The printing industry is an important part of the national economy, and it is also one of the fast-growing industries in the past decade or so. Among them, the development of newspaper printing has achieved remarkable achievements in terms of process reforms, technological equipment updates, and the scale of business operations and the rapid increase in printing volume. However, compared with the international advanced level, China still has a considerable gap in the overall level of technical equipment for the newspaper printing industry and the need for business development. It is necessary to continue efforts and continue to develop to high and new technology in order to meet the needs of the development of the situation.
Before 1985, almost a thousand newspapers and newspapers all over the country used extremely backward, inefficient, polluting lead, lead-printing techniques, difficulty in typing, long publication cycles, and poor printing quality, which severely restricted the journalism after the reform and opening up. development of.
The backwardness of the printing industry is a national problem. It is not only the issue of newspaper publication and printing. The level of China's entire printing technology and equipment is at least 25 years behind the international advanced level, which is equivalent to the level of foreign countries around 1960. In order to solve this problem and find a way out, there was the "7481 process" that was launched in 1974. But it was the National Printing Technology Equipment Coordination Group established under the leadership of the State Economic Commission in 1982 that really moved forward, promoted the development of the business, and gradually achieved remarkable results. A plan was formulated, scientific research and production forces were organized, funds were implemented, and a 16-character guideline of “laser photography, electronic separation, offset printing, and binding linkage†was proposed, which opened a new chapter in China's printing technology transformation.
It was in this situation that the publication of the newspaper saw hope, found a way out, and added people to the tackling of problems and comprehensive reforms. From 1982 to the first half of 1985, the success of computer-laser Chinese character recording, editing, and tabloid publishing system experiments conducted at the Xinhua News Agency opened the door to the modernization of newspaper printing technology. From 1985 to 1987, the experiment of publishing and composing system of the computer laser Chinese character newspaper published by the Economic Daily News conquered one difficulty after another and achieved fruitful results, paving the way for the transformation of printing technology in newspapers throughout the country. From 1988 to 1993, it took only 5 years or so. Nearly 1,800 newspapers from the central government to the provinces, cities and prefectures all eliminated lead. The entire industry realized computer typesetting and offset printing.
In this period of time, it not only realized the computer-based recording and typesetting of text, but also realized the data-based scanning of images, and the remote data transmission of newspaper pages through satellites and telephones. Afterwards, a database was gradually established to resolve the color separation of color newspaper desktop systems. The computer was introduced into the editorial department, and the editorial system for the interview was developed and continuously improved. In the same period, many newspapers also implemented computer management for advertising, distribution, finance, and daily office work. By the end of 1998, the prepress section of the newspaper had basically reached the international advanced level.
Prior to 1988, all newspapers used lead printing rotary machines, and there were 600 lead printing machines of the same size in the country. With the transformation of the prepress system, the offset printing rotary press was gradually used. By the end of 1993, all the lead printing rotary machines were eliminated. With the continuous increase in the volume of printing, the number of offset printing rotary presses has been increasing year by year. By the end of 1998, the total number of offset printing rotary machines owned by the nation’s newspapers (including those that were being installed, those that had not arrived, and those that had been signed) had reached 1100. A printing unit, the total printing capacity increased nearly 3 times than 10 years ago.
The technological transformation in the past 10 years has greatly supported and promoted the development of the press and publishing industry. In 1988, there were only 922 types of newspapers in the country. The total annual output was 22.2 billion pairs. In 1998, the number of newspapers reached 253, an increase of 122.670, and the total output reached 54 billion pairs, an increase of 143.24%. . Before 1992, major newspapers throughout the country issued four editions each day. After 1993, the expansion was started. Now it is mostly 8th edition. Newspapers in some large and medium-sized cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shenyang, Harbin and Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Henan, and Sichuan have been expanded to 16th edition. 24, or even 48. Before 1993, newspapers did not have color newspapers. In 1994, they began to produce color newspapers. In 1996, there were only about 50 kinds of national color newspapers, and by the end of 1998, it had reached about 400 types. All these developments, without the support of new technologies, are absolutely impossible to achieve. It should be said that the transformation of newspaper publishing and printing technology is a comprehensive and even advancement of the "16-character guideline" for the development of the printing industry.
In the first 10 years, great achievements have been made in the technical transformation of newspaper printing, but there are also many problems. The overall level of newspaper printing technology and equipment is unbalanced development, some systems are not supporting, the degree of automation is not high, equipment capacity is insufficient, maintenance is not enough, and some are sickly running, can not meet the needs of improving the news timeliness and newspaper development. The main problems that currently exist are:
The non-standard and non-unity of the newspaper publishing system has caused repeated investment and operational troubles for the businesses that have connected to each other. The national newspaper publishing system is not the Founder system of Beijing University or the Weifang Huaguang system, but the two cannot communicate with each other. There are also different versions of the same system, such as Founder 93, 95 up to the latest NT RIP card; Huaguang V, VII, VI, etc. Without updating, there are several generations of problems.
Image Processing. Only a few newspaper companies handle it well, and most newspapers lack a high-precision, large-format scanner that can both scan reflexes and handle color-transmitted texts. Most of them also use traditional photoengraving techniques, and the effect of transmitting images remotely is not good.
Color processing. All color newspapers are generally equipped with a color desktop processing system, but their grades and levels are different, resulting in a situation in which the quality of current color newspapers is not ideal. Of course, there are technical problems with operation management.
Remote transmission system. At present, there are three kinds. One is using satellite transmission, but it often fails; the other is transmission through the telephone line, the transmission rate is low, and the time is long; and there is an optical cable transmission, and some city transmissions have started using optical cables. This is a more reliable method. It is a development trend, but the investment is relatively large.
The platemaking process adopts the method of film reprinting, and the color newspaper adopts artificial imposition. First, the quality is not good, and the second is a long time, which is extremely unfavorable for shortening the publishing time.
Insufficient printing capacity. There are many printers running sick and the quality of printing is not good. There is a lack of equipment capable of printing color newspapers. Some of the structures are not adapted. Only two newspapers are required. Three or four sheets must be printed. They need to be printed separately, which brings difficulties to the distribution. In the past two years, newspaper printing also required the function of printing copper plated newspapers. To meet this requirement, it is necessary not only to solve the problems of printing machines, but also to impose higher requirements on image processing.