THE GUARDIAN’S SWITCH FROM BROADSHEET to Berliner has been a prime example of the newspaper’s willingness to embrace radical change, but it’s not the only example.

It is also one of only two UK national newspapers to have merged the production and circulation director roles into a single function (along with the Telegraph), and prominent in both of these changes has been Bob Steadman, director of Production, Distribution and Sales (PDS) at Guardian News and Media.

Previously deputy circulation director, and a Guardian man since 1979 in various circulation roles, Steadman’s ascent to the top job in the department (which was formed in 2003) came last November. He doesn’t pretend therefore to be a fount of technical production expertise.

“I have a strategic vision across the operation and that’s how I can make the role work,” he says, “but I could not do it without a good production team, and we have three fantastic production managers here in Steve Peters on magazines, Peter Mulcahy on newspapers and Peter Harte, who has a finishing focus.”

PDS takes charge “the moment copy leaves editorial”, and everything is geared towards producing a quality product that will sell. It’s a broad remit, and Steadman admits that the company has benefited though, not least from clearer channels of communication when they are most required, even if there was a settling in period. Steadman points out:

“If something goes wrong in a newspaper, you often find that production think it is the distribution team’s fault, while distribution think it is production’s, or people think the scheduling was unrealistic, and consequently you can never quite pin down the problem. Once you have production and distribution under the same roof though, people start to think about shared ownership of the problem, and then they’re batting on the same team to make it work.”

The move to Berliner in 2005 was certainly one project that benefited from this cohesiveness. Steadman explains that alongside the massive technical production issues, with new presses being installed, the department was also working on the logistics of physically getting the new size to market – what size bundles and how to strap them, for example – while the sales staff worked on issues such as restocking on point of sale materials for the new format. Fortunately the department did have a reasonable length of time to get ready for the switch.

Steadman recalls: “We got the retailers and wholesalers to come in and talk about how we were going to distribute the newspaper, and retail actually became the big opportunity, because having invested significant money in our own POS material, no-one else could fit in it, so we had independent talks with the retailers and it was our USP.”

The success of the switch, not least in helping boost circulation and slow the steady decline that all newspapers face, was undoubtedly satisfying.

“It’s about your products being the best they can be,” says Steadman. “Right the way through the process we make sure the colour, the production, and the images are the best they can be; we get to the print site on time, and we print exceptionally well; we do our work with the retailers with an enthusiastic team and work hard at making our sales the best they can be.”

Steadman’s career has mostly been spent in circulation, but he’s had to learn the ropes as a print buyer, since stepping up as director of the PDS department in November.

The Guardian was printing a number of its monthly supplements and also Observer magazine at Quebecor World, and it would be fair to say that for Steadman there was barely a honeymoon period as a print buyer, as he explains:

“Quebecor was a baptism of fire, four months into this role. I had to deal with their administrators, and that was my first experience of that. Quebecor was a very good supplier for us though and they did a terrific job. I remember sitting down with one of my production managers on a Friday and we had no-one to print the magazine for the following Sunday.

“Polestar was already printing Weekend for us and we said to them: ‘Can you do these other titles for Sunday week?’ They said they could so we had a temporary solution in place. We needed a permanent solution though, so we spoke to a few companies, and in the end Polestar won on a long term basis.”

There were questions internally about the advisability of placing so many of the newspaper group’s titles with a single print supplier, but despite the growth in Internet and the migration of advertising revenues in that direction, print isn’t going away. Steadman says that the printed newspapers still contribute 85% of the organisation’s revenues, so it remains very important. Making the printed product a less environmentally damaging one is also high up on the agenda.

“I would love to find the perfect replacement for polywrapping the newspaper at the weekend, but we’ve not found it yet,” he admits. “We are improving but we need to find a better solution. Maybe the solution is that we get better at recycling.”