Monday, April 11, 2011

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

We had a wonderful opportunity to tour the area's biggest newspaper offices today! It was amazing to see everything.  If you have a newspaper office that does printing inhouse....I highly recommend setting up a tour!!!

Here's some highlights:



This room houses copies of all paper editions from 1920 to 1996.  That is the year they converted to all computer.


This is a 1200 pound roll of recycled paper.  They go through between 20-30 of these everyday.  Each day they print between 130,000-150,000 papers per day.


This is printing press was used for the last time in 1978.  It was the type that you had to set the words.  This was used  from the early 30s on and printed almost 25,000,000 lines of print during its career.


This was a plate used by the machine.


This is the new type of plate used.  These plates are only used once...cannot be used again.  They are recycled though.  Each plate costs $67.00 and each day  between 38-44 plates are used to create the newspaper.  They are ran through special computerized machines and created.

This gentleman is checking the ad print line.  He must check it ever few minutes to make sure there are no print issues.  You can see the newspaper line by his knee.


Check between the bars you can see the uncut ad being printed.  This $20 million dollar equipment (and that was in 1996) prints, cuts and folds the papers.  This machine costs them $5,000 in electrical costs to start up.  It can print up to 45,000 papers per hour.

Last week they set a National Record for having the longest, uninterrupted print.  They ran 1,024 rolls of paper without a break or jam. 

This is loading dock.  The papers are loaded onto the carts and then put on trucks for delivery.  Goal is to have the papers in the customers hands by 5:30 am. 


We had such a wonderful guide!!!  Thanks to the Toledo Blade for all the wonderful information.

3 comments:

  1. I love these like that!! How interesting! Thank you so much for stopping by Staying Home and Staying Sane. :)
    I'm a new follower.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That sounds like such a neat field trip idea!

    ReplyDelete