Printcasting

(Para leer en español, oprimir aquí.)
 
(Broomfield, Colo. Feb. 19, 2010) Today Printcasting, a democratized publishing technology and service funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Bakersfield Californian, announced its expansion into South American markets through partnerships, starting with La República, one of the leading political newspapers in Lima, Perú.
 
Printcasting (http://www.printcasting.com) allows anyone to be a magazine publisher by tying online content to publication templates that can be printed out, as well as viewed online. By going to Printcasting.com, anyone can quickly create a printable PDF magazine or newsletter that features their own content, as well as content from participating news providers and bloggers. The tools include free, customizable design templates that normally require expensive desktop layout tools.
 
Only 9 months old, the Printcasting service has already been profiled in The New York Times, Business Week and MIT Technology Review, and called a “Must-Do Strategy” by the World Association of Newspapers. Printcasting is funded by an $837,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge – a five-year contest for using technology to distribute content in local communities. Part of that funding goes to local testing of Printcasting before the final version is released under an open-source license in June.
 
“We’re honored that such a progressive defender of free speech as La República has chosen to make Printcasting part of its future,” said Printcasting’s founder Dan Pacheco. The service will strike three more partnerships before June. Companies and organizations interested in being a Printcasting partner should send an inquiry to partnership@printcasting.com.
 
Gustavo Mohme, Director of La República, said his newspaper would use Printcasting to encourage readers to create and distribute magazines that put pressure on Peruvian politicians. “We join this project with great enthusiasm, and think it’s an extremely useful tool for our local communities,” said Mohme.
 
La República will also be developing features on the Printcasting codebase that will appeal to Latin Americans in exchange for the right to use the Printcasting code before it is open-sourced in June. Like Printcasting, the newspaper’s Web site (http://larepublica.pe) is built on top of the open-source Drupal platform. Drupal recently allowed them to quickly launch a feature called “Tu Voz Impreza” (“Your Printed Voice” in English), a vehicle that lets readers get their stories published in the daily paper.
 
“This is one reason we wanted to work with La República. We’re all on the same philosophical page about citizen participation, and we’re even developing in the same environment. That sets the stage for closer collaboration that will result in an even better product and user experience for everyone,” said Pacheco.
 
Despite no promotion outside of the United States, Printcasting is already used by people in 35 countries around the world, including in Latin America. Formal partnerships will take international adoption of Printcasting to a new level by providing Spanish versions that are promoted in specific Spanish-speaking communities. As Spanish is spoken by 300 million people worldwide – including 30 million in the United States – having a Spanish option will drive a significant amount of new adoption.
 
The geography and Internet usage throughout much of Central and South America make it an ideal testing ground for Printcasting, which is seen as a bridge technology that can help close the digital information divide. Average Internet penetration in South America is around 33% versus 73% in North America, and those who do access the Internet for personal reasons often do so from Internet cafes or mobile phones.
 
“Printcasting takes content that is typically only available online and lets it effortlessly travel back into the physical world,” said Pacheco. “As more news and information moves online and print editions shrink, our technology allows newspapers to continue to provide a printable option for those who don’t have home broadband connections -- and at a fraction of the cost of printing a newspaper for every reader every day.”
 
The digital divide in Latin America is even wider outside of cities. While 75% of the people in Latin America live in urban areas, the 25% in smaller towns are often out of luck when it comes to information. They often don’t have newspapers available for a simple reason: the delivery trucks can’t reach them every day. And for the same reason, newspapers can’t invest much in hyperlocal coverage for these areas.
 
“Using Printcasting, we hope papers like La República can reach that quarter of the population in a new way. Instead of investing in hundreds of expensive trucks and fuel, they could enlist the help of thousands of citizen bloggers who have home printers,” Pacheco said. “Citizens want to get important information out in their communities, but it’s not going to happen through blogging alone. The smaller and more remote a local community is, the more important physical distribution becomes.”
 
But Printcasting is about more than just print, Pacheco said. “Princasting is really a digital content processor for visually designed output,” Pacheco said. “We’re already working on leveraging the underlying Printcasting technology in new ways, including using it to create content for e-readers such as Apple’s iPad. The next generation of handheld readers creates more demand for visual layout, which is at the core of what we do.” He plans to provide more details about this expanded strategy for Printcasting at the “Rewiring Journalism” session of the O’Reilly Tools of Change in Publishing conference on February 23 in New York City (http://www.toccon.com/toc2010).
 
La República is one of two major daily newspapers in Perú, a country of 29 million people. It is distributed throughout the country, including in the capital of Lima, which has a population of 8 million.  Founded in 1981 by Gustavo Mohme Llona, it was a staunch opponent of the dictatorship of President Alberto Fujimori after his coup in 1992, and an important defender of freedom of speech and democracy at a time when most other local media was controlled by the Peruvian government.
 
The Bakersfield Californian (http://www.bakersfield.com) is an independently owned newspaper providing local, national and worldwide news to 270,000 readers weekly in Kern County, California. In July 2006, Editor and Publisher magazine placed The Californian on its annual list of “Ten That Do It Right” among U.S. newspapers, and called it out as one of the most progressive and innovative newspaper companies in America. The Californian has long been an early adopter of social networking and user-contributed content, an area that Pacheco helped pioneer as Senior Manager of Digital Products.
 
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950, the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. The Knight News Challenge, part of the foundation's Media Innovation Initiative, is an international contest to fund digital news experiments that transform community life. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.
 
Contacts:    
Dan Pacheco, Founder, Printcasting.com
(303) 465-5560 / dan@printcasting.com
 
 
Gustavo Mohme, La República
gmohmec@grupolarepublica.com.pe