For years, publishers have accepted that printing small-run newspapers comes with unavoidable inefficiencies. As circulation declines, transportation costs rise, skilled press operators become harder to find and newsprint supplies tighten, many community newspapers have continued relying on production models built for a very different era.
CherryRoad Media believes there is another way.
During a recent sponsored webinar hosted by E&P, CherryRoad CEO Jeremy Gulban and CDS Senior Sales Executive Joe O’Doherty outlined how the company has begun replacing traditional web press production for many of its smallest newspapers with distributed digital printing. The approach isn’t designed to replace every newspaper press. Instead, it targets one of the industry’s most difficult challenges: economically producing newspapers with relatively small circulations while preserving print as an important revenue and community engagement platform.
“Our print runs are under 1,000 copies,” Gulban explained. “One thing about web press printing is it’s never been very efficient for small runs. You’re going to waste at least 1,000 copies to get to 1,000 sellable copies, which has always been a challenge.”
He said the economics have only worsened as costs continue to rise. “We started last year talking about tariffs on newsprint,” Gulban said. “Now we just have shortages. It’s hard to even get newsprint. There were probably going to be tariffs around aluminum plates and ink, which did come to pass, and it’s hard to find skilled pressmen.”
When traditional economics no longer work
CherryRoad operates more than 100 newspapers across 19 states, many serving rural communities with relatively modest circulation. Those markets often require newspapers to be transported long distances from centralized printing facilities, adding significant expense before a single paper reaches readers.
“We tried to centralize our printing into three facilities,” Gulban said. “That became problematic because of the cost of fuel, maintenance and transportation. All of these challenges just make it less and less viable to print a newspaper of under 1,000 copies the old-school way.”
Rather than reducing print frequency or abandoning print altogether, CherryRoad began exploring another production model.
Ironically, the inspiration came from home. “My wife picked up a pamphlet from our local town government and said, ‘Why don’t you print your newspapers this way?’” Gulban recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, come on, that’ll never work.’ But it got me thinking.”
That conversation eventually led CherryRoad to CDS, one of the largest Xerox partners in North America, and to a year-long effort to determine whether high-capacity digital production presses could economically produce community newspapers.
According to O’Doherty, these systems shouldn’t be confused with traditional office copiers. “This is not an office copier,” he said. “It’s a digital press that’s a lot smaller than an offset press that can fit into an office environment. They sit on your network, they’re driven by a Fiery server, and when the paper comes off the machine, it’s complete. It’s ready to be distributed.”
Building a distributed printing network
Today, CherryRoad has deployed 27 digital presses throughout its newspaper operations, strategically locating them closer to the communities they serve.
The workflow is remarkably streamlined. Newspaper pages are finalized as PDFs, reviewed by a centralized prepress team, transmitted electronically to remote locations and printed already folded, stapled and even addressed for mailing.
“We don’t need people in the field who know how to print,” Gulban said. “Any office worker can catch the papers, put them in the right postal bins and take them to the post office. It’s a very efficient, easy process.”
The approach also dramatically reduces dependence on increasingly scarce newsprint. “This is 20-pound office paper,” Gulban noted. “It’s in every copy machine in America. It’s plentiful. It’s widely available.”
That shift has already proven valuable. “If we hadn’t done this a year ago,” he said, “we wouldn’t have enough paper to run that operation or print our papers.”
O’Doherty said the technology also provides publishers with predictable operating costs. “The solution we’re offering is a guaranteed cost,” he explained. “We guarantee the cost for the equipment, the service and the supplies. We include everything except the paper and the staple cartridges.”
The financial case for change
CherryRoad’s transition wasn’t simply about improving production quality. It was designed to improve the economics of operating community newspapers.
One early deployment in Arkansas eliminated approximately $39,000 annually in transportation costs by printing six newspapers closer to their readers instead of hauling them hundreds of miles.
After expanding the program to dozens of markets, the company began seeing measurable operational improvements. “I compared the profit margins on the converted markets versus the non-converted markets,” Gulban said. “The markets we print this way performed eight percentage points better than the traditional markets.”
Those gains come from several sources, including lower transportation costs, reduced waste, predictable production expenses and fewer staffing challenges.
CherryRoad also found that local communities adapted more quickly than expected. “When people actually saw the product, the reaction was a lot different,” Gulban said. “The feedback from most consumers is that the pictures are better. It’s easier to read because of the crispness of the print.”
Advertisers responded positively as well. “Advertisers like the ads better because they’re much better looking than the best web press ad could be,” he said.
Even among readers resistant to change, the response has remained encouraging. “We’re getting five compliments for every one complaint,” Gulban said. “In the newspaper business, I think that’s a pretty good ratio.”
Access slides from Webinar broadcast
Opening new advertising opportunities
While solving today’s production challenges was the immediate objective, both presenters believe distributed digital printing could eventually reshape how local newspapers generate advertising revenue.
Because every copy is digitally produced, each newspaper can theoretically contain different advertisements tailored to individual subscribers. “We’re very much focused on the ability to do ad customization,” Gulban said. “If a car dealer wants to sell a car to a specific person, they can tailor an ad that shows a pickup truck because they know that customer previously bought a pickup truck.”
He views the technology as bringing direct-mail precision into traditional newspaper advertising. “I think it’s going to be a much more effective form of direct mail,” Gulban said. “It opens up a whole other revenue stream for us from an advertising perspective.”
O’Doherty believes that flexibility is one of digital production’s greatest strengths. “We call it on-demand printing,” he said. “How many papers do you need this week? Four hundred? Five hundred? Seven hundred? You print exactly what you need.”
For publishers serving rural communities, operating smaller newspapers or searching for ways to preserve print without accepting continually rising production costs, Gulban believes the conversation is no longer about replacing newspapers. It’s about finding a sustainable way to keep producing them.
“I’d like to see a scenario where these machines are all over the country,” he said. “Publishers are working together, sharing them for redundancy, and we’re using variable printing to really act like a direct mail house. I know that’s a bold vision, but I like to think big.”
Lee Bachlet
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here