Tales from the Morgue: A day in the life of a newspaper

NEWSPAPER DAY IS BUSY AFFAIR

100 Employes Work to Put Out Daily on Time Each Day

Production of the Arizona Daily Star requires the services of almost 100 salaried employes and the coordinated services of widespread agencies which extend their activities all over the world.

Work on the next morning’s paper starts at 6 o’clock each morning when circulation department men open the front office to expedite the last portion of the work of distribution of the current day’s issue.

They begin to take classified advertisements, changes in subscriptions and orders for papers at that hour. At 8 o’clock the staffs of the display and advertising department and the society department of the news room begin to arrive.

The display men check, over prospects for the sale of local advertising, order for “foreign” or national advertising and often begin the preparation of copy. The social editor starts the work of gathering the society news for the next issue and the Happy Day editor looks over the mail for contributions to her column.

At the same time the editor and publisher arrives and usually two printers are on the day shift to set type and prepare the machines for the production of next day’s paper. The editor prepares the editorials and, as publisher, usually has a series of conferences and discussions with department heads and other employes in view of coordinating and directing the work of all departments.

A little later in the morning the day reporters begin to arrive in the news room to begin the gathering of news. Before noon the city editor is on the job to direct the work. Soon after he arrives portions of the market reports begin to come in on the telegraph printers, automatic typewriters operated by wire, from an Associated Press bureau on the coast.

The managing editor is usually on the job about the same time although he is not scheduled to go to work until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

At 4 o’clock the “wire” officially opens with news reports beginning and the work