newsONTARIO COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION’S clipsJANUARY 2005 VOL. 19, NO. 1 New Year scares n Christmas eve, Rainy River Record Editor Ken Johnston was called to the scene of a fire. However, when the call came through Ohe was surprised at the address. 312 3rd St. in Rainy River. "That is the Record's address. I will be right there," said Johnston. An adjoining apartment's smoke alarms were wailing away as another ten- ant called the fire department. Apparently the Record's neighbour left Selecting the best kids in Ontario a candle burning and then went to be with family on Christmas Eve. Our judges for the Ontario Junior Citizen of the Year Awards got together this It burned down and shattered. The month for the very difficult task of selecting the 12 outstanding final recipients of smoke set off the alarms, and fortunately the 2004 Awards program. The recipients will be announced on February 18 once the fire did not spread and basically went all the community newspapers have had the opportunity to present certificates of out on its own. nomination to the 157 nominees from across the province. Shown here, left to "It was scary," said Johnston, who was right, Junior Citizen Coordinator Nancy Burman, J.P. Bradette from Corporate most concerned about losing the historic Sponsor Tembec, Dundas Star’s Debra Downey, The Londoner’s Phillip McLeod, issues, stored in the back of the Record Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin’s Doreen Sykes, and St. Marys Journal Argus’ office. "Computers can be replaced, the Bill Huether. papers can not." It was deja vu for Johnston as The but the town council offered office space all the town gossip every morning and Record’s previous office burned to the at a very reasonable rate. In the front of smelled the equipment starting up. ground in 1971 when a fire in an adjoin- the building was the Record office and the They moved to the 3rd Street location ing Main Street business caught fire. The fire hall. In the back was the town garage. which was the old Canadian Legion previous owner was not going to reopen, The walls were thin and staff could hear Continued on page 6... Minding the industry trends By Don Lamont Industry insiders are wondering how an essentially rural mar- Executive Director ket comprising small towns once served by individual papers will respond to The Post, which combines the news and adver- very now and then publishers make some decisions tising once delivered by The Hanover Post, The Chesley about how to organize their newspapers that spark Enterprise, The Durham Chronicle and Saugeen This Week. discussions within the industry about whether those Three of the old papers were paid circulation broadsheets. moves will set a precedent for others in the industry Current subscribers of the paper who live in the more populated to follow later. The current example centres around areas, as well as out-of-town subscribers, will have the option to EThe Post - a region-wide, free distribution, total market newspa- pay the postage to have the new product mailed to them. per recently launched in midwestern Ontario. Similar approaches have been tried in Ontario in the past but Communities aren’t stagnant. It’s important to continue to try they have tended to cover more urban settings or they involved new ways to meet the changing needs of readers and advertis- regions not served by individual papers before. The question ers. Continued on page 3... WHAT’S INSIDE: Slimp’s picks for 2005 PAGE 2 Watercooler PAGE 5 Listening is key for redesign PAGE 7 2 OCNA’S NEWSCLIPS • JANUARY 2005 Slimp’s favourite technology picks for 2005 By Kevin Slimp the results. Two cameras arrived on the scene over the past few Institute of Technology months and began changing the way a lot of papers take photos. My favorite high-end camera is the new Canon EOS 20D. With It's hard to imagine a year has gone by since my last 8.2 megapixels, the 20D is faster than similarly priced digital ‘favourites’ column. As I travel throughout the U.S. and Canada, SLRs. At $1,599 (US, without lens), we're sure to see a lot of I'm always amazed at the number of people who stop to tell me these at newspapers in the coming months. they keep this particular column taped to the wall in front of Another camera that became a staple at many papers in late their desks. There's no magic in this list. These are simply the 2004 is the Nikon D70. An incredible camera for the price, products I've found most valuable as I work each day with news- around $950 (US, without lens), the D70 replaced the