Current.org | Display advertising in "Current"

Reserving display ad space and color

Send us your insertion orders in writing before reservation deadlines, generally 10 days before cover date. Download the insertion order form, fill it out and fax it to us.

Or send e-mail to , giving: pub date, size, headline of ad, who should get the bill, purchase order number (if any), phone and e-mail for you and designer, how and when artwork will be delivered and page placement preferences.

When you reserve space, you must also choose black-and-white or color printing.

Not accepted:

We do not accept advertorial designs that look like editorial articles.
Help-wanted and positions-wanted ads for employment are accepted only as classifieds.

Cancelations: If you can’t use reserved ad space, cancel before space reservation deadline. (We recommend both phoning and writing. Please don't rely entirely on fax or e-mail to reach us, especially near deadline.) Current reserves the right to bill for ads canceled after the deadline.

Paying for ads

We mail invoices within days after publication, payment due 30 days after bill date. Invoices reflect net rates — agency discounts do not apply. Advertisers with overdue bills will be required to pay up and prepay before we accept further ads.

Color and other additional charges

Color ink charges: Space rates on next page include only black ink. Color inks are available at additional charge, but may not be available on certain pages or at all, depending on press capacity.

Specify that you will need color capability when you reserve space and provide separated artwork.

Process color: $600. Required if you wish to include full-color photos. Colors created by blending four inks: cyan, yellow, magenta and black (CMYK). Printing plates are made with a direct-to-plate digital process.

Single color: $200 for your choice of a single hue that can be reproduced with process color. We no longer offer spot color printing using hand-mixed inks. You still have the economical option of using a single hue (and various percentage tints of that hue), but it will be reproduced with the four-color process. Your designer sets up the ad for four-color printing.

Premium placement pages: Current generally chooses pages for ads, but we will try to give specific premium placements — pages 3 and 5, center spread, inside back page and back page — when advertisers request them. If a page is available, the fee to guarantee placement is $100. Some pages are often taken months ahead. Reserve early and in writing.

Design & composition: $50 per hour. We can assist in a pinch, but we urge you to assign your own professional designer to prepare materials. We also charge per hour for labor if you submit copy with serious technical problems that you can’t fix before deadline.

Materials accepted for reproduction

Preferred format: high-resolution PDF. Must include
all images and fonts, color separations. Flatten (merge
layers) in your design software before creating PDF. Create PDF with “press” setting, not “ebook” or “print.”

Also accepted: PC or Mac files in native file formats of design software:

Preferred: Adobe InDesign or Quark XPress 4 or lower.
Less preferred: Illustrator, later Quark versions or
Photoshop (600 dpi minimum).
Not accepted: Corel or Microsoft formats

Image scans:

TIF format preferred.
Scan photos at 200-300 dots per inch.
Scan solid black-and-white line art at 600-1200 dpi.

Fonts: Type 1 or OpenType preferred. Always include.

Proofs: required with your art!

Most reliable way to get what you plan: Make a color
matchprint, examine it and submit it so our printer
will know how the ad should look.
Less reliable: hard-copy proof from color printer.
Still less reliable: PDF file.
Barely adequate for B&W: fax.

Defensive design to avoid color gremlins

Newspaper web offset printing is not guaranteed to equal magazine quality for every copy printed. It can be quite good, but when it’s not, you can save your ad with defensive design.

If you are preparing a color ad, use only CMYK images. Make sure there are no elements of your ad, incompatible with CMYK, that were prepared in RGB for use on a web page. Designers do slip up, creating last-minute worries (at best) and potentially ruining your ad.

Protect your legibility. Avoid printing small text (12 points or less) with multicolor builds or in white on backgrounds built with multiple inks.It's safer to print small text in a single ink such as black. Don’t create black with four inks.

Minimize registration problems. Alignment of colors can slip during a press run. With very dark type over lighter background, don’t knock out the background. Avoid abutting fine rules to objects in other colors.

Beware of large areas of a single ink. It risks uneven color for at least part of the pressrun. Building the background color from multiple inks helps your odds. If you must use a large solid area of one ink, use an 80% or 90% screen and compensate by choosing darker ink.

Don’t rely on colors you see on screen. PDFs and other RGB computer files show a different range of hues than CMYK inks can print. Beware: Some RGB colors cannot be recreated ink CMYK.

Why meet the art deadline?

Procrastination is a hideous character flaw! Also:
Security for your design. Even experienced designers sometimes make errors that don’t show in proofs or PDFs. Most ads received before art deadline undergo a thorough proofing, including processing by the same RIP that creates printing plates. This proofing is your best insurance.
Security for your reservation. While we try to accommodate late artwork, Current reserves the right to cancel ads if artwork is not submitted by deadline.

Our printers need proofs to check reproduction, and paper proofs are best.

Delivering art by express, e-mail or FTP

Express delivery: Use it to deliver not only your electronic files but also your color proofs. To protect your art, please maintain a duplicate in your office and ship by Federal Express or similar trackable carrier.

Physical delivery media

CD
floppy disk
100 MB or 250 MB Zip disk
Hard copy—artwork on paper accepted only for
black-and-white ads.
Film and negatives not accepted.

Address
Sherron Phillips
Advertising/Production Director
Current
6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 350
Takoma Park, MD 20912
E-mail:

Electronic delivery:

E-mail: Send files of as much as 2MB to the address above.
FTP: Send larger files via FTP or e-mail to our prepress house, Electronic Ink Inc. For FTP connection info, send an e-mail to .

Display ad dimensions

Full page, 10 x 14"
Junior page, 7.5 x 10"
Horizontal half page, 10 x 7"
Vertical half page, 5 x 13.5"

Little junior, 7.5 x 5"
Quarter page, 5 x 6.75"
Vertical quarter page, 2.4 x 13.5"
Full double truck (two pages), 21.25 x 14"
Junior double truck (two juniors), 16 x 10"

To separate ads from editorial matter, we require a border or background screen for ads smaller than a full page.

Current is printed as a newspaper, so bleeds are not available (except across gutter in double trucks).

Display ad rates and frequency discounts,
July 2007 through June 2008

These rates are effective in July 2007. Rates may change next July.

Rates are net per insertion. Agency discounts do not apply.

Take advantage of our frequency discounts: Advertisers can get more exposure for the dollar with Current’s frequency discounts below. You can begin a customized 12-month contract any time during the year. Advertisers are eligible for frequency discounts only after committing to a frequency level in a signed contract. Frequency discounts apply to space charges but not to color or other add-on charges.

No. of issues	1-3	4-6	7-10	11-14	15-23	24-29	30+
Discount	Full price	5%	8%	12%	16%	20%	25%
Full page	$1395	1325.25	1283.40	1227.60	1171.18	1116	1346.25
Junior page	896	851.20	824.32	788.48	752.64	716.80	672
Half page	760	722	699.20	668.80	638.40	608	570
Little junior	486	461.70	447.12	427.68	408.24	388.80	364.50
Quarter page	429	407.35	394.68	377.52	360.36	343.20	321.75

Web page revised Nov. 14, 2007
Current: the newspaper about public TV and radio
in the United States
Current LLC, Takoma Park, Md.

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