PRINT NEWSPAPER
Habitual Fine Colour
at La Presse
When one thinks about a printing quality, newspapers are not likely the first thing that comes to mind. Massively produced with relatively low linescreen
using flimsy stock, newspapers are nevertheless a significant part of the print we encounter on a daily basis.
The biannual competition by the World Association
of Newspapers celebrates the achievements of newspaper production through its International Newspaper
Color Quality Club (INCQC). The Club was initially
devised to promote the adoption of ISO standards in
newspapers so that international advertising campaigns
can be consistent. In the 2010-2012 contest, out of the
109 named newspapers, Montreal’s La Presse was the
lone Canadian representative.
For La Presse, its membership is the result of several
factors which makes it unique in the North American
landscape. In 2000, La Presse gained a new President
and Publisher by the name of Guy Crevier. Crevier envisioned radical changes for the then 117-year-old new-paper. There would be an intense focus on producing
graphically pleasing content in order to compete with
other media. Crevier also decided to divest the newspaper from its own printing and contract out instead.
In 2003, Transcontinental Métropolitan, a new plant,
began producing La Presse on its new Heidelberg
Manstream 80 press.
“It was quite a visionary objective to outsource,” says
Caroline Janet, Vice-President of Communications at
La Presse. “The idea was to make La Presse more of a
content company and leave the printing aspect to a spe-
cialist. Our goal right away was to take the newspaper
and bring it to another level, on the printing side and
also on the content side. We have to pay tribute to
Transcontinental, because they completely went with
our strategy and worked with us hand-in-hand.”
These changes would lead La Presse to over 100 awards
between 2003 and 2010, including two Michener awards,
the Pulitzer equivalent in Canada. Most important of all,
according to Janet, La Presse has managed to maintain a
steady circulation despite the challenges many newspapers
were facing in the latter half of the decade.
Jean-Marc De Jonge was a part of this transformation
on the production side. In his role in quality control for
the newspaper, De Jonge also was tasked to make La Presse
one of the top 50 newspapers in the world by instilling
new habits throughout the print production workflow.
“It’s not just about using a third party to print the paper,”
says De Jonge, “But also to make sure that if we do the
move, we will be among the best in the world.”
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PHOTOANDRÉ TREMBLAY, LAPRESSE
TOY
STORY 3
Incursion dans l’univers
3D du dernier chapitre de
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NATHAËLLE MORISSE T TE
CINÉMA PAGES 2 ET 3
Among the changes, press operators were
no longer allowed to make tonal changes
subjectively on press; any changes must be
based on densitometric data to ensure the
printing aspect was an immovable constant
in the production chain.
“It’s not about good results, it’s about good
habits,” says De Jonge. In the early days of moving to ISO standards, De Jonge explains how
colours would look wrong, despite printing to
specifications. The cause had to be traced up
the production stream and solved there before
the print quality improved as a whole. Had the
operators made tonal changes on the press, it
would have thrown other graphic elements on
the same page out of spec.
Although La Presse benefited from its rela-
tionship with Transcontinental and the new
Métropolitan facility, De Jonge also attributes
the paper’s success to the aforementioned
habits as much as the new equipment. “Old
presses [can] come with old habits,” he says, but
emphasizes that even operations with state-of-
the-art equipment can be failed by poor oper-
ation consistency. In 2004, mere months after
the presses came online, De Jonge helped form
a quality-control lab in which daily copies were
pulled at random and looked upon objectively.
The act of analyzing typical run copies instead
of the preselected office copies parallels the
changes in this year’s INCQC. “The contest was
not about the quality of your daily newspapers
but the quality you can achieve under ideal circum-
stances,” says De Jonge. “The changes in the rules reflect
what we were doing here: the daily quality instead of the
top quality you can print on your press.”
