For those of you who keep back issues of AntiqueWeek around, it’s time for a little experiment. Find a copy from December and place it side by side with this issue with the front pages facing up. Notice anything? Take a look at the red of AntiqueWeek’s nameplate in the December issue and compare it to the red of the nameplate in this issue. You should see a much more even red tone in this week’s paper compared to the nameplate in the December issue. In December we gave our pressroom, our readers and our advertisers a little present. OK, really, it was a BIG present. We got a Quad-Stack 414+4 color press. This web press not only allows us to print more color than we could in the past, but the quality of that color is much better. Throughout January and February, our pressroom operators have been experimenting with the new color unit. It isn’t just something you can plug in and run. It requires a lot of calibrations and a whole lot of technical stuff that only the men and women of the pressroom understand. In the editorial department, I just stayed out of the way and watched the color steadily improve week by week. The Quad-Stack was not cheap. But, it was an investment that will help both our readers and our advertisers, as more and more advertisers are discovering the advantages of advertising their sales in color. After all, a full-page ad showing carnival glass isn’t going to look nearly as nice in black and white as it would in color. Our old color unit could print some pages in color, but it was always difficult to get the registration just right. There is nothing worse than out-of-register color. “Since the paper was launched nearly 40 years ago, every decision has been led by the guiding principle of providing the best customer service for our advertisers and subscribers,” said Publisher Richard Lewis. “It’s no secret that color grabs the attention of our readers. Providing the best quality color available is another way we can meet the desires of our customers.” Not only does our new Quad-Stack print better color, it prints more of it. In the past we could print eight pages of color. Now, depending on how many pages we run, we can print 12 pages of color. If you look at the National section in this issue, you will see Page 4 has a color ad on it. In the past, we could never have printed color on Page 4. As a matter of fact, we printed color on all 12 available color pages in this week’s National. You may have noticed another change that is a result of the new color press. You have fewer papers with three sections. In the past, we could only run 40 pages per section of the newspaper. If the Eastern edition went more than 40 pages, then we would have to run two sections and then with the addition of the National section, that made three. We can run 56 pages in one section on the new press. This has caused concern with some readers who suddenly think part of their paper is missing. If you ever want to know exactly how many sections you should receive each week, check just under our nameplate on the front page. We always put how many sections there are right there. The color press will not only spice up advertising, but it will augment news photos, too. We receive a lot of positive feedback from our readers about the color pictures that are in the paper. The new press is really going to bring these pictures to life. There is another change you should notice when comparing the front pages of a December issue and this one. The front-page story should be much easier to read as we gave the story more space between the lines. Readers have complained in the past about the difficulty of reading newsprint. We think that this additional spacing should make the story much easier to read. Let me know what you think. |