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[jnichols]

Or anyone's who's been on the inside of a small newspaper office recently. Where are the presses? How close are they to the editorial office, assuming they're in the same building?

Thanks,

Judy

[clayiseditor]

Hi Judy,

It depends.

When I was city editor for a large daily, the press was down the hall, maybe 100 yards away from the newsroom.  When I was managing editor of a smaller daily, the press was literally on the other side of the wall of my office. I couldn't hang any pictures on that wall as the vibration would knock them off.

Now, as publisher of two weeklies, I don't even have a press! Plenty of small papers, especially weeklies, don't own their own presses. I print at another paper about 40 miles away.

A big cost-savings move these days is "clustering" where a company buys multiple papers relatively close together geographically. It then buys one central press (and other operations often), and all the papers print at the one press, instead of having several presses (presses are very very expensive).

Our company owns 23 newspapers; weeklies, semi-weeklies and dailies. It also owns two press operations. All but 6 papers print at those two press operations.

Clay

[Lynette]

Judy, In the small town where I live the newspaper comes out 3 times a week - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The owners built a new building in the 90's. It is two stories and the editorial and lay out rooms are on the second floor. Downstairs is a reception area and a couple of small offices and an office supply store. Behind these rooms is the press room with a loading dock on the back. The papers are most often printed at night or in the very early morning hours.
Lynette

[jnichols]

I've decided to get rid of the presses in this fictional newspaper all together.  It's a weekly newspaper run on a shoestring, and now that it's possible to layout everything on computer and send it somewhere else to be printed I can't imagine why the publisher would keep presses around, considering the cost of running and maintaining them, not to mention paying people to operate them. 

Thanks for your help. 

Judy