When asked to speculate on the lack of North Ameri-
can representation in the INCQC, De Jonge says he
blames business philosophy more than print ability: “If
you look at newspapers in North America right now,
they don’t use colour as we do because they don’t see
newspapers as we do. It’s not necessary for them to invest
in it right now [because] they’re satisfied with what’s
happening. It’s not the philosophy of the printer, it’s their
philosophy of the way they’re doing business.” De Jonge
calls the operation at La Presse more reminiscent of Eu-
ropean newspapers, from its overall design language to
production. “In fact, the first thing Guy did when he
signed the contract with Transcontinental was to have
LE MONDE
VIRE FOOT!
COUPE DU MONDE 2010 PHOTOAFP
OÙ TRIPPER FOOT À MONTRÉAL?
PLUS PAGES 1 À 3
LA THÉRAPIE DU BALLON ROND
ISABELLE HACHE Y À SOWE TO PAGES A2 ET A3
ANGLETERRE c. É.-U. : COMME EN 1950?
JEAN-FRANÇOISBÉGIN SPORTS PAGE 11
ALGÉRIE: LA COUPE DE L’ESPOIR
LAURA-JULIE PERREAULT À BEN TALHA PAGEA32
9 PAGES
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PIERRE FOGLIA
PAGE A7
Le pape
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PAGEA24
PHOTOBERNARDBRAULT, LAPRESSE
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MARIE-CHRISTINEBLAIS PAGE A6
PHOTOMARCOCAMPANOZZI, LAPRESSE
FINDESESSION ÀQUÉBEC
CHARES T ÉBRANLÉ,
MAROIS EN OBSERVATION
C’est la session des coups bas qui se termine. Jean Charest et Pauline
Marois en sont même venus aux attaques personnelles. Dans ce concert
d’invectives, d’une rare violence, la contribution mesurée du député de
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UNE ANALYSE DE DENIS LESSARD PAGE A9
TERRES À LOUER
Un nouveau modèle de
propriété agricole prend de
l’ampleur au Canada. Une
pratique qui profite à qui?
JOËL-DENIS BELLAVANCE
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me learn in a pressroom with European people.
“Your competition is the Web [and] your competition is TV. Even when you look at a hockey game now,
there are more graphics involved. Even if I had the best
press in the world but my design doesn’t take the full
scope of it, what does it mean to have a great press? We
want to be attractive, we want people to look in it. It’s
about having good content, good looks and good printing – quality everywhere as a philosophy.”
“We’re a 125-year-old newspaper, but we are a very
modern newspaper,” says Janet. “Our company has a
culture of change, of trying to be at the forefront and
ahead of the readers’ needs, so that is our motivation.
It’s a funny business to be in because it’s very rare that
you are in a company which delivers every single day, an
entirely different product.”
– Clive Chan
This cuboid target had to be included
in four different days of print in order
to qualify for the competition.
The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) established its International Newspaper Color Quality Club
(INCQC) in 1995 with the aim for more newspapers to
employ the ISO 12647 standard in production.
The 2010-2012 contest has evolved to better reflect the
daily production process of newspapers. In the past,
newspapers could print one-offs to demonstrate its
proficiency at using ISO standards in print. This time,
however, newspapers are encouraged to produce
samples within its daily printed page resembling an
actual advertisement. Based on print runs over four
months, the contest both analyzes the print accuracy
in colours via empirical measurements and also in
subjective review by a panel of judges.
In the past, WAN restricted the INCQC to a mere 50
members. This year, however, because the difference
between ranking 50 and not ranking at all was minimal,
the competition will grant all who pass the test INCQC
membership. As a result, 109 newspapers from around
the world were named Club members, chosen from a 162
participants (which is down slightly from the 2008 competition, with 198 participants). Of the 109 newspapers,
more than 60 came from Europe, approximately 40 came
from Asia with only four coming from North America.
“I think part of it was the economic situation,” says
WAN researcher Roland Thees, in trying to explain the
lack of North American particpation. “[And] I don’t
know how big the belief is in the newspaper business
in North America. In Asia, the amount of newspapers
and circulations are still rising.”
