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IT’S A BIG, WIDE WORLD OUT THERE

PRINTING SCIENTOLOGYFOLLOWERS OF L. RON HUBBARD RAMP UP PRINT PRODUCTION IN THEIRCALIFORNIA DISSEMINATION FACILITY BY VICTORIA GAITSKELL

The new International Dissemination and Distribu-tion Centre’s centrepiece is a Goss Sunday 2000 6-colour web press, equipped with two auto-transferprint units, GMI closed-loop colour control, a PCF 1.1folder, Muller Martini Vivo delivery system, in-line ro-tary trimmers (Compactos), and an in-line QA systemfrom AVT. Its other presses include a 5-colour Heidel-berg XL 105 with coater and an HP Scitex XL1500inkjet system, HP Designjet z6100, and HP Designjet35500. The centre is driven by Agfa Apogee workflowand boasts full bindery and mailing facilities (includ-ing an on-site representative from the U.S. Postal Of-fice). Still other equipment manufactures and recordsCDs, prints and embroiders volunteers’ caps and uni-forms, and carves customized 3D chapel crosses and in-signia. The centre also assembles audio-visual systemsfor Scientology bookstores and training facilities.

Pouw writes that the centre was built over the courseof one year at an undisclosed cost and is the first timethe Church has owned web and sheetfed offset presses.For many years previously, it produced Scientologyposters, magazines, flyers, and other promotional itemsby outsourcing to various printers with similar tech-nology. “The purpose of the [new] printing facility isto enable us to print more materials for the Church-supported humanitarian campaigns, as well as for useof our Churches worldwide at the same price or moreinexpensively than before. For the same amount it usedto cost to produce 3-million Truth About Drugs book-lets, we can now print 35 million,” explains Pouw.

Currently close to 100 unpaid staff work at the cen-tre – all members of the Sea Organization, a fraternalreligious order of the most-dedicated Scientologistswho have committed their lives to volunteer service ofthe Church.

Pouw says annual production volumes are not avail-able for the centre as yet and instead cites the capaci-ties of its equipment: “The web press is capable ofproducing 55,000 pages an hour, or better than 600,000publications a day. The sheetfed press can print enoughposters in just one hour to cover every subway stationin every major city of Earth. The capacity of the enve-lope stuffer is 250,000 per day.” How much of these ca-pacities are realized is anyone’s guess, but Pouwconfirms that the Church has no intention of taking inany work from outside clients.

Besides the centre, the Church also prints toner-basedmaterials on demand at Bridge Publications Inc., a274,000-square-foot Los Angeles company, establishedin 1981 and dedicated to publishing the scriptures of Sci-entology. Among the benefits of this production methodis its ability to accommodate short turnarounds and re-duce costs for the relatively small quantities of materialrequired by the Church’s new territories.

Bridge Publication’s products reach theAmericas, Africa, Asia, Australia,New Zealand, and Oceania,while its sister organ-ization, New

Era Publications in Copenhagen, Denmark, serves Europe, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth ofIndependent States (former Soviet Republics), India,and the Middle East. Pouw writes that production vol-ume at these two toner-based facilities has grown by660 percent since 2007. Again, rather than specifics onvolume, she cites equipment capacities: “Combined,these facilities can now publish the full ScientologyScripture, much of it in 50 languages, up to 500,000books per week (26 million a year) and 925,000 CDsper week (48.1 million annually).”

The Scripture she mentions amounts to the vast bodyof knowledge codified by the Church of Scientology’sAmerican founder, L. Ron Hubbard (often referred toby Scientologists as “LRH”). Central to this knowledgeis Dianetics, a set of theories and purportedly thera-peutic procedures conducted by a trained one-on-onecounsellor or “auditor.” In oversimplified terms, theseprocedures are intended to help subjects advance toprogressively higher states of spiritual awareness andimprove their ability to understand and deal with thevarious aspects of existence. The procedures also aim

to help subjects obtain relief from suchpainful and debilitating mental states

as irrational fears, behaviours,upsets, insecurities, and

psychosomatic illnessesand so ascend from

the state of

The reception of the Dissemination and Distribution Center, which produces publications and other dissemination materials for the more than 9,000 Scientology Churches, Missions and affiliated groups.

LATE 2010 SAW THE COMMENCEMENT OF OPERATIONS AT THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY International’s new Dissemination and Distribution Center in Los Angeles – a 185,000-square-foot printing and manufacturing facility housing administration, production, warehousing, mailing and shipping for the Church’s extensive range of multilingual religious, educational,

and promotional resources. Last month, the Church also announcedplans to open a national headquarters and conference centre near Orangeville, Ontario.

