what’s happening to the newspaper business. If you want to know why it makes me want to cry, read this.
You all know…
April 5th, 2009 8:18 pm · 2 comments
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Tags: media
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| Artie See 4/5/09 8:53 PM | QUOTE (Lancaster Online @ Apr 5 2009, 08:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A. J. Liebling once wrote, "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." Not quite right. It also belongs to the people who produce one, even if they do smoke at their desks. |
| Artie See 4/5/09 9:18 PM | Mike: Do you remember the old letterpress along Mifflin St.? Type was cast into the edge of lead strips on a Linotype, then locked up into frames, one page at a time; a thick yellow "mat" would press against the frame, leaving a negative impression of the type into the mats. Composition would send the mat down a chute to the pressroom, where a pressman would put it in a semicircle into a machine that would fill it with lead, then trim the flashing off the edges with a circular saw. These lead half-cylinder plates would be locked onto the press, then transfer ink at high speed directly onto the newsprint. Once in a great while a plate would fly off the press, guaranteeing late deliveries that day. Do you remember how the old thick oil-based ink covered everything, and how the pressmen would fold rectangular hats out of newsprint to keep the ink out of their hair? Do you remember the days before stackers, when you had to take the newspapers off the conveyor from the pressroom on the fly, by hand? Do you remember the steel wire that was used to secure the newspaper bundles? Do you remember the old loading dock at Mifflin and Beaver, with room for only three trucks at a time? Do you remember the spiral chute the bundles would come down, along with the occasional worker taking a shortcut? Do you remember J.F. Steinman's dark green Cadillac limousine? Typewriters and Linotypes have been replaced by computers. Lead plates have been replaced with flexo. People have been replaced by technology, and jobs eliminated by economics. But a few things have never changed. |
