GateHouse Center for News Design to open in May

GateHouse Media Inc.'s new Center for New & Design will produce its first pages in May from Austin, Texas.

The lease on a temporary facility has been signed, and work is beginning on a long-term facility within the same office park in north Austin.

GateHouse decided to pursue centralization to allow for increased efficiency in the production of pages, while preserving or improving quality for the local publications. Austin was chosen for its quality of life, talent pool and the relatively disaster-free climate.

"We spent a great deal of time searching for the right location for the new design center," said David Arkin, vice president of content & audience for GateHouse Media. "We wanted a market with the right ambience to attract the best creative talent and to realize our vision. We found it in Austin."

About two dozen employees from design hubs in Rockford, Ill., and Framingham, Mass., will move to the new center. The center will employ about 150 designers and copy editors by the end of the year.

The first designers from Texas have already been hired as the center gears up to launch next month. More than 1,400 people have applied to work at the center already. People who are interested in applying can check out the job listings for more information.

Throughout the summer, the center will ramp up to design hundreds of papers from across the country: Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, California and more. Newspaper pages will be designed and edited in the Austin center and then sent electronically back to the local sites for printing. GateHouse publications work within the same content management system, so designers in Texas can see the same content and pages as the editors at the local sites.

The Rockford and Framingham facilities are closing to allow the company to create a center for product and people innovation that has the ability to grow with the company and beyond.

Ultimately, GateHouse's vision for the new center includes exploring commercialization opportunities, such as taking on work designing newspapers outside of the company.

Future goals include content marketing and native advertising, expanding niche services, digital and print innovation, and first-class training.