Recently, more stories have been appearing about newspapers outsourcing various types of production, from ad production to printing and distribution, including a recent column by Andy Tribute about newspaper trends that touched on the outsourcing issue. WhatTheyThink spoke with Michael Brady, Director of Production Operations, Technology Department, for the Newspaper Association of America(NAA) to gain an understanding of whether this is an escalating trend in the face of increasing pressure on the newspaper industry or merely choices made by a few newspaper companies.

A major deal that caught our attention was the announcement in November of last year by Canada’s Transcontinental, Inc., and the venerable San Francisco Chronicle of an exclusive 15-year contract for Transcontinental to print the daily newspaper and its related products, as well as to provide complete post-press services. Transcontinental, North America's seventh-largest printer and Canada's leading newspaper printer, is slated to begin production of the Chronicle in spring 2009 in a new plant it will equip with state-of-the-art technology in the San Francisco Bay Area. Transcontinental is already printing Canadian newspapers The Globe and Mail and La Presse, as well as, in its plant in Toronto, The New York Times for the Ontario and Upstate New York markets. The San Francisco Chronicle is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which publishes some 200 magazines around the world, including Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and O, The Oprah Magazine, and owns 29 television stations which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers. Transcontinental has a network of Canadian 12 plants that extends from St. John’s, in Newfoundland, to Vancouver BC and prints about 200 newspapers, including some 20 dailies.

There are two competing trends right now in the newspaper industry. One is outsourcing such as the San Francisco Chronicle/Transcontinental deal...the other is the opposite of that, with some newspapers expanding their production capabilities and becoming commercial printers, in a sense.