Chris Freeman, Sales Executive, Atex
If we can hail a self-driving taxi in 2026… why are newspapers still paginating by hand?
That question felt particularly relevant in Austin. A city where you can ride a Waymo to a Texas ranch BBQ, and inside the conference halls, publishers were still talking about the hours it takes to build a single print page, night after night, deadline after deadline.
I was joined by Stewart Bowley, Atex’s VP of Product, who made the trip from the UK. Austin didn’t disappoint. The conference sessions were well attended, the hallway conversations were frank, and the networking was as strong as ever. We even closed things out with an authentic Texas ranch experience. Safe to say Stewart approved.
Stewart getting acquainted with Austin’s other form of automation…
What stood out most wasn’t a radical shift in how publishers see print; it was the realism. Print still drives revenue. It still matters to readers. But the tolerance for inefficient production workflows is rapidly disappearing.
The conversations we had with publishers were consistent. Print remains commercially important, but the cost and effort required to produce it need to come down significantly, without sacrificing quality, control, or brand consistency. Teams are under pressure. Headcounts aren’t growing. Deadlines aren’t moving. Something has to give.
And this year, the questions were more direct than ever.
“If the system can do that for me automatically, I’m for it.”
That line came up more than once. Teams are spending hours on individual pages, manually flowing content, adjusting layouts, placing ads, fixing overflows, and repeating the same tasks edition after edition. We’re talking to publishers about producing entire publications in an hour or less, not by cutting corners, but by removing unnecessary manual work from the process.
Chris Freeman and Stewart Bowley, MEGA Conference 2026
A Few Questions Came Up Repeatedly
Do I need to replace my CMS or dismantle my tech stack?
No. Atex offers MyType, a complete CMS built for publishers. But auto-pagination can also run alongside whatever system you’re already using. Content flows in, pages are built automatically, and existing workflows are respected. There’s no rip-and-replace mandate, which is critical for teams already managing complex environments.
Will my paper still look like my paper?
Yes. The system operates on your style guides and layout standards. Your fonts, your column structures, your design DNA. Automation doesn’t redesign your newspaper; it enforces the rules your designers already defined. Readers won’t notice a thing. Your team, however, will feel the difference immediately.
Is this AI laying out my pages?
Atex uses AI in areas like content preparation and optimization. The pagination itself is rules-based. It follows the logic your editors and designers have always applied, just without the manual effort. That distinction mattered to publishers. This isn’t about handing layout decisions to a black box; it’s about codifying expertise and applying it consistently at scale.
What about ad placement?
Ads are placed onto pages based on booking and layout rules before editorial content is added. It’s one of the steps publishers consistently tell us takes the most time and introduces the most risk when done manually. With Atex, this is handled as a standard part of the workflow, reducing rework and last-minute reshuffles.
Do I lose control of the page?
The opposite. Editors retain full control through InDesign or the Atex editor. Automation handles the repeatable work; humans handle the exceptions. As a byproduct of this shift, customers have seen a 75% reduction in InDesign license usage. Control doesn’t disappear; it becomes more intentional.
The conversations in Austin were direct and productive.
The Momentum Coming Out of Austin is Real.
A publisher running Atex print automation today is producing 75 titles weekly with a central team of six. Not a single reader has noticed the difference. That’s not an aspiration—that’s a live operation we can point to. And it’s the benchmark we’re bringing to the market.
Several of the publishers we met at MEGA are already moving. We’re mid-rollout on print automation for a group of papers that attended the conference, and follow-up conversations and demos are actively underway with others.
The window to get ahead of this is open—but it won’t stay that way. Publishers who move now gain a meaningful operational advantage over those who are still paginating by hand a year from now.
If you weren’t in Austin, now is still the right time to have the conversation. The publishers who are moving on this aren’t waiting.
Thanks to America’s Newspapers for a great conference and for continuing to support local journalism.
Reach out directly: cfreeman@atex.com