Newspapers in the 'before' times

I notice that Eli’s column this week focuses on telling readers about what it takes to put together a newspaper. I also notice that Dave Zika’s writing talks about Waseca forty years ago.

Voila! I am the perfect person to bring those two ideas together. A member of Waseca High School’s prestigious Class of 1977, I graduated college in 1981 with a degree in journalism. I also got married just after earning that degree and moved to my husband’s home area of north suburban Chicago. We lived there for a year or so before we decided we preferred living in the Waseca area.

In 1982, Mike Johnson started the Waseca Weekly, a competitor to the town’s long-time lone publication, the Waseca Daily Journal. Mike chose to hire three news people and one sports writer: Of the four of us, only Jim Lutgens and I were local. I stayed with the Weekly for 6 years or so, covering stories that included the short-term draining of Loon Lake (an effort to cause the weeds to die and “lock” the excessive nutrients in the ground), a train derailing, catastrophic snowstorms, and much more.

I’ve mentioned other elements of my history before, so I won’t go on with them. My purpose here is to comment how different it was to put a newspaper together back in the “before” times.

Nowadays, as long as I have internet access, I can sit down and type my stories on any computer in any place. Even if I am writing it last-minute, once it’s in the shared online document Eli mentions in his column, he has immediate access to it–regardless of where he is, and again, as long as he has internet access. (In the case of Eli’s generation, they would practically rather give up air than internet, so he always has it.)

Back then, the Weekly was state of the art in that it had an in-house network.  If I was going to type a story, it had to be on a keyboard inside the office.

Eli makes reference to “laying out” the newspaper. As he says, it is the process of placing the advertisements and the columns of news stories on their respective pages, seeing how much space they require, and, when needed, deciding what page stories will “jump” to. Again, though, he does that on a computer screen.

For the Weekly, we needed a huge open space in the basement with long, slightly tilted work surfaces large enough to hold sheets of layout paper the actual size of a newspaper page. 

The first person to work with them would be Carol, who was in charge of typesetting. She began by putting the “banner” (the paper’s identifying artwork) on the first page and the legally required publishing information box on the second page, then the page numbers and other required information at the top of all the other sheets. These elements were produced on a special “photographic” paper, if I recall correctly. The very large typesetting machine actually cast an image of whatever Carol typed onto this special (doubtless expensive) paper, and then developed it using chemicals.

Once each newspaper element was typeset, it was cut out by hand and pasted into place using wax.  Yes, wax. We would run layout pieces through the waxer, trim them, and set them onto the paper. They adhered beautifully, but could also be repositioned easily. For quick, easy repositioning, the preferred tool was an Xacto cutter–very sharp, very fine razor blades on handles all along the workspace. No dangers there.

Anyway, piece by piece, the ads, the columns of news stories, the photos, and finally the headlines and cutlines would be created and pasted down in their turn. Pretty much the entire staff was expected to be present, each taking charge of an assigned element of the work. What Eli–who is very talented at what he does–can finish alone in four hours, it took six or more of us to do. It was about a four-hour process, though, if I remember correctly.

Last comparison, although there are many, many more I am tempted to make, is “putting the paper to bed.”  When Eli’s electronic version of the newspaper is finished, he saves each page as a “pdf” document and sends it electronically to the printer. It arrives there, ready to be reviewed and sent to the presses, within seconds.

Missy Dunn can tell you about this one. Although not during my tenure, Missy had the job of delivering the “laid out” pages to the printer. When, after hours of work, discussion, and review, the waxed-together pages were deemed finished, it was possible to walk along the counter and see each page in turn. Handy, for example, when confirming that the text marked “continued on page 5” is actually located on page 5.

With (nearly) everything reviewed and fixed, the pages would be gently stacked together and placed in a large, hard-sided carrying case. Then it would be carried out to a car and driven to the printer, in this case, I believe, in Faribault. For the few hours between the time it was laid out and the time it was reproduced, those precious sheets were the only copy, anywhere, of the newspaper. If something had happened to it, it would have taken dozens of man-hours to recreate. Fortunately, great care was taken to ensure nothing happened.

In short, just as Dave Zika says in his column, there has been a lot of change in the last 40-ish years…Jim Lutgens and I reminisce about it, on rare occasions. So thanks, Dave and Eli, for getting this train of thought started.  Sometime, maybe, I’ll touch on the topic of what it took to get pictures into the newspaper back then…