Canon papers of all sizes. This year's list is so long that I've had to Rebel as the hot camera in the industry. divide it into two columns. This month, I'll cover hardware. Next month, I'll fill you in on my software favourites. If you dis- Desktop Scanners agree with something included in this list, feel free to send me Epson and Canon continue to make the best desktop scanners for an e-mail to let me know. A lot of folks do. newspaper purposes. Ranging in price from $99, both vendors So here it comes. My list of favourite hardware products for offer several models which work nicely at an 85 or 100 line newspaper designers in 2005: screen. My current favorite is the Epson Perfection 4180. Listing at $199 (US), this scanner offers true 4800 x 9600 resolution, Desktop Computers with excellent clarity and The Power Mac G5 is the perfect computer for the serious color. The Epson Perfection newspaper designer. Offering options from single processor 2480 is another excellent models to a dual processor 2.5 GHz model, the Power Mac G5 scanner. Offering 2400 x packs a serious punch. Recent tests indicate the slowest model, 4800 resolution, the 2480 lists a 1.8 GHz G5, completes a 450 function test in Adobe at $99 (US). For more infor- Photoshop CS 15 percent faster than a similarly equipped Dell mation, visit www.epson.com. Dimension 3.4 GHz Pentium 4. The Dual 2.5 GHz G5 completes the same test 98 percent faster. Models start at $1499 (US, for File Storage the 1.8 GHz single processor). LaCie continues to offer the best options for file storage. I was tempted to select the iMac G5 as my desktop computer Behaving well with both Macs and Windows-based PCs, LaCie of choice, but the Power Mac G5 is still the best option for pagi- d2 hard drives continue to be my favorites in 2005. For testing nation. However, the iMac is too good to ignore. The design is purposes, I selected the LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with futuristic with the entire computer, optical drive, hard disk, Triple Interface 250 GB drive, listing at $269 (US). Connecting speakers, and power supply housed within the flat panel display. via FireWire 800, FireWire 400, iLink, USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, Starting at $1299 (US), this system fits in with many of the tasks this drive works smoothly in just about any configuration. Video necessary at a modern newspaper. professionals love this drive for its speed. Newspaper designers Although Macs make up the majority of design workstations will learn to love it for the same reason. It's almost like working at most newspapers, there are plenty of folks laying out pages on on an internal hard drive. Similar drives are available from Windows-based systems. When I'm making a recommendation LaCie in 160 GB and 200 GB models. For more information, concerning PC purchases, I usually recommend a Dell worksta- visit www.lacie.com. tion. The product numbers constantly change, but the Dell Network disks began to make their way into newspapers in late Precision 670 - starting at $1,589 (US) - is a solid option today. 2004. As I mentioned in a previous column, Ximeta released the Users will appreciate the speed (up to 3.4 GHz processor avail- NetDisk in the fall as the first external hard drive that could be able), the storage capabilities and more. The Precision 670 also connected to either a LAN (local area network) or directly to a comes loaded with Windows Professional. Mac or PC via USB 2.0. It sounded too good to be true. I took the NetDisk for a test drive by connecting it directly to the net- Server work switch at my office. I was very impressed with its speed Several months ago I had the opportunity to assist in the installa- and ease of use. At less than $250 (US) for the 160 GB model, tion of a 64-bit Xserve G5 at a newspaper in Crossville, the Ximeta NetDisk is quite the file server, without the server. Tennessee. After waiting more than two months for the server to For more information, visit www.ximeta.com. arrive - this was one of the first Xserve G5s shipped - we went In 2004, LaCie released the Ethernet Disk, an easy to use online to work installing the server. Since that time I've visited numer- storage disk ranging in sizes up to 800 GB. Featuring advanced ous newspapers and universities who rely on the Xserve. file-sharing technology, the LaCie Ethernet Disk frees servers by Designed to deliver UNIX-based strengths and cutting-edge providing independent, stand-alone storage accessible to anyone capabilities of Mac OS X Server, this rack-optimized server in the network.