This year marks my 30th year in the newspaper business.
And like every year before it, 2017 is filled with changes.
I’m not talking about the day-to-day adventure of reporting on a dynamic city like Chilliwack. I’m talking about the way we bring that news to you.
The paper you’re holding today may look like the one you held last week. But how it came together is different.
As I write this column, my words aren’t being saved on my hard drive. Nor are they even being saved to a server in my office.
They’re being stored on a “cloud” somewhere in the silicon ether.
It’s part of a new production system that’s being rolled out at Black Press papers across B.C.
I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s new, exciting, and yes, a little intimidating.
Change has become the constant in the newspaper business. But it hasn’t always been like that. For years newspapers were produced much as they had been for generations. There were improvements, but the overall production fundamentals changed little since Gutenburgh invented his press.
In fact, the first paper I worked at made room for this rookie reporter by moving out the lead forge that had been used to set the type. (I even helped haul out the ingots.)
In the corner, just out of its box, was the reason for this change: a computer.
Our production department had already made the switch to photo-typesetters, but the newsroom was still reluctant. True, the IBM Selectric typewriter I was assigned was better than the Brother I had used in college, but I knew the power of the computer. In my final year of journalism, our instructor gathered us around a curious device called a Macintosh Plus and gave us a glimpse of desktop pagination.
It would still be a couple of years before that innovation entered my newsroom. But when it did, my little Mac Classic, with its four megs of RAM, changed everything. No longer did we pound out stories on cheap yellow paper, edit with pencil, then hand it off to a typesetter who would output it in long, single columns to be waxed onto cardboard flats.
Instead, we could see the page in its entirety (albeit on a screen no bigger than a postcard).
Since then, the pace of change has only quickened. Faster computers, more powerful software, and the introduction of digital photography has moved newspaper production to where my journalism instructors never imagined.
Still, the biggest change affecting this business is not the paper and ink production. It’s what’s happening online.
And that’s part of the reason we’re making this latest change at The Progress.
The Internet, of course, is nothing new. Neither is our website theprogress.com. But it continues to change and evolve, with more real-time reporting, video, active links and dynamic graphics.
The new system we’re working on at The Progress this week will further help us blend our newspaper with our online presence.
In a couple of weeks that change will be more evident as we unveil our new website design.
In the meantime, old dogs like me will continue to learn new tricks, knowing that in this business, they won’t be the last.
Greg Knill is editor of the Chilliwack Progress
