, a special 35-lb., 70-brightness newsprint — Wayne Kayser, assistant director of print publishing for the Christian Science Publishing Society, is quoted:
“This newsprint has the characteristics needed to accept full four-color printing and does not yellow as soon as conventional newsprint. It is also highly compatible with the soy-based inks we use in our color.”