Australian editorial production house Pagemasters has licensed its technology and knowhow to North American agency the Canadian Press in a deal which will lead to services it pioneered being offered in North America. A new subsidiary wholly-owned by Canadian Press, Pagemasters North America will provide newspapers in Canada and the USA with a complete range of editorial services, from design to sub-editing and headline writing. The launch follows Pagemasters’ success in providing editorial production services to newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, including sub-editing for the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, ‘The Age’, the ‘New Zealand Herald’ and the UK’s ‘Daily Telegraph’ and ‘Sunday Telegraph’. Under the agreement with The Canadian Press, Pagemasters will provide consulting and advisory services and earn revenue based on the success of Pagemasters North America. Pagemasters – a wholly-owned subsidiary of Australian Associated Press (AAP) – currently produces more than 10,000 editorial pages per month in four production centres in Australia and New Zealand and employs more than 100 sub-editors. AAP chief executive Clive Marshall says the launch of Pagemasters North America will enable AAP to capitalise on the high level of interest that received from newspapers in the US and Canada – the largest English-language newspaper market in the world. Managing director Bruce Davidson believes it also has the potential to lead to significant changes in the Borth American editorial production model: “We will be heavily involved with the Canadian Press in setting up editorial production centres in North America, working closely with newspaper publishers as they grapple with the radical changes sweeping the industry.” President of the Canadian Press Eric Morrison says the organisation wanted to be a part of the solution to the industry’s current difficulties: “It was a natural choice to work with a world leader like Pagemasters to give Canadian and US newspapers the benefit of their expertise in significantly reducing editorial production costs. The key is the savings through greater productivity and efficiencies are not achieved by sacrificing the quality of the pages.”