What's Not Black and White and Read All Over?

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What's Not Black and White and Read All Over?

Postby jon » Wed Aug 21, 2013 8:26 am

The Edmonton Journal is now in the transition phase of their plan to go all colour. And to close down their own printing plant.

Ironically, the "old presses" they mention from 1980 were bought and installed in East Edmonton to provide some colour in the daily paper to meet competition from the new kid on the block, The Edmonton Sun. Before that, the Journal had published Downtown and enjoyed a monopoly ever since the Edmonton Bulletin folded on January 20, 1951.

Journal print edition moving to sleek, full-colour look
By Lucinda Chodan, Editor-in-chief, Edmonton Journal
August 19, 2013

EDMONTON - The Journal begins a transition to a sleek new format and a more colourful print edition Monday [August 19].

By the end of August, all copies of the newspaper will be printed at a new printing facility in St. Albert.

The new presses will allow us to offer better quality reproduction and colour on every page, something that was not possible on our old presses, which date back to 1980.

The new format is slightly slimmer and shorter than the version we have been printing for the last several years. The newspaper page becomes six millimetres narrower and about 70 millimetres shorter (that’s about a quarter-inch narrower and about 2.75 inches shorter for those who are more comfortable with Imperial measures).

While the page is smaller, the type is not. We have retained the same typeface and type size for articles in the new-format Journal.

Monday is the first day of a transition phase during which we will ensure everything is working well and we are able to deliver newspapers to all our home subscribers. The new Great West Newspapers facility in St. Albert features brand-new presses that have not yet printed a full run of the Journal. So for the next two weeks, some Journals will be printed in St. Albert on the new-size newsprint and others on the existing newsprint supply on our old presses.

That means some newspapers will have the new, smaller image size printed on the old, larger newsprint; this will result in some extra white space along the edges of the paper.

Also, during the transition period, not all pages will appear in colour because the newspaper will be printed in two parallel runs on the two presses. When the transition is complete, which will be on or before Aug. 29, all pages will be full colour.

We have had to make a few adjustments to correspond to the new format.

The most significant changes occur on our daily comics page from Monday to Friday, where we have eliminated four comics: Non Sequitur, Get Fuzzy, Chuckle Bros. and Cornered.

About 1,800 readers took part in a comics survey in July and helped us choose which comics would be eliminated on the new, shorter daily page. There will be no changes to the four pages of colour comics in the Saturday edition, which means Get Fuzzy will continue to live on in that weekly Saturday comics package.

Our puzzles and games pages were also reconfigured and redesigned. The weekly Aces on Bridge question-and-answer column in the Saturday edition has been dropped, although Aces on Bridge remains in print Monday to Saturday. We have stopped publishing Myles Mellor’s weekly Diagramless puzzle, which appeared on Saturdays, as well as Isaac Asimov’s daily Super Quiz. And we have moved Sudoku to the puzzle page every day.

You will also see new shapes for some familiar features, such as our daily weather map, which now is more colourful. But apart from that, the content of the Journal remains virtually unchanged.
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Re: What's Not Black and White and Read All Over?

Postby czarcasm » Wed Aug 21, 2013 8:42 am

Many of the twice weekly local papers in the Greater Vancouver area have gone to a more colourful look in recent months. Lots of colour in the car and real estate ads and throughout the
paper. The print is cleaner and gone are the days of black newsprint smeared on your fingers.

I wonder if The Vancouver Sun will be around long enough to make changes like the Edmonton Journal?
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Re: What's Not Black and White and Read All Over?

Postby hagopian » Wed Aug 21, 2013 12:12 pm

Too little too late. Huge overhead, distribution costs are killer and recent studies prove people scan papers.

I have not bought a hard copy of a newspaper in 13 years. I can get my news on line, on my tablet, on my phone.

Who needs to cut down more trees for yet another Stacey's Ad, that no one is seeing?
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Re: What's Not Black and White and Read All Over?

Postby Eldon-Mr.CFAY » Wed Aug 21, 2013 1:36 pm

Greetings,
I do buy newspapers fairly often and there are a lot of older people like my 91 year old Mom who like reading them. Also I am absolutely sick and tired of been glued to computer screens to get everything. Yeah I get a lot of information from Google, websites etc. but it gets a little sickening been completely dependent on it like a drug addict!!! I for one like to take a book, magazine or newspaper with me and not worry about looking at some electronic screen or worrying about the batteries been charged etc.. I can see the positive side of the internet technology information but I can also see a very negative side to it too. Its sort of like the old Couch Potato Watch TV all the time addiction. Take a book, magazine or newspaper and for Gawds sake go out to a park and enjoy reading it and forget about the internet computer media. If you really want to be up to date in the park take a radio along and listen to the all news stations like WX 1130. This time of year with summer out there the fresh air and outdoors gives everyone a really good break from the inside activities and computer!

My nephew is 22 years old and grew up with computers, I educated him about the importance of radio and technology and even gave him a quick course in how FM transmitters work by putting a Part 15 on the air in Ontario 12 years ago when he was young. He liked broadcasting music and playing his guitar on the air on that. Even though he knows a lot about computers and does use them a lot he too realizes that you have got to have alternatives to it and does not depend on it completely either. Yeah he knows how to read a book, magazine or newspaper and does do that!!!

Take care everyone, All the Best to you.

73s Eldon
Bye . . Mr. CFAY "Frequently On The Frequency"
The CFAY Website: http://cfayradio.wordpress.com
CFAY Radio: http://tinyurl.com/l9qqmh
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Re: What's Not Black and White and Read All Over?

Postby Neumann Sennheiser » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:29 pm

Eliminated the daily Get Fuzzy comic?
Whoa, there's gonna be some unhappy Edmontonians with a sense of humor.
Ah well, no fear. The Seattle Times runs it on pay-wall free comics everyday. That is, pay-wall for most everything else but not the comics.

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"You don't know man! I was in radio man! I've seen things you wouldn't believe!"
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