Once stories, photos (and Trekking Tale #200) are in position, the newspaper is still visible only on the computer in Clearwater, but it is ready to move along to the next stage of production.
On Tuesday morning, the roughed-in newspaper with its stories and photos placed makes its first stop in Barriere, where its sister paper, the Star/Journal, is produced. Here the ads are inserted by graphic artist Lisa Quiding on her computer. By Tuesday afternoon, the layouts for both papers, fully completed, fly through the Internet to the Black Press office in Vernon. Occasionally a late-breaking story, like the sink-hole at Brookfield Shopping Centre, will cause last minute changes. The layout was already in Vernon when that story broke (pun?), but made it into the paper before printing began.
On Wednesday morning, the images are transferred (magically) from a computer in Vernon to rollers at the press. At last it begins to sound a bit like the whirring presses of yesteryear!
With the paper threaded through two rollers simultaneously, both sides of each page are printed together, using a soya-based ink that reduces the grubby hands of yore to some degree. Colour pages use a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink to produce the variety of colours we appreciate. Many rollers are in action to produce each paper quickly. Machines collate and fold pages, then count and package the finished newspapers; groups of 20 are combined to make weightier bundles of 100.
Those with mailing addresses on them are packaged separately – another of office manager Yevonne Cline’s jobs is to update the list of subscribers each week and send this information to Vernon. On Wednesday afternoons Bob Hayward (husband of Star/Journal editor Jill Hayward) picks up the papers in Vernon and brings them to the office in Clearwater. Local driver Ray Wilson then arrives to distribute the bundles of papers — some to the post office so they appear in mailboxes on Thursday; the rest are bundled and delivered to the businesses that sells the paper.
During its first few years the paper was printed in Clearwater – an all day job – until the Kamloops Daily News took over the printing.
“I remember Frank Tonge (a former owner of the Times) marvelling that he could go out for a cup of coffee, came back, and the printing job was done,” said editor Keith McNeill.
One challenge then and now is remembering you are working ahead; sometimes discussions become confusing as the deadline for one paper and the beginnings of a new issue come close together.
“Another thing that keeps us on our toes is waiting for last-minute promised items or bits of specific info as Monday’s noon deadline gets pushed to the limit,” Keith added.
The success of our local paper can be seen in the many awards it has won both in B.C. and across Canada. The presence of letters to the editor is important in judging, but so are other factors.
“All stories, photos, and community articles submitted by freelance correspondents such as Robyn Rexin and you add a lot to our newspaper,” Keith assured me.
Wow! I found this all most interesting so now, when I press “Send” and see this Trekking Talk disappear from my screen, I’ll be able to picture what happens until we collect our paper from the mailbox and start turning pages to see what has been happening in our community.
“Am I in there?” I will ask husband John if he beats me across the road with the key on a Thursday.
Now: read, be informed, and enjoy….
