Customized for Quality

McMurry Publishing is tailoring its workflow for CTP production of finely crafted syndicated magazines and custom publications While McMurry Publishing displays remarkable flexibility and resiliency when taking on new projects—and as it adapts its production workflow accordingly—the Phoenix-based custom publisher is constant and uncompromising with regard to its quality standards."Quality is one of our hallmarks," emphasizes Preston V. McMurry Jr., the company's president and chairman. "The people at McMurry will never hear me say that we're spending too much; however, they have heard me say that (something we're working on) looks like crap and that I won't attach my name to it."The seeds of Preston McMurry's passion for publishing took root in 1985 when he created Vim & Vigor magazine as a marketing vehicle for his then-employer, a multi-hospital healthcare system. McMurry later purchased the title from the hospital group and launched his own company, McMurry Publishing, which has grown from a four-person operation with a single title into a $27 million custom publishing business with a full-time staff of 83.While Vim & Vigor remains its flagship title, McMurry Publishing now produces 21 quarterly titles with a combined annual circulation of nearly 30 million copies. The firm's more than 300 clients represent a variety of industries such as healthcare, banking and finance, education and gaming. Company holdings also include an ad agency, McMurry Ad Group, which has its own staff and clients, and accounts for approximately 20 percent of the business' total revenue. McMurry Publishing produces several types of publications, including syndicated magazines owned by the publisher. An example is Vim & Vigor, with issues comprising 72 pages, 20 of which are unique in content for each of the title's 28 markets. The company also offers single-sponsor custom publications—including Future and Scottsdale Citizen—to clients, which then retain ownership of the titles. Single-sponsored titles may also be syndicated, such as in the case of Balance, produced for Baylor Health Care System and syndicated to area hospitals. At press time, the company had just launched its first non-quarterly, a 24x, McMurry-sponsored publication management newsletter for the custom publication business. People and processMcMurry Publishing's 10-person production department is led by Vice President of Production Wally Gibbs. "Wally has been with the company for about 81⁄2 years, and has proven to be an extraordinary manager of people and process," McMurry declares.Each production person is responsible for one or more titles, and typically oversees each issue from editorial completion to output, including ad trafficking and ensuring that publication versions are printed properly. Press checks are common practice and, according to Preston McMurry, each staff member is empowered to make all production-related decisions related to his or her title(s).Twenty-eight editors and designers are also on site at McMurry Publishing. Typically, staff editors will write national stories for the syndicated magazines, while customers create their own local content and send files via disk or e-mail to the publisher. "For Vim & Vigor, we determine national features up to a year in advance because each has to be approved by 28 hospitals," McMurry points out. The publishers handles all the final editing and design of the syndicated magazines."For the custom publications, we always work with clients on an individual basis: We write, they approve; it's the same with illustration and photography," he continues. "There's more interaction." Every customer receives bluelines for final approval.McMurry Publishing does Mac-based design and digital page makeup, as well as some scanning, internally. At press time, the publisher relied on two local vendors, Color Masters and Digital Industries, for additional prepress and imagesetting services. The company had not brought film output in house because, McMurry CFO Chuck Wilson notes, "two to three years ago, the cost of an imagesetter was not an appropriate expense for us."The time is nowRecently, however, McMurry decided that the time was right for a move to eliminate film from its workflow. "Right now, we're getting ready to go computer-to-plate," Wilson reports. "We're in the evaluation process presently, and working with all our vendors on a successful transition." McMurry's printers are World Color (now Quebecor World), Jonesboro, AR; Times Printing, Random Lake, WI; and Schumann Printers, Fall River, WI.Gibbs calculates that 30 percent of pages are already produced CTP, and he forecasts that percentage to double by year's end. "We expect 95 percent of our publications to be CTP in 2000," Wilson adds. Why go digital now? "Equipment costs are down, and ROI is up," Wilson states briefly. Furthermore, Gibbs points out, "CTP is the logical continuation of the digital revolution and the next logical step for us." Certainly, direct-to-plate has entered the mainstream, and publishers are feeling the heat to go with the flow. "Already, there are some printers out there that don't accept film anymore," Gibbs contends. "And when they estimate a job, they just assume that customers will send digital files."But McMurry Publishing's vendors don't rely on assumptions—rather, they have provided the custom publisher with a helping hand up to the leading edge. "Having