In the past 13 weeks, 10 newspapers in the ACM-Superior region have gone through a major transformation with new computer workstations and software for their newsroom staffs.

Along with those upgrades, many advertising sales staff members also received upgraded workstations as they moved to the MediaSpectrum eProofs system, allowing them to upload materials for ads to be built at the ACM’s Ad Design Center.

The newsroom staffs not only learned how to use their new iMac workstations — which were a major upgrade from the Power Mac G3 and G4 models many of them were using — they also made the switch to InDesign from Quark 4.

Because of the major upgrade in hardware and software, the newspaper went through a redesign process as well, with new templates made with input from Rick Rogers, director of product development with ACM Newsroom.

During this 13-week journey in the ACM-Superior region, several members of the regional team and corporate team played major roles. Special thanks goes to George Wolfson, with ACM’s MediaSpectrum rollout team, for his assistance in training the ad staffs on eProofs; Rodney Blaukat and Allen Free, members of the ACM digital team, for their help in training the ad staffs on eProofs; Daniel Hodac and Dwight Sears, members of the ACM MediaSpectrum team, for their assistance in the chat room with the sales staffs; Bob Bischoff and Roger Johnston, IT staff members with the ACM-Superior region who played key roles in the computer workstation installations and in training the staff on the new hardware and software; Pino Shah with ACM IT for his efforts in the hardware installations and training; and Todd Keute, regional director for the ACM-Superior region, for his leadership during this transition. Todd made an effort to be visible in each market during the rollouts, and his presence was huge in getting each staff to buy into the change.

Finally, the biggest thank you goes to the publishers, editors, ad managers, reporters, page designers and everyone at each location for welcoming the change to their daily job function, and having positive attitudes as we upgraded their workstations. Change is never easy, and each staff took on the challenge and succeeded. At each location, we never missed a publication day on go-live week — and that’s a true testament to your efforts.

Personally, I would like to thank everyone at each location who made me feel at home and part of the team during my travels. I truly enjoyed the experience of helping each of you during this transition, and consider it an honor to have been on this journey with you to start 2012.

Cheers,
Rick Rogers
Director, Product Development for American Consolidated Media 

To catch out front pages from the ACM-Superior region during the transition, see gallery below:

The staff of the Hibbing (Minn.) Daily Tribune survived go-live day on Tuesday, as the staff produced its first edition using their new computer workstations and InDesign software.

Check out a handful of pages below in the gallery:

The staff of the Sawyer County Record, a weekly print publication and daily website located in Hayward, Wisc., launched a redesign of its newspaper using their new InDesign pagination software and computer stations.

The Record boosts a circulation of just more than 7,000 in print. It publishes each Wednesday. The operation also publishes a weekly shopper, The Four Seasons, each Monday. On the web, the newspaper can be found at www.haywardwi.com.

The staff is led by publisher Gary Pennington and managing editor Paul Mitchell.

Take a look at the page gallery below to get a glimpse of a handful of pages featuring the Record’s new look with InDesign:

On Tuesday, Feb. 28, the staff at the Gladwin (Mich.) Record & Clarion published their first edition using their new computers and software.

The newsroom designed the paper using InDesign for the first time. It was quite a leap for them, moving from Macs with OS 9.2 to Macs on Lion OS, and going from Quark 4 to InDesign 5.

Technology-wise, they went from 1999 to 2012 in two weeks.

They staff did a wonderful job adjusting to their new computers, software and workflow.

The new technology and upgrades are part of the MediaSpectrum project with ACM.

Check out a few of the pages below:

During the past three weeks, the staff of the Ashland (Wisc.) Daily Press has been going through several enhancements in its technology, software and workflow as part of the ongoing MediaSpectrum project.

On Tuesday, Feb. 7, the Daily Press produced its first publication using Adobe InDesign. The change to inDesign 5 from Quark 4.0 has been a big one for the newsroom staff, led by Wanda Moeller, editor. The Ashland Daily Press features a newsroom of seven, including Moeller, who also serves as the newspaper’s publisher and currently its ad manager. The staff is made up of three news staffers (Dick Pufall, assistant editor; Rick Olivo, news reporter; and Sara Nemec, news reporter and member of the ACM Digital Reporter Project 2.0 team; as well as sports editor Larry Servinsky and Garett Greenwald, associate sports editor. Candee Ferguson serves as the night editor and paginator.

The Ashland Daily Press produced a daily website with a print publication five days a week (Monday, Wednesday-Saturday)

The Tuesday, Feb. 7, edition was an E-Edition only, as the staff will produce its first print edition on Wednesday.

Along with the change to iMacs with Lion operating systems and inDesign, the advertising staff has made the move to MediaSpectrum’s eProofs software and a new ACM ad order system. The eProofs software allows an advertising executive to submit materials to the design teams and proof ad copy on a web-based software using cloud technology. This technology is currently being used in three regions of ACM (Chesapeake, Ohio and the Valley).

The Ashland, Park Falls and Phillips locations in Wisconsin are the first newspapers to go live with the MediaSpectrum eProofs and ACM Ad Order system in the Superior region.

To get a sneak peak of the Ashland Daily Press’ E-Edition see the page gallery below. We will post the official launch of the print redesign tomorrow as well. On Thursday, redesigned print products for The Park Falls Herald and the Phillips Bee will be introduced, as those will also be the first print editions produced using inDesign.

The Miami (Okla.) News-Record debuted a redesign of its print product on Sunday, Feb. 5. There are several changes and new features in the redesign, but the biggest of them all is the flag — which features the newspaper’s website address as the prominent element, with the name of the newspaper above.

The redesign of the News-Record completes a total redesign of the 4 major print products in the Miami cluster. The other products that went through a redesign include the Grove (Okla.) Sun, the Delaware County (Okla.) Journal, and the Cherokee County (Kan.) News-Advocate. The redesign process has been spearheaded by the design team of David Hoover and Cody Dyer, based in Miami.

Check out the new look of the News-Record below:

The staff of the Stephenville (Texas) Empire-Tribune launched the redesign of its print product this week. The new look includes more color on the front page, an updated font family, and lots of new features inside the newspaper. Those new features include more alternative-story formats as furniture pieces, a photo section on page 2 each day, and 3A is now Empire-Tribune 3.0, which is home to lots of quick-hit information and web teasers.

To see a gallery of pages from the redesign, click the photos below:

Not only did the staff of the Grove (Okla.) Sun redesign its primary print product with a launch the first week of 2012, it also launched its Weekends section, which publishes every Friday.

Check out the gallery of pages below:

The staff of the Delaware County (Okla.) Journal is launching a redesign of its print product on Wednesday.

The design is the work of David Hoover and Cody Dyer, the two-headed pagination team for the Northeast Oklahoma and Southeast Kansas region. They received assistance and feedback from Janet Barber, the one-person editorial team of the Journal, which is ACM’s weekly newspaper in Jay, Okla.

Check out three pages from the redesigned product below: