20+ Edition Suburban Weekly Newspaper Editorial, Prepress & Pagination

IMPROVE EDITORIAL AND ADVERTISING quality, service and productivity while reducing labor costs across multiple locations

Project Focus

• Weekly Newspaper’s Advertising and Editorial Prepress Ad Order Entry and Pagination
• Assess and redesign operations and workflows related to pagination, ad order entry, and editing
• Prepare and coach a client team to complete the detailed operational redesign, including new workflows, staffing, scheduling, skills, and systems

Client Gains: Financial and Operating Benefits

• 50% reduction of page handling during pagination process
• Editors achieved a 25-30% gain in time, through realigned responsibilities that eliminated pagination tasks
• 43% improvement in productivity (increased ratio of mastheads to editor from 1.6 to 2.3)
• Organizational realignment to improve coverage, productivity, and quality across 25 weekly newspapers
• Time available for editors to raise visibility in the community increased by 100%
• Reduced staff by 11%

Key Changes that Supported Client Goals

• Developed new model for editorial and advertising staff functional responsibilities
• Trained, coached and supported 5 directors and team members to implement the new model
• Developed benchmarks, procedures and practices; identified key indicators to report and measure activity; established processes for rate compliance reporting and overall communications; provided tools for balancing pages, deadlines and mastheads for pagination scheduling; and revised staff scheduling for ad order entry and graphics work.
• Coached implementation team on the role of an implementation coach, using key indicators to manage, and conducting model orientations with staff
• Established weekly, monthly, and quarterly planning and communications meetings
• Centralized advertising order entry functions
• Realigned reporting from an independent operational structure, with 20+ titles under three publishers at three locations, to an integrated functional structure for editorial, advertising and operations

Print Friendly