A newspaper is held responsible if returns from a single advertisement or a campaign are not satisfactory. It is looked upon as a “poor medium.” Yet how many times the true fault can be traced to the message itself. Full efficiency in advertising is the result of full efficiency in the copy * * *.
(Reprinted by the kind permission of The Bureau of Advertising, the American Newspapers Publishers Association, Mr. William A. Thompson, Director.)
NEWSPAPER
ADVERTISING PLATES
Mechanical production of any kind is an unsympathetic and inexorable thing, and the modern large daily newspaper, in its mechanical production, is unsympathetic and inexorable to the highest degree. It reproduces exactly and impartially from all the different material supplied to it.
Your ad-plate is locked into the form with the other matter composing the page. A hurried lock-up, and the form is molded into a mat and stereotyped. Fast presses and cheap ink do the rest.
If your ad does not show up well in the first few impressions run off, the press grinds on just the same, with little or no make-ready. Once they start, it is too late to stop to allow the press-room foreman to investigate why a certain ad does not print up well. The “Daily Bugle” must get on the streets, if possible, before its competitors with the important scoop that the Beghum of Swat has just died. If you have supplied the best material for the newspapers to work with, the clean-cut reproduction of your advertisement is insured. If you have been penny-wise and pound-foolish in saving a few cents on your ad-plate, all the dollars you spent on art, typography and white space for your ad are on the knees of the gods and liable to be spilled off the said knees, and your ad is messy looking when it appears. The advertiser invariably blames the newspaper and the newspaper passes the buck on to the plate-maker. The printed appearance of the ad is largely determined by the kind of plate furnished to the newspaper.
The large daily newspapers are entirely dependent upon the stereotyping process for the necessary speed required in production. They do not print directly from type or cuts. The big advantage of stereotyping in this connection lies in the fact that it is the quickest method of producing a solid, duplicate printing plate from an original molding form. After locking up a page form, it can be molded, the matrix dried and the plate cast and ready for the press in about ten minutes.
Therefore, only unmounted plates should be sent to the large daily papers and not wood mounted, as it takes too long for the heat to pass through the wood base in drying the mat.