Automated regional printing: how it works

The automated regionalization of USA Today has been going on since July 2013. The Gannett newspaper with a circulation of more than 3.2 million is printed in different locations throughout the country. This means that some advertisers in the “Nation’s Newspaper,” as it calls itself, might want national coverage, while other advertisers might only want to advertise in a specific region, or set of regions. Additionally, elements such as TV listings need to differ from one side of the country to the other.
This has always been possible, and practiced, but in the past it was a complex process requiring multiple software packages and manual, page-by-page intervention.
So how did USA Today come to automate such a process? What was the technology used, and how can that technology benefit other publishers and newspapers?
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