Sir Harold Evans knows a thing or two about newspapers. The former editor of The Sunday Times has spent a lifetime in the business and, despite the nayayers, he believes there's plenty of life left in it yet. He forsees a future when a reader can walk into a local print shop anywhere in the world, order the newspaper of their choice and have it run off digitally while they wait.

Evans' vision runs counter to current thinking, which holds that the latest technologies, and in particular free online news sites, will herald the demise of the printed newspaper. However, Evans believes that digital technology - both online and print - will in fact save the medium and indeed lift it to new heights.

Evans' dream isn't that far-fetched, when you look at the developments in digital print. Over the past decade, press manufacturers have been working to make it a realistic proposition and publishers have been taking their first tentative steps in this new world, using it to print editions in far-flung parts of the world.

However, concerns over cost remain and, with the economic outlook still cloudy, many publishers are understandably reluctant to take the plunge. Nevertheless, last year, Dubai-based Atlas Media Communications (AMC) invested in a Screen Trupress Jet250 so that western newspaper publishers could print their titles in the Middle East. The investment was made as part of a contract between AMC and Newsworld Corporation, a worldwide newspaper distributor. What's more, in Malta, a Kodak customer invested in a Versamark VL400 to print UK newspapers for British tourists.
"They are getting up-to-date newspapers and it's better than simply flying in hundreds of copies," explains Mark Humphreys, Kodak UK sales manager for newspapers.

Black and white and read all over
But it's not been an easy market to develop, says Océ graphic arts programme manager Paul Krisson. "We are coming up to the 10th anniversary of when we got into newspapers," he explains. "It started well, but the market wanted colour and digital couldn't deliver that at an affordable price. The number of publications we could work with was limited."

However, according to Humphreys, in the past couple of years, print quality has taken a huge step forward. Krisson adds that September 2008 was the tipping point for the market. By then inkjet technology had matured enough to allow Océ to make a serious play for the colour newspaper market "delivering affordable colour at an acceptable level".

Both Humphreys and Tim Taylor, marketing manager at Screen Europe, are convinced that digital is no longer just a buzzword in the newspaper sector, but a serious way of reducing shipping costs.

"The easiest way to justify the technology is by looking at replacing the cost of distribution - all you are doing is moving the file, like a PDF, to a location where you can print locally," says Taylor.

"There is also an environmental consideration," adds Humphreys. "Flying copies out to a remote destination is not good for a publisher's carbon footprint."

Taylor believes that this model will remain the norm for some time to come. The argument from digital vendors is that it makes far more economic sense to remotely send a file to a printer with a digital press in a distant corner of the world - it also means that readers aren't getting hopelessly out-of-date news that they could simply get on the internet. "You're not shipping extra copies," adds Taylor. "You only print the number that you want. I can foresee a situation where newspapers are no longer shipped around the world."

Think global, print local
But what of Evans' prediction, that individual consumers will be able to have a newspaper custom-built and printed to their specific needs? It's already happening according to Océ's Krisson. From November last year, students in Berlin were able to receive their very own personalised newspaper, called Niiu, printed on an Océ Jetstream 2200.

Taking licensed content from a raft of German titles and websites, the publication has a fixed page count of 24 and allows students to receive content of their choosing. This could range from news stories relevant to their course to blogs that they are following online (see Technically Speaking, PrintWeek, 22 January).

"It's a 100%-personalised newspaper," says Krisson. "It's also addressing the issue of attracting the younger reader - an old-fashioned medium needs to bring in the next generation."

The signs are good for the future of this particular project, according to Krisson. The target is for the newspaper to gain 4,500 subscribers by May this year and it's currently on track, according to the publishers.

While it's clear from this example that digital print, used in the right manner, can win over a younger generation it might also be effective at revitalising ailing regional newspapers. Both Krisson and Taylor believe that digital could be hugely influential in the survival of those titles.

"There is no reason why local newspapers can't be printed digitally," says Taylor. "Many are weekly and it might work out if a smaller number are delivered to shops. In addition they could be updated easier. It would also be easier to print even more regionalised versions."

"You could include 10 pages of digitally printed local news that could run in the main newspaper," adds Krisson. "The bulk is still printed on litho, but you could target a particular zone using a digitally printed section." He says that it might also be possible to combine a highly personalised newspaper with the local free weekly title; in effect turning a newspaper into another form of direct mail.

Kodak has also been busy in developing inkjet technology that merges digital with offset. It's come up with a 4.5in printhead that can be attached on a web press and gives the publisher the option of adding variable data.

Money matters
But this is still some way off and there are concerns that for all the potential in digitally printed newspapers, operational costs are still prohibitive. One cautionary tale comes from the US. Last year, The Printed Blog ceased publication due to a lack of investment. The brainchild of software entrepreneur Joshua Karp, the concept seemed innovative: a digitally printed newspaper distributed to the citizens of Chicago and San Francisco consisting entirely of reprinted blogs from the internet. More than 300 bloggers signed up and content was managed centrally and then sent electronically to local distributors with full-colour digital presses.

Unfortunately, Karp couldn't raise the minimum amount of money to push The Printed Blog further. It underlines the problem that digital print technology still faces - cost. Steve Brown, managing director at Southall-based Stroma, believes that this is a stumbling block for many established publishers. His company, a digital print operation, is at the heart of Océ's Digital Newspaper Network, printing titles such as The Australian although it also produces other products such as books and training manuals. Brown notes that at the moment publishers are only printing titles in very short runs - anything more and the cost becomes prohibitive.

"We print titles for embassies, but these instances we're talking about runs of five or 10," he says. "In my view, the technology costs need to come down. The running costs are fine, but it's the capital expenditure that makes it difficult. If costs come down then you would have a lot more partners coming on board."

The other battle for digital print is that conventional litho is comparatively cheap - indeed it costs next to nothing to mass produce newspapers. The cost to produce a digital newspaper is around £1.50 per copy, while it costs just a few pennies to print the same paper coldset. Kodak's Humphreys agrees that cost is definitely a barrier at the moment. "The cost per copy is what counts," he says. "But costs have come down in the last 24 months and it is far cheaper to print 500 newspapers on digital as opposed to coldset."

Screen's Taylor reckons that with economy in its current state, digital print is viable. His argument is that flying mass produced newspapers thousands of miles is not a sustainable model, he argues. It's far better, and cheaper in the long run, to print fewer numbers courtesy of a PDF file.

And an application, such as Karp's, could still come to fruition for a niche readership still keen to get information via the printed newspaper. Whatever path newspapers go down, we're still some way off having every newspaper in the UK digitally printed. Financially it remains prohibitive and the traditional litho press is likely to still be mass producing newspapers for some years to come.

However, the recent examples of projects in the Middle East, New Jersey and Berlin offer a glimpse that digital print does have a role to play in the evolution of newspapers. And with combination of niche applications, plus internet paywalls, predictions of the demise of the printed newspaper may be premature.