Last Frontier KPBM March 2015

WWW.KPBJ.COM
MARCH 2015 | 3
Also in this issue
• Is Port Orchard market
delivering on the hype? 23
• Form, function of bank
branch of the future, 6
• Coffee-hour crew shares
advice on contracting, 9
• Tech columnist
Charles Keating reviews
net neutrality issues, 23
The Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal is
published by the Kitsap Sun the first week of
every month, and distributed to business
addresses through Kitsap County, North Mason
and Gig Harbor.
Brent Morris, Publisher
brent.morris@kitsapsun.com
David Nelson, Editorial Director
david.nelson@kitsapsun.com
Tim Kelly, Managing Editor
tim.kelly@kitsapsun.com
editor@kpbj.com
Mike Stevens, Marketing Director
mstevens@kitsapsun.com
Jeremy Judd, Digital Director
jeremy.judd@kitsapsun.com
For inquires to receive the Kitsap Peninsula
Business Journal at your business, contact Circulation
Sales Director Hugh Hirata at 360-792-
5247 or hugh.hirata@kitsapsun.com.
To advertise in the Kitsap Peninsula Business
Journal, contact Michael Stevens at 360-792-
3350.
TO SUBMIT NEWS:
Tim Kelly, Managing Editor
tim.kelly@kitsapsun.com
360.377-3711, ext. 5359
Standard mail postage to be paid at Bremerton, WA
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Kitsap Sun, PO
Box 259,
Bremerton, WA 98337-1413
© 2015 Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal / Kitsap Sun
ISSN 1050-3692 VOLUME 28, NO. 3
introduction
| david nelson
End of one era, continuing the next
The Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal
you are holding may not immediately
look much different than
what you’ve seen from us
over the past 10 months.
But the path it took to get
into the community was
new, and that explanation
illustrates a business decision
made here that will
make a difference into the
future for the publication that brings you
local business news, columns, announcements
and advertising.
The night of Sunday, Feb.
22 was the final press run
for the 1973 Harris 1650
offset press in the basement
of the Kitsap Sun office
in downtown Bremerton.
There was certainly
an amount of nostalgia associated
with that night. I
sat there watching, as impressed
and mystified as
always when I would see
the old machine rumble to
print the Sun or one of our
other publications. A printing
press is a remarkable
piece of machinery, and
through the eras of print
journalism the Kitsap
Sun’s basement has always
been a place where change
occurred. So first I’ll share
some history.
More than seven decades
ago the paper started with
a flatbed press, two typesetting
machines, handme-down
engravers from
a Tacoma paper. During
World War II a two-unit tubular
press was installed
that could produce up to 32
pages, and there were five
typesetters. In the 1960s
we upgraded to an 80-page
rotary press, which could accommodate
color, and expanded the composing room
and what was then known as the stereotyping
facility. A little more than a decade
later, in 1973, the state-of-the-art Harris
1650 was installed and that, with some
technological upgrades over the years, is
what we’ve printed on ever since.
This edition of the Kitsap Peninsula
Business Journal was printed outside of
our building on Fifth Street. That’s the
difference you don’t see — but you should
know about.
The KPBJ, along with our daily edition,
other weekly community newspapers, special
advertising sections and quarterly
magazine publications, will now be printed
off-site at a large Puget Sound printing
facility, and trucked to our loading docks
each evening. This shifts us away from a
unique task that’s gone on every night in
our building for decades. But it’s a shift
that benefits readers because of print quality,
offers more choices to advertisers in
terms of format and options to connect
with customers, and helps our bottom line.
Our current presses have limitations in
capacity, color and quality. Our skilled
pressmen work diligently to make the paper
look its best each day, but the machinery
is outdated and limited in some aspects.
The opportunity is here for us to
produce a more appealing paper for readers
and advertisers, and could foretell
The press at the Kitsap Sun after running for the last time in Bremerton.
some format changes or opportunities
with the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal.
That means we do lose employees
from our pressroom and packaging center
in the process, which is never an easy decision.
Some of you in the business community
know those difficult economic
choices all too well.
But journalism, like many of the industries
you readers work in, is a changing
world. That’s what my history lesson
above serves to illustrate. We’re acutely
aware of that fact now as we expand our
digital services and readership on websites
and social media, and as we continue
dealing with a changing market for print
products. We’re simply able to offer more
choices in our printed product in the current
environment, whether in color, size
and format of the paper, or special advertising
products, and in certain terms at a
higher quality than what our presses were
capable of.
While this move changes our workflow
to build each month’s Business Journal, it
does not change our focus on journalism
for this community and advertising services
for local businesses.
The Sun has gone through several eras
during our nearly 80 years of printing a
daily paper, in terms of our products, journalism,
business strategy and even our
physical home in downtown Bremerton.
In fact, acquiring the Kitsap Peninsula
MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN
Business Journal was a landmark change
in that vein, when we added a type of publication
that the company had never produced
in its history. This announcement
about our production shifting is a significant
one, and the latest step in our ongoing
evolution as a local news company.
The issue you’re holding is a sign of our
continued commitment to readers and the
business community, and the backstory
on its production should serve notice of
our intention to continue into the future
as a print and digital company, and do
so in the most efficient and effective way
possible. Thank you for your continued
readership and support.
• David Nelson is the editorial director
of the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal
and editor of the Kitsap Sun. Contact him
at dnelson@kitsapsun.com.