SLAYTON — The owners of a Slayton printing plant are phasing out traditional newspaper press equipment, and cutting some jobs.

At the same time, several area newspapers printed at the plant will also be transitioning over to a new style, and being printed on new digital printing equipment.

Jeremy Gulban, CEO of CherryRoad Technologies, said Page 1 Printers in Slayton has two main sides to its operations. One side prints glossy materials, while the other does newsprint. The printing press for newsprint is in poor condition, Gulban said.

“We’re going to phase that out over the next month or two,” he said.

As part of the transition, Page 1 will also bring in digital printing equipment. Several Minnesota newspapers owned by CherryRoad Media will switch to a new tabloid format, printed with the digital printers.

“Tabloid” refers to being printed on a smaller size of paper than a broadsheet newspaper.

The transition to digital printers will likely mean that Page 1 will reduce about 15 positions out of about 35 currently at the Slayton plant, Gulban said. He said employees would be offered some opportunities for relocation, or severance.

Gulban said the digital printing equipment would have some positive impacts for printing local newspapers.

“It’s a good solution for (print) runs with less than 1,000 copies,” Gulban said. He said a digital printer is also able to create better color and crisper images than a web printing press, which prints on large rolls of paper. On a web press, different colors of ink are applied to the paper separately, and the dots of ink need to line up perfectly to make a crisp image.

“On a mechanical press this is very hard to do because of the vibration of the press and the fact that the pressman must manually align the settings for each print run. A digital printer does the same thing but with pinpoint accuracy because it is not vibrating and there is no manual alignment required,” Gulban said.

Gulban said the process of transitioning CherryRoad’s newspapers over to digital printing started last week in Arkansas. The digital printing process would allow the newspapers to be printed at a more local level, the Arkansas Press Association reported.

Five CherryRoad newspapers in Arkansas were switching over to digital printing equipment closer to their communities, instead of being printed at a plant in Hutchinson, Kansas.

In addition to Page 1 in Slayton, CherryRoad also owns printing plants in Kansas and Ohio, the Arkansas Press Association reported.

Gulban said the transition to digital printing at Page 1 would first be made for newspapers that CherryRoad Media owns. Down the road, digital printing options would be available for other papers, he said.

CherryRoad owns about nine papers in southern Minnesota and five in northern Minnesota, Gulban said.

According to the CherryRoad Media website, some of the CherryRoad papers in southern Minnesota include local papers in Sleepy Eye, Redwood Falls, Granite Falls, Montevideo and Cottonwood.

Recently, CherryRoad-owned newspapers including the Tri-County News in Cottonwood, the Granite Falls Advocate Tribune, the Montevideo American News and the Sleepy Eye Herald-Dispatch have all announced they will be getting a new look with digital printing, as well as introducing new community calendar and advertising features.

Community meetings about the new look for local papers are being held in Montevideo and Granite Falls on Wednesday. The meetings are planned from 1-2 p.m. at Java River in Montevideo, and from 3:30-5 p.m. at Bluenose Gopher Public House in Granite Falls.