The OTH
This is the second of two articles
on desktop publishing.
By JIM GREENHILL
Staff Writer
Back in the fall of 1984 a visitor
to the offices of The Daily Tar Heel
walked through a newsroom contain
ing aging typewriters. By the end of
the school year, those typewriters were
gone and student journalists were
using a new $140,000 computer sys
tem. Four years later that system, too,
is gone.
At the beginning of this summer,
The Daily Tar Heel replaced its Vari
typer EPICS system with a combina
tion of IBM and Macintosh products.
The paper sold the old system for
$15,000 "and I consider that a real
good deal," said DTH Director Kevin
Schwartz.
Few were interested in buying the
five-year-old system, Schwartz said.
"It was a good thing at the time,"
said Bill Leslie, one of the paper's
two production coordinators. The
Varityper system was state of the art
technology when it was bought and
the DTH got a good deal, he said. Its
importance was that it gave the DTH
Restaurants
Speaking of Mom and Dad, if you
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wallet), dress up and take the limo to
La Residence, a private Rosemary
Street home converted into a French
restaurant. It's very expensive and
gives you shivers just walking by the
place. Fortunately, they have opened
up a new, less expensive section of
the restaurant, a cafe, which offers
casual, indoor or outdoor dining,
excellent food and wonderful atmos
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control of production, he said.
The Varityper system was based
on proprietory technology, Leslie said,
in which there was no access to pro
gramming. "It meant you were locked
into a single vendor and you had no
compatibility with other systems,"
Leslie said. "The bottom line was
that it was terribly expensive."
Incompatibility with other systems
meant that it was impossible for the
DTH to have Associated Press wire
stories feed into the system, or for
reporters to type in stories from a
remote location, or for a modem to
be used to link into the growing
number of national data bases, Leslie
said.
The service contract alone on the
old system was 10 percent of the
purchase price every year, Leslie said.
He attributed the high costs to the
limited market products like the EP
ICS system had and to clients' de
pendency on the manufacturer for
service and supplies.
"Those kind of costs kill, espe
cially small companies like the DTH,"
he said;
For around $60,000 less than
half the price of the previous system
phere.
Going from the sublime to the
ridiculous, what to do when you've
got that late night, buzz-induced crav
ing? You hit Hector's or Time-Out,
that's what. Hector's, a Chapel Hill
tradition since 1969, offers greasy but
great burgers which are perfect for a
2 a.m. snack. Always, always get their
double-cheeseburger on pita (with
chili), but have plenty of napkins on
hand. Time-Out is famous for its
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the DTH has bought a system that
is larger (12 EPICS editorial termi
nals were replaced with 15 IBM Per
sonal System2 Model 25 editorial
terminals) and more versatile.
"If you look at the industry as a
whole, we've moved from being right
-behind to being right on the fore
front," Schwartz said.
The new system allows the paper
to capture wire copy, edit it and lay it
out on screen. In the future, a sports
reporter covering a Tar Heel basket
ball game in Atlanta, Ga., will be
able to type his story straight into the
system from his hotel bedroom. Us
ing modems, the DTH can access
national data bases.
"It's going to profoundly affect
the way that newspapers gather in
formation," Leslie said. "The small
est newspaper in Podunk, Wis., can
do research on a major story."
Production costs have fallen, but
quality has improved. "Our costs are
now 10 percent of what they were,"
said Stacy Wynn, DTH production
coordinator.
Instead of typesetting galleys in a
costly machine that required constant
from page 14
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A lot of fine eateries have been
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With the times
maintenance and expensive cliemi
cals, the newspaper is now laid out
on a large Macintosh screen using
Aldus PageMaker. The whole page
of editorial copy is then printed out
on a laser printer and pasted up on
the pages with the advertisements.
The new laser printer is a Vari
typer product. Companies like Vari
typer are responding to the obsoles
cence of the old systems by introduc
ing proprietory software for PC sys
tems and compatible support prod
ucts like the new printer, Schwartz
said.
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And training has become easier.
"You can't get through this Univer
sity anymore without using a com
puter, even if it's just to write a pa
per," Schwartz said. "By the time
someone comes in to be a writer, it's
likely they've already used an IBM
or a Macintosh."
In a short time, The Daily Tar
Heel has come a long way from beat
up typewriters to high-tech typeset
ters. Or, as Leslie said, "Five years ago
this was still a dream."
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