Editorials

At the end of the day: Big day at News plant May 3, 2007 - | Editor/Publisher

Thursday, April 26 started out as an ordinary press day at Graves Publishing Co.’s Nashville News plant. The News had a two-section press run scheduled, 20 pages, 3,700 copies.

Even though the News has the largest circulation of any newspaper in southwest Arkansas, including dailies and weeklies in some larger cities, it was a normal press run for a Thursday in May.
Or at least it was normal until about 11 a.m.

George Jinks, publisher of the Hope Star and Daily Siftings Herald in Arkadelphia, called in a panic.

“My press is broke down. Can we come your way?” Jinks asked.

“Bring it on neighbor! We’ll fit you in.” Gulp. What have I got us into this time.

In the past, the Hope Star has either printed or assisted Graves Publishing dozens of times and we were determined to help them in their time of need.

Jinks said, wait there is more. It seems his plant in Hope was also on tap to print two 15,000 copy four-color inserts and the Spanish language paper, Amigo.

“We got you covered. We’ll make it work.”

I quickly handed the phone to Bobby Chambers, our News’ longtime experienced printer.

I let the staff know about the Hope situation and outlined the game plan. First priority, get the Nashville News printed and out the door. Second, bring in some extra help to insert papers so our press guys can concentrate on running the newspapers.

The Nashville News was printed, inserted, and delivery was underway about the time the Hope Star, sent by telephone, got on the press.

A word about how modern newspapers work, or are supposed to work anyway, these days. The papers are built on computers and either sent by high speed internet to a printing plant or carried by computer disk. The next step involves turning the computer images into film and ultimately into plates which are used to print the newspaper.

Graves Publishing Co. in Nashville, for example, in addition to printing Howard County’s favorite newspaper, also publishes four weeklies - Murfreesboro Diamond, Glenwood Herald, Montgomery County News, and Lafayette County Democrat.

The Graves press crew got the Star and Siftings Herald printed and out the door on time. The other papers were printed at night. It took five hours to print the two 15,000 copy press runs. The crew went to press a total of seven times and printed 47,000 copies.

The Star and Herald staffs said their newspapers never looked better, thanks in part to pressman Miguel Garate

At the end of the day we were pleased to bring some extra printing dollars to Nashville, and not take them to Texarkana, Texas.

I invite your comments ...

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