Publishing Executive, April 11, 2008 (original link attached)
I was at one of my favorite industry gatherings today—the Publishers Production Forum. This special group of production directors never fails to have some of the best and most pointed dialog anywhere to be found in our industry.
Today’s meeting was no exception. During the meeting I heard the following exclaimed, “Prepress: It’s 10 percent of the budget and 90 percent of the talk.” You know that is true. I will add an additional thought of my own. What do you still consider prepress? Is what goes onto the Web with no parallel print component still considered prepress? If not, what is it? Let me take that question for you publishers and production people one step further. Do you production people still consider your job to be a manufacturing job? Is that what you really do? Do you still manufacture widgets in the shape and form of magazines, or are you more and more moving electrons rather than hard atoms. Clearly, 10 years ago directors of manufacturing moved hard atoms. They used industrial strength manufacturing technology to make things and ship them. What percentage of your job would you still define as making and shipping tangible “things?”
What will your job be called 10 years from now? Will you be DIM? Digital Infrastructure Management?
Here are a few more questions. Who is placing the ads now? Who is sending completed pages? Where are these pages being sent? How much of this process is going to be digitized with no human intervention, in either the print world or the Web world?
And lastly, how and where do you define your role in the publishing pecking order process?
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