Spring 2008—For Empire State Weeklies Inc. and its sister company, Webster Printing Corp., the decision to adapt to changing times and technologies wasn’t anything new. The company started as a weekly newspaper in 1945, and added in-house printing services in 1968. Since then, they’ve never looked back, shifting the emphasis to the printing side of the business.
 
Today, Empire State publishes two weekly newspapers, and has a full commercial print business. They employ 20 people, including four dedicated to prepress, and print everything from newspapers and magazines, to direct mailers and books. Clients range from other newspaper owners, to schools and colleges, to other smaller printers, non-profit organizations, and various other businesses.
 
Choosing the Right Equipment
Empire State has run an 18-inch ECRM imagesetter for four years now, with no problems. That factored in to their decision, in June 2007, to look to the company when Empire needed to add their first platesetter. While conventional platemaking is still in the cards, Empire State needed to also move forward. And though their positive experience with both ECRM equipment and customer support was influencing, there were other factors at play.
Empire State has worked with Eastern Litho, a Massachusetts-based graphic arts dealer, for many years. Eastern Litho also has a close relationship with ECRM. This helped Empire State secure a personal demo of the new equipment and a training session before they made the decision to buy. And once they had decided they liked the ECRM technology, they were pleased when a package of all the elements they needed (with for a price they could afford) was tailored for them. The new MAKO NEWS platesetter joins a workflow made up of all Apple workstations and Kodak violet plates and is connected via ECRM’s WorkMates.
 
WorkMates Workflow
WorkMates is specifically designed for the newspapers and printers migrating from film to a PDF-to-plate workflow. The affordable workflow solution addresses the basic prepress need of scalability. If a publisher decides to add stochastic screening or color critical ICC matched proofs, all they need to do is add a plug-in module. WorkMates allows each prepress manager to configure their digital prepress on an as-needed basis.
 
Making a Difference
“We have experienced a huge difference in the time required to plate our four-color jobs compared with conventional platemaking,” notes Dave Young, president, Empire State Weeklies. “Also the fit on press make-readies is vastly improved,”
 
The new equipment has definitely made a difference for Empire State. ECRM has given them the tools they needed to help keep up with customer demand and the changing requirements of the electronic files that have become the norm for jobs submission.
But improved back-end handling hasn’t been the only perk. According to Young, Empire State has received comments from several customers since the installation, and those have been mostly about the improvement in quality to the final piece – a win-win situation all around.