Depressed

Wonder which big papers bought high-end presses sometime between 1998-2003. Talk about fatal investments.

 

My company bought a new press in '08, I think. They obtained a newspaper in the process. Cheaper to buy both than build a building and buy a press.

 

The guys in the folded newspaper hats had more pride in the product than the assholes in suits and ties upstairs.

 

No more calls please ... WE HAVE A WINNER!

 

So how many people still have pica sticks, reduction wheels, Exacto knives and waxers still kept in a place of honor.

 

Still have a pica stick. Good back-scratcher.

Oh, BTW, company installed a new press in 2002. Think they'd do it over again.

 

After hours our sports crew comes in via the press door. Tonight I'm cherishing the press getting ready to go, while the press crew bustles around with the Blazers game blaring over all the noise. Hope that stays around for a long time at my shop.

 

We were up that way for my wife's high school reunion in the mid-1990s, so I stopped by Rochester Institute of Technology and bought a textbook on how to run a color web press. A lot of it is over my head, but my motive after the end of the composing room era was to not look stupid when I talk to the pressroom, to never ask them to do the impossible.

A lot of those guys are smart people who have a lot of pride. At my last paper we got new presses and I asked one of the foremen: You guys have display cases filled with awards you won with the old presses, I bet you're looking forward to all you'll win now. He said we could have kept winning for another 10 years with the old pressroom, seemed almost disappointed the paper needed to buy the pennant like Steinbrenner.

Current paper prints at our plant in the burbs and it's been that way for a long time. It's better than someone else printing us, but not like having the presses here. I can see that it would be difficult to do it here because the newsroom is in a very urban environment. Even our old loading bays would really impact traffic patterns in this part of the city.

 

3 years ago, we're a 4-person staff. Corporate layoffs mandate a terrific young man (an SJer) being shown the door -- 4 months after being hired and moving across the country.
5 months ago, I find a co-worker -- and one of my dear friends -- dead in his home. He was 58.. He had been at the paper 37 years.
I'm not permitted to fill his position. Sports staff now numbers 2, for the largest county in our state.
Outsourcing our press run results in my deadline being moved up an hour.
Yes, yours truly is now in all-out-hunt-for-any-new-job mode.
May the bastards who have run our proud industry into the ground rot in hell.

 

I hear you Colton...I truly believe my shop works hard to make the best out of a bad industry right now. But I've seen a similar shift in staffing. Frustrating when you get complaints from readers (this happened today) wanting more coverage, and it's things that 5 years ago we would have had no problem. Still, doing our best to deliver a quality product even if it means not quite as many gamers and such.

I've explored work in outside fields based on the downturn in our industry, but at heart I'm a newspaper guy. I'll probably stay until they kick me out.