New York Times Completes Blackmagic Upgrades at 18 Print Sites

June 30, 2008 — North Canton, OH

New York Times looked to Presteligence when they decided to upgrade 18 out of their 24 print sites with the latest release of Blackmagic News Extra. This project included new hardware, software upgrades, and system training spanning over a three month time frame.

Without any particular installation strategy required by The New York Times, Presteligence scheduled site installations in an order that made the most geographical sense--- lumping west coast or southern sites together. This allowed a project manager to arrive at one newspaper early in the week and finish a second installation by the end of day Friday.

Depending on the site, the system hardware shipped to Presteligence corporate headquarters in North Canton, Ohio or directly to the newspaper. The project manager installed the HP server’s operating system and Blackmagic News Extra software within a half day. “Typically, we’d get on-site at 9 am and be running files through by 2pm,” said Mike Pisani, one of the three project managers assigned to this undertaking. The servers alone were an immense upgrade for many of the sites that were running Blackmagic on very outdated NT servers, like Atlanta Journal Constitution. The New York Times maintains a color database profile so there was not as much color matching and testing as there would be in a completely new installation. The print sites connect to The New York Times network and send the pages through Blackmagic News Extra to one of their two plotters.

The Presteligence project managers presented a half-day on site training session to prepress and plate room workers following the software installation. Version 3.5 features added color tools unavailable in the version these sites were using since their original installations in 2001. 3.5 will also allow The New York Times to replace their existing HP 1050s with something new from HP, Epson, or Canon.

Presteligence is the only OEM Dealer of Serendipity’s Blackmagic software, offering Blackmagic News Extra. BlackMagic News Extra utilizes the same Ripped data to proof that is used for final output without re-Ripping. BlackMagic News Extra specifically addresses the automated proofing of high-resolution screened bitmaps, prior to imaging to film or direct-to-plate. The system features Real Dot Technology (RDT) to produce high-quality, accurate color proofs on newsprint stock using large-format inkjet printers. The Blackmagic News Extra upgrades were installed at the following New York Times print sites: Ann Arbor, MI; Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Billerica, MA; Chicago, IL; College Point, NY; Concord, CA; Dayton, OH; Denver, CO; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Gastonia, NC; Kent, WA; Lakeland, FL; Minneapolis, MN; Princeton, MA; Columbia, MO; Springfield, VA; and Torrance, CA. Most of the other print sites contracted directly with Presteligence for the upgrade.

For more information:
Denise Oates, Director of Marketing, Presteligence
doates@presteligence.com ; 330.305.6960 ext 500

back to news/press release