In the last year, we have made a determined effort to work with papers on display-ad makeup. Based on what we heard from people in the field, we came through with several million dollars of special-fund money to deal with that problem. That's another question. We have this gut instinct that a better-looking paper will sell more papers and more advertising. Fellow publisher Lewis agrees.
Some factors are subjective.
Quality doesn't have a factor that you can put into the pay back. In terms of pre-press equipment, Lewis suggests that personnel and morale become particularly important. You may be losing people because they say, 'You guys are behind on technology, and it's too hard to use your equipment. At that point, Lewis says, making the capital expenditure can reduce the operational costs of constantly replacing workers. Another corporate technology exec agrees.