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Soapbox Philosophy: Survive, and always keep a press going
by Gregory R. Norfleet · Op-Ed · October 01, 2015
There’s stopping the press, then there’s stopping the press.
In the journalism world, a publisher endows an editor with a power, hopefully very seldom used, to stop the press.
Michael Keaton’s character gets to yell that in The Paper after breaking a big story. I had to do it a couple of times when I worked at a daily newspaper, but mostly for glaring production errors, not so much for breaking news. Thankfully, I’ve never had to do it here.
Stopping the press is expensive. It means wasting paper that’s purchased by the ton and ink that’s bought by the barrel, and overtime pay. It’s one of the reasons newspapers employ proofreaders.
In the spring, a publisher made the call to stop the press — for good — at the Daily Egyptian newspaper. My first job at a “daily” was at this award-winning newspaper of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The quotes around “daily” are because it was not a true daily newspaper, as it was published only five times a week, Monday through Friday.
But that was then. As the years went on, the frequency of publication dropped to four times a week. And now it will cease printing, though, thankfully, publication will continue by buying time on another newspaper’s press.
The D.E. really was a great newspaper during my college years (1988-1992). Every year we would enter state contests and we expected — expected — to win several awards. Our top rival was a Big Ten school, the University of Illinois. The question at those contests was which school would return with the most honors.
Our staff was intensely motivated, a bit idealistic, had amazing chemistry and was incredibly organized. An angry Chancellor John Guyon once stormed into the newsroom demanding we name sources of information leaked from his office. Ad sales met our needs back then, though our “company cars” were two beat-up pickups, one with manual drive. The paper had zero subscribers. We gave it away free at the newsstands. Some 20,000, if memory serves. Those were the glory days of the D.E. I proudly included my time there in my resume, and my clips helped land my first couple of jobs after graduation.
So this press stoppage was an effort to save money, some $50,000 a year, after 47 years of printing in-house. Considering the D.E. competed almost head-to-head with the Southern Illinoisan (today simply known as The Southern), I’m both impressed it lasted this long and disappointed that the day eventually came.
A hundred years ago, the West Branch Times printed on an in-house press, but that ended sometime in the 1950s, according to “West Branch: The First 150 Years.” Running a press is expensive, and those that still have them make ends meet by landing other commercial printing jobs. Dailies often print for several weeklies, as well as churning out weekly flyers for grocery stores, etc.
So while fewer and fewer publications run their own press, it remains important that those presses keep running, whether for the D.E. or the West Branch Times or the Los Angeles Times, because the printed word carries greater weight with readers than digital, even if it moves more slowly. Perhaps it is because it moves more slowly that the printed word carries more weight.
I can’t say in 2015 that the printed word will never end, only that I hope it doesn’t. However I can say that, sitting here in the Information Age, the desperate need for trustworthy information will always exist. Putting it in print helps us retain it.
So carry on, Daily Egyptian. Carry on.
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