Macworld's Digital Advantage

McDougall, Paul, Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management

THIS MONTHLY TITLE CUT LAYOUT TIME ON ITS CLASSIFIEDS FROM THREE DAYS TO 30 MINUTES. IT'S PART OF AN AMBITIOUS PLAN THAT WILL ULTIMATELY TAKE THE TITLE DIRECT-TO-PLATE.

It's 1:30 PM, and Macworld production manager Cynthia Mazzola is beginning to lay out the magazine's classified ad section.

At 2:00 PM, her work is done.

The 20- to 30-page section used to take three days of planning and cutting and pasting, but that was before the San Francisco-based monthly went digital. The International Data Group title's first step was to install Managing Editor Software's Ad Director package, part of an ambitious digital advertising program that the magazine's execs say will result in big savings of time and money. They hope, eventually, to be receiving, producing, proofing and transmitting all ads electronically--a process that will eliminate expensive film and environmentally hazardous chemicals from the production process, while speeding turnaround times.

"The cost savings alone can be tremendous," says Macworld vice president and director of manufacturing Anne Foley from her corner office overlooking the Bay Bridge. "And if printers are going to go direct-to-plate within three to five years--which is what they are all saying--then why not have our advertisers already accustomed to digital and just be ready to do it?"

To date, Macworld's classified advertising section is digital until the final film stage, and 80 percent of its mail-order section is produced the same way. This is remarkable progress for a project that began only last year, when a number of the book's advertisers--many of whom are themselves on computing's cutting-edge--began asking for the okay to submit their ads on disk rather than film. "It wasn't long after that that we were asking ourselves what it would take to do the whole section digitally," says Foley.

It didn't take much, she says: hiring a part-time pre-press specialist; purchasing software to provide on-screen layout; and adding RAM and storage capacity to the in-house Macs. "We're not talking about a lot of money," says Foley. "If people are doing any kind of design, they already have the basic equipment."

Beyond the technology, implementing the project was a matter of convincing some of the more hesitant advertisers that the advantages of the program would not come at the cost of print quality. Foley admits to some initial hand-holding: "We had to talk a few of them through the process and reassure them that this really does work. Some wanted the option of sending in the film as well as the disk, so if there was a problem I could just strip in the film. But most of our advertisers, by the nature of the business they are in, already had a good understanding of what we were trying to do and why it could help them."

Why digital?

But it's not just Silicon Valley …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Macworld's Digital Advantage. Contributors: McDougall, Paul - Author. Magazine title: Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management. Volume: 23. Issue: 11 Publication date: June 15, 1994. Page number: 60+. © 2009 by Media Central Inc., A PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 1994 Gale Group.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.