Despite the Church’s busy preparations for the 100th anniversary of the birthday of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, spokesperson Karin Pouw kindly e-mailed me answers to a selection of my writtenquestions that, together with an equipment list for the new centre and my review of the Church of Scientology’s Website and onlinevideos, form the basis for this report.

The only one of its kind, the International Disseminationand Distribution Center houses cutting-edge technologyhoned to maximum output.

APRIL 2011 • PRINTACTION • 19

An early copy of Hubbard’s work, a foundation of the Church of Scientology.

evolved a host of affiliated organizationsthat apply LRH’s teachings for social im-provement and reform. These include theNarconon drug education and rehabilita-tion program, the Criminon program forrehabilitating prisoners, a system of AppliedScholastics employed in schools, literacy,and management-training programs, aHuman Rights Initiative, and a VolunteerMinisters program for global disaster relief.All require their own distinct printed anddigital resources.

New and improved ScriptureIn keeping with the importance theChurch places on LRH’s writings and lec-tures, in 2009 it completed a 25-year, 2-million-man-hour project to recover andrestore his entire legacy of knowledge toconform to his original words and inten-

tions. This achievement included the re-lease of several previously unavailable lec-ture series, for which the Church has alsodeveloped new training courses and ma-terials. It has also created audio-books in15 languages of all of LRH’s principaltexts, along with attractively packagedsets of the restored information, such asThe Basics, a collection of 18 core booksor 18 books and 280 lectures that sell re-spectively for $574 and $4,498 plus tax atthe Church of Scientology’s Torontoheadquarters. (Both prices include a 6-month membership in the InternationalAssociation of Scientologists with ac-companying member discounts.) Furtherinnovations are a guidebook and Materi-als Guide Chart to Scientology’s entirebody of knowledge, showing the order foreach item to be studied in sequence.Prices for Toronto beginner’s trainingcourses on site or by correspondence startat $62. At first, courses typically take stu-dents two to three days to complete andbecome more expensive and esoteric asthe student advances in knowledge.

Promotion for the Church’s restoredmaterials reports that they have beenmade more intelligible by correcting theerrors and adulterations of earlier tran-scriptionists. The restored books includemore comprehensive indexes and glos-saries for ease of reference. Additionally,the new materials have been redesigned,not only for visual appeal but also to lookdifferent from one another to help distin-

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With equipment handling every function from printing to cutting, folding, binding andsorting, the facility can prepare 250,000 human rights DVD mailers in a day, or 2-millionbooklets in a week.

The Scientology Custom Mill features a broad array of tools required for the creation of allsignage and other elements of an Ideal Organization of Scientology, including woodworkingequipment, metal-etching and cutting machines, painting and polishing booths, a plasticsmolding system and in-house artisans to give each new Ideal Church its distinctive style.

“Preclear” to the progressively more ad-vanced levels of “Clear” and “OperatingThetan.”

“Thetans” is Scientology’s term for thetrue, but often forgotten, nature of humanbeings: Immortal spiritual entities wholive through countless lifetimes and candevelop to their highest potential by fol-lowing the systems described in LRH’sworks. Scientologists often refer to theirprocess of spiritual development as mov-ing along a Bridge to Total Freedom, orsimply “the Bridge.” Like many other reli-gions, the Church of Scientology also be-lieves in the existence of a Supreme Being.

In 1947, LRH circulated his initial con-cepts of Dianetics among selected friendsand colleagues in a manuscript he even-tually published in 1951 under the titleDianetics: The Original Thesis. In the in-terval, he also wrote a comprehensive textcalled Dianetics: The Modern Science ofMental Health (1950), perhaps his bestknown work that remained on The NewYork Times bestseller list for 28 consecu-tive weeks. LRH followed these two sem-inal books with a prolific output oflectures, training courses, more books,and other writings, all complex andloaded with specialized terminology. Sci-entologists refer to these materials collec-tively as “technologies” or “standard tech.”

In 2007, LRH’s successor and Scientol-ogy’s current ecclesiastical head, DavidMiscavige, quantified the scope of LRH’sopus as follows: “The full knowledge ofDianetics and Scientology is contained in3,000 tape-recorded lectures, 8,000 pagesof text, and 29,000 pages of issues. In full,

those materials total more than 35,000,000words. which incidentally is only slightlyless than the Encyclopedia Britannica asauthored by some 4,000 scholars over thecourse of 250 years!”

Perhaps at least partly because of thecomplexity of its doctrine and organiza-tional structure, the Church of Scientol-ogy often appears to garner its greatestpublicity over the controversies sur-rounding some of its policies and beliefs,the complaints of its former members, orthe lawsuits in which the Church has beenembroiled periodically since its foundingin 1953. The Church is also widely recog-nized for its celebrity followers, includingmusic, movie, and television stars likeIsaac Hayes, Chick Corea, Edgar Winter,Lisa Marie Presley, Kirstie Alley, John Tra-volta and Tom Cruise. In fact, the Churchoperates an international Celebrity Cen-ter in Hollywood to cater to artists, politi-cians, industry leaders, sports figures, andothers with the power and ability to cre-ate a better world.

