Quick Printing

The Internet can be a wonderful tool, but it has its dark sides.It can be a colossal time waster. I wonder how many printers spend precious hours surfing the Internet and sending e-mail messages back and forth rather than going out the door and selling something to somebody. Quite a few, I\’d wager.

The Internet encourages bad manners. People can say mean, untrue, hurtful, and ignorant things in e-mails and on list-serves and blogs without the risk of having to deal face to face with those the comment\’s effect. I remember one particular reader who had become so incensed by something I wrote in my editorial that he bombarded me with hate e-mail that culminated in a message alleging that I had a \”comb-over.\” Heck, I don\’t have enough hair for that.

The Internet also offers up a mind-numbing amount of information of dubious usefulness. Sure, I can do a Google search for \”printing\” and be told in 0.09 seconds that there are 599,000,000 references to \”printing\” on the Web. (No lie.) But that is of no value whatsoever. OK, I can refine my search to \”quick printing\” and trim the hits to a mere 84 million, but so what? As that new \”old saying\” goes, we\’re drowning in information and thirsting for knowledge.

Also, the Internet has removed most of the gates that used to help us revise, correct, and evaluate information before it was disseminated. When I first went to work in newspapers, there were several minds and sets of eyes that went over a story before it hit the press. Now all some yahoo has to do is compose a message of dubious content and hit a button to send it out into the world where it is given the same weight as well-researched, thoughtful and actually true offerings. (I won\’t even get into spelling here.) And the Internet can give folks like that a highly inflated sense of their own importance. They are out there competing for attention with the New York Times or Washington Post, whether they have anything of value to say or not. \”Look at me! I\’m somebody.\”

Finally, the Internet is also a remarkably cheap and easy way for con artists to disseminate their scams, infiltrate your computer, or hijack your personal information with little or no risk of getting caught.

Don\’t get me wrong, the Internet is a valuable tool and I use it every day. That said, it is just a tool and is no better or worse than the people who use or misuse it.

Bob Hall
Executive Editor, Quick Printing magazine

I just got back from the Sir Speedy/PIP Printing convention in St. Louis. Other than it being hotter than the hinges of Hades, it was a fun time. Once again I was confronted by a few folks wanting my opinion on the future of offset printing. They quoted such stalwart gurus as Frank Romano in predicting that offset was on the long downhill slide into irrelevance. I replied “Balderdash” or words to that effect.

Sure, digital printing is where the growth is and digital printing will wind up with more and more of the “marks on paper” work we do. However, at the same time that digital is capturing a larger percentage of the information communications market, that market is getting is getting larger. Some of that new information will stay in electronic form but there will still be a robust and growing appetite for printed stuff — whether digital or offset.

Bottom line is that offset — while accounting for a smaller percentage of overall information communications — will continue to account for a big bunch of dollars for the foreseeable future.

Remember, as long as you take in work in digital form, your customers will see you as a digital printer whether you output on an iGen3 or hang CTP plates on a Ryobi or Heidelberg press.

FedEx still hasn’t quite figured out what to do with Kinko’s. They’re obviously not pleased at the financial performance of FedEx Kinko’s as evidenced by the rather unceremonious departure of former Kinko’s CEO Gary Kusin. When FedEx bought Kinko’s they were more interested in increasing retail locations to support their shipping business than they were in building print and copy volumes.The FedEx Kinko’s folks were insistent that I meet with them at On Demand, where they had a major presence. It didn’t take but a minute to figure out that the PR folks there had no clue that our magazine’s readers consider FedEx Kinko’s to be competition – although perhaps not very serious competition. They wanted to tell me about plans to double the number of locations from the current 1,200 to around 2,500, and I listened politely. The one question I really wanted to have answered was the desired ratio of copy/print sales to shipping sales in existing and planned stores. Nobody knew and I doubt they would have told me if they did.

Meanwhile, FedEx says it plans to use 100 selected Kinko’s locations as parts distribution centers for companies that need emergency replacement parts – including biomedical supplies. Now that’s really from left field.