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During the past three years, only a sprinkling of companies have announced plans for new, modernized or expanded newspaper production plants.
Most improvements have been at smaller sites, while the few at bigger papers resulted from, decisions and budgets made in the late 1980s.
This spring, however, North American dailies of various sizes announced major capital investments. A handful of projects may not indicate a brighter economy or an increase in overall industry spending. But even if more people are not demanding newspapers, certainly more is being demanded of newspapers, notably better, faster printing and improved delivery of other products.
By mid-year, announced plans included the following undertakings:
* Almost half of the $52.25 million that Southam Inc. is investing in its newspapers will go into expanded production and distribution facilities at the Ottawa (Ontario) Citizen.
* The New York Daily News will begin long-sought color offset printing when it turns a New Jersey bleach factory into a printing-distribution plant.
* After 185 years of publication, the Washington, Pa., Observer-Reporter regularly is printing color on a new press in a new plant.
* To handle burgeoning post-press operations, the Houston Chronicle opened a large Packaging and Distribution Center with business offices.
During the summer, two more projects, still in early planning stages, were announced by the Central Newspapers Inc. group: a new downtown headquarters for Phoenix Newspapers Inc. and possibly a new production-distribution facility for Indianapolis Newspapers Inc.
SOUTHAM SPENDS
Of the three dailies serving Canada's capital, the largest (170,489 weekday circulation) is owned by the country's largest newspaper chain. Southam's Citizen is to become an all-morning paper next year upon completion of a $24.2 million expansion at its production and distribution plant.
Southam intends to invest $28 million more to help all its papers adopt page-layout technology to speed prepress production.
Citizen publisher Russell Mills said the addition of 11 Goss Metro press units will boost printing capacity by 50% to an average of 60,000 copies an hour. "Apart from allowing the paper to have more color pictures and graphics," he said, "the new presses will allow the Citizen to get more late news and sports scores in...and give our readers earlier delivery."
Mills noted that while there is strong reader demand for an...