The Church of Scientology has regu-larly applied for recognition as an officialreligion with tax-exempt status in thevarious countries where it operates. Sofar, nations that have granted such recog-nition include Australia, Croatia, Hun-gary, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Slovenia,Spain, Sweden, the Republic of China(Taiwan), and the United States. Con-versely, Ontario considers Scientology anon-profit organization, and it is notlisted as a charitable organization withthe Canada Revenue Agency.

The Church of Scientology has also

guish the subject-matter contained ineach one. The new designs also eliminatehyphenation and employ typefaces andmathematical ratios in size and spacing tooptimize their legibility.

The effectiveness of both Scientology’snew production facilities and its revisedproducts is evinced by the large and im-pressive roster of recent awards they havereceived for design and execution. These in-clude the American Graphic Design Awards(2009, 2010), American Package DesignAwards (Graphic Design USA, 2011),American Inhouse Design Awards (2009,2010), Benjamin Franklin Premier Print(“Benny”) Awards (PIA, 2009, 2010), Bind-ing Industry Association (2009, 2010), FoilStamping & Embossing Association ofAmerica (FSEA, 2009), In-Plant Printingand Mailing Association (IPMA, 2010), andInternational Book Awards (2010). Addi-tionally, Bridge Publications has won theProgressive Manufacturing 100 Award forthree years running (2009 to 2011).

Printed and electronic resources for growthThe Church’s renewed emphasis on im-proving and enlarging its printed andother informational materials forms ameasure of its commitment to continuedinternational growth. Its January-2011Website analytics showed that over 32-million visitors had viewed more than 70million of the Church’s videos in 17 lan-guages in the last 12 months. “We have astrong commitment to both [print andonline] communication,” Pouw confirms.“The most common question we areasked is simply, ‘What is Scientology?’And for that answer we encourage peopleto visit a Church of Scientology or visitour Website.”

At the same time, the Website attests,that from 2004 to 2009, the Church dis-tributed 80,000,000 lectures and books byLRH, more than in the preceding 50years, and 65,000,000 from 2007 to 2010.“L. Ron Hubbard’s books and lectures(the CDs and accompanying transcriptsand literature) are by far the most-im-portant printing jobs we undertake,”Pouw reconfirms, “since his books andlectures comprise the scriptures of theScientology religion.”

Regarding the growth of Scientology,she continues: “In the past 10 years theamount of Scientology Churches, Mis-sions, and affiliated groups increased bya factor of four. At the forefront of theChurch’s expansion has been the estab-lishment of [what we call] new Ideal Sci-entology Churches in major metropolitanareas. Since 2003, 24 new ScientologyChurches have been acquired, restoredand rebuilt, including those in the worldcultural capitals of Rome, Madrid, NewYork, London, Berlin, Washington, D.C.,Moscow, and Melbourne. The most re-cent new Ideal Church of Scientology wasdedicated on L. Ron Hubbard’s centen-nial, March 13, 2011, in Tampa, Florida.”

Pouw reports that, especially since theearly 1990s, the Church has been growingthe fastest in Russia and Asia. In terms ofnumbers per country, Russia holds theirsecond strongest membership after theUnited States. In Canada she says thereare about 100,000 Scientologists, based inEdmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victo-ria, Kitchener, Toronto, Ottawa, Mon-treal, Quebec, and New Brunswick.

“Internationally, the Church has approximately 60 additional properties in various stages of design and construc-tion, with many new churches moving toward completion in the next 24 months,several before the end of the year,” shecontinues.

Development of their new Orangevilleproperty will entail converting the formerHockley Highlands Inn and ConferenceCentre on 80 hectares of land in Mono,Ontario, which the Church purchased in2009, into a national headquarters and aluxury conference and retreat centre.“The facility was perfect for our pur-poses,” explains Pouw. “It is in a beautifullocation, but is very accessible and onlyan hour away from Toronto. The groundsare stunning and the facility has plenty ofrooms for people to stay, excellent con-ference facilities.” A completion date hasnot yet been set. So far plans include fivebuildings totaling 160,000 square feet andas many as 200 permanent staff – but asyet no on-site printing facility.

Victoria Gaitskell is keen to exchange ideaswith readers at victoria@printaction.com

The grand-format printer and banner welder can create banners large enough to span the face of high-rise buildings, forbroadscale dissemination of Church-sponsored social betterment campaigns, such as the Truth About Drugs program.

The 121-ton Goss Sunday 2000 web press uses 10-mile-long paper rolls and can print55,000 pages per hour.