IFRA (www.ifra.com), NAA (www.naa.org) and PANPA (www.panpa.org.au) determine the world's 50 best newspaper printers who are then awarded membership in the International Newspaper Color Quality Club (INCQC) 2008 – 2010 (www.colorqualityclub.org). This quality benchmarking has been carried out at two-year intervals since 1994 and participation is open to all newspapers, independent of circulation and frequency of publication (daily or weekly).
With 190 nominations, newspaper companies from all continents registered the largest number of newspaper titles to date for the INCQC 2008–2010. In the same vein, the number of countries from which these titles were registered, at 43, is higher than ever before. In the last competition 2006–2008, 50 newspapers from 16 countries attained club membership. A total of 181 newspapers from 38 countries took part in the most recent competition.
Careful evaluation
Since November, IFRA, NAA and PANPA experts have been involved in a careful evaluation of the many entries to the competition, and this process will continue up to the end of February 2008. As a precondition for participation, the newspapers, of which the majority are IFRA, NAA and PANPA members wanting to benchmark their printing and reproduction quality on an international scale, were called on to process and print a number of especially prepared test elements, photos and digital ads. In addition, they had to collect and submit printed samples from their daily production runs.
All the reproduced and printed test elements have now been measured and their quality evaluated. Copies submitted from the daily production runs were checked page by page for their printed quality and likewise evaluated. The third part of the overall evaluation, that has yet to be completed, consists of judging an editorial image and a digital ad. This part of the evaluation process, that is carried out anonymously, is done by a jury of experts composed of representatives of publishing houses that participated successfully in the last competition. The jury will meet mid-February in Phoenix, Arizona, US.
It is not only the best results worldwide that are determined, but also the most successful regional results from North America and Asia.
The 50 new members in the INCQC 2008–2010 will be determined and announced at the beginning of March. The prize award ceremony will be held on 11 April, on the eve of Nexpo 2008, in Washington, DC, US.
