The joys of networking; magazines need more than just a collection of computers; they need a strategic vision

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 1990 by Jack Powers

For many publishers, buying a computer is like buying a typewriter. Hire a new editor-buy him a PC. Promote an assistant art director-buy her a Mac. Set up a remote bureau-buy everybody laptops and plenty of modems.

It's often a lot easier to spend a couple of grand on equipment than it is to think about the consequences of automation. We've seen dozens of magazine publishing companies with a computer on every desk, a few in the closet and several more on order-and no clear, coherent vision of how all that hardware should be organized.

PCs and desktop technologies create a confusion of responsibilities. In the old days, publishers bought stand-alone systems from full-service manufacturers who built the equipment, installed it, trained everybody on how to use it and didn't leave until everything worked properly. if there was a problem, there was one salesman to yell at and one company to drag into court.

Today, of course, publishers buy equipment from the computer store down the block, from discount sales operations at the end of toll-free ordering lines, and from somebody's brother-in-law who can get a good deal on disk drives.

The software generally comes shrink-wrapped in a box with a manual, a few diskettes and the best wishes of the developers for a happy and productive life. What technical assistance there is comes from the product support lines--dial 1-800-ETERNITY-manned by techies who have never actually seen a magazine production office or worked to a deadline, and who love to put people on hold.

A lot of the new publishing tools are too cheap-you can't make enough money selling an 800 software package to provide the kind of industrial-strength sales and support that comes with a $100,000 dedicated publishing system, the kind needed by a million-dollar magazine shop. Smart magazine production people have become very good at wrestling computers into productive use, however, and as their production operations mature, they inevitably wind up assigning someone the job of systems manager, a.k.a. production editor.

But in the PC era, magazines need more than just a collection of computers that function properly most of the time. In order to get the full benefit of production automation, there's got to be a strategic vision, a plan of how to use the technology to do more than set type, draw layouts or communicate to a service bureau.

Network publishing combines text processing, computer graphics, desktop publishing, professional pre-press work and creative automation tools in an electronic editorial and production system that makes magazines better, not just cheaper and faster.

For most magazines, PCs first appeared as one-for-one replacements for typewriters at editors' desks, and they weren't used for much more than capturing and editing keystrokes and, eventually, interfacing with an outside type shop.

Today, however, PCs, Macintoshes and other workstations are going far beyond typewriting. They're being used for research, electronic copyflow, remote communications, charting and graphing, picture editing, ad placement, page layout and complete production up to plate-ready film.

Think of a magazine computer not as an island of self-contained processing, but as a node on a large and growing network that links all parts of a magazine office into a coherent, coordinated unit. Publishers and production managers who exploit the unifying potential of network publishing tools not only get to press faster and cheaper, they build stronger lines of communication between editors, art staff and production people.

The components of network publishing are divided into four broad areas: text processing, pagination, art and photography, and proofing. Not every publication shop should have all four components on-line, but most magazines can look forward to coordinating these different aspects in the next few years.

Text processing

Over 70 percent of the type set in the United States last year was processed from electronic files, not paper manuscript. Most people who write for publication write on a computer of some kind, and most of the computers they use are IBM-compatible PCs.

A great many editors use their PCs just like their Underwoods and Remingtons, typing and editing files onto disks that are moved around the office over an HMTD network, the most common editorial net. HMTD--Hand Me That Disk-is generally adequate for small shops and publications with long deadlines, but publishing is by nature a collaborative process and local area network (LAN) systems can be justified with as few as a half dozen editors on-line. Basic text networking

In standard PC networking products like IBM's PCNet, Novell's Netware and Sun's TOPS, many computers can share text and programs stored in a centralized file server, a PC dedicated to storing and retrieving files for all the users in an office.

There are four main benefits to centralizing editorial copy over a LAN: Files are easier to find; versions are easier to control; back-up and archival copying is simple; and all users can share peripherals like modems, tape drives and printers.