face-to-face meetings with the suppliers involved has really helped," Gibbs remarks. "In January, our out-of-state vendors sent representatives to meet with us in our offices and at a local prepress site to make sure that everyone knew where responsibility and liability would fall, to discuss what's working and what's not, and to coordinate our agendas. We worked out a lot of solutions at this meeting."Sharper imageGibbs does not expect CTP to be a production panacea, but he does anticipate both immediate and long-term benefits."We've found that print quality is a little improved; images are sharper and cleaner," he states. "We may realize cost advantages down the road, but we're not seeing a big savings there right now. It's more of a trade-off: We're spending less at our local prepress house(s), but more with our printers." CTP is likely to save the company time, too, in the future. "Some publishers may save time, others may not (with CTP)," Gibbs adds. "Much of that can depend on your vendor relationships." So far, the transition has been smooth, Gibbs assesses. "If, like us, you're already on the Mac and doing internal digital production, you'll be in good shape. If you're still doing pasteup, you're way behind," he notes. One of Gibbs' primary concerns is digital proofing. "A film-based proof tells us that nothing is going to happen (to alter the pages); but, with CTP, file integrity is questionable. We need to make sure that we can trust a digital replacement for a Matchprint," he says. "We plan to run a parallel system for a while, where we're looking at a Matchprint along with the digital proof," he continues. "Getting used to a digital proof requires an adjustment period, like what we went through going from Matchprint I to Matchprint II."Still, the company doesn't plan to go all digital, all at once. The time is not quite right for digital file transmission, for example. "That's a wild card," Gibbs states. "We looked into it and estimated that it would cost several thousand dollars a month to send our files digitally. We can send disks for a lot less."At one point, even before McMurry Publishing made the CTP move, the publisher had a dedicated line to one of its prepress vendors, but decided it was more cost-effective to download to Zips. "For weekly publications and in emergencies, digital file transmission works well, but we do quarterlies and have so few emergencies now that it's not worth it," Gibbs relates. "However, we will continue to consider it."Using disks, Gibbs still anticipates reduced shipping costs thanks to CTP. "We're sending tons of film and proofs via FedEx now, which we hope to eliminate," he notes. While the company will encourage digital ad submission, some ads will still be supplied as film and require copydot scanning.The publisher plans to maintain its prepress partnerships for the time being, depending on those vendors as CTP middlemen. "They will be doing the CTP equivalent of what they did in a film-based workflow," Gibbs explains. "We used to send them native application files, which they would output to film and proof. With CTP, we still send application files; nothing changes for us internally. On the prepress side, the vendors will process the files, output a digital (Iris) proof, then, once we sign off, they will download the final files, along with the Iris proofs, to the printers." Final files are output either as PostScript or PDFs, depending on the printer."We will look at bringing prepress completely in house in a year or so, but the fact that every vendor has a different workflow makes it harder for us to do it all ourselves at this point," Gibbs acknowledges.It's true that suppliers choose to follow many different CTP routes: using various hardware and front ends, accepting a variety of file formats and following individual procedures. McMurry Publishing's printers all use Creo platesetters, but do not follow the same workflow.Gibbs compares trying to conform to vendors' specific CTP standards to "having different flavors of ice cream, (none of which) you can eat out of the same bowl." Success with with one vendor, doesn't guarantee success with another, he emphasizes. "And we're working with five vendors, using two different press configurations," he exclaims. If a production genie were to grant him one wish, Gibbs would have his request ready. "I'd like to see PDF work perfectly for everyone in every situation," he reveals.The more things change...For McMurry Publishing, CTP will change the process by which the company produces its products, but the fundamentals—practices, philosophies and people—endure. Regardless of the technologies it utilizes, the company upholds its mission statement for each publication: "Our mission is doing business for profit. First yours. Then ours. We do this by creating publications that are appreciated by discriminating readers in the finest homes and offices everywhere."Realizing that goal is very much a team effort at McMurry Publishing, inspired in great part by Preston McMurry's people-oriented management style and infectious enthusiasm. "I try to talk to everybody in the company at least once a day," McMurry remarks. "Periodically, I'll ask employees to recite our mission statement from memory. No one has failed me yet." -Dawn Greenlaw

Publishing News

Customized for Quality

Publishing Executive Staff

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Publishing Executive Staff