Globe and Mail says its future is to have a magazine look and style

The Globe and Mail will be more like a magazine than a newspaper by late next year as new printing equipment comes online at its primary printer, Transcontinental Inc.

What was once the good, grey Globe will become a four-colour newspaper and change its format to fit the new Commander CT presses that Transcon has purchased in order to meet the obligation of its 20-year, $1.7 billion contract extension, according to a story in Newspapers and Technology.

Perry Nixdorf, The Globe and Mail's vice president of operations, said the new machines will allow the paper to meet its goal to improve print quality. "We are alive and well and we are now ready to evolve to a point where we can connect to our audiences in a style and manner that's preferential to them," he said.

All four of the new presses will have heatset capability -- a commonplace for four-colour magazine printing.

Heatset was an important consideration, Nixdorf said. "We will definitely be looking at the best ways to optimize the heatset, whether it's better quality newsprint, or the production of glossy, niche publications," he said.

"The future in our industry is to go to a magazine look and style, so we wanted heatset and UV upfront."

Transcontinental will build a new plant in Toronto to house two of the machines. The third press will be placed at a Transcontinental site in Calgary and the fourth in another company-owned facility in Vancouver, B.C. The Calgary and Vancouver plants will replace contracts Transcontinental now has with local printers to produce The Globe.

The Globe will standardize its size to a 21-inch cutoff and 44-inch web width; currently, the paper is 22.75 inches and it is produced on a 48-inch-wide web. This may require the Brandon Sun (which produces the Globe for distribution in Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and Transcon's Halilfax plant (which services the Atlantic provinces) to make some adjustments, said Nixdorf.