Rocky Mountain News releases extra exclusively in PDF

Don Fluckinger

PDF has found its way into some innovative publishing streams, one of

them being the “Digital Newsbook” format, a joint Adobe-Kent State publishing

technology venture in which, theoretically, newspapers can release rich-media

content quickly for download over the Web.

Last month, the Rocky Mountain News released the first extra edition exclusively available in

the Newsbook format, which was created in Olive Software’s ActivePaper, and

readable in Acrobat Reader. The Newsbook, available for a limited time, solved a

vexing problem newspapers face each election day: The print edition has to be

“put to bed” before all the results are in, while radio and TV news outlets

feast on their exclusivity on the day after.

The bad news? Only 300 people downloaded it, although the paper’s

publisher told Newspapers and Technology

he deemed it a success. The good news? Not only did the paper successfully

create the Newsbooks, but staff was able to beat its 9:30MST deadline by almost

four hours, releasing the final (of two) PDF edition by 5:40–no small feat when

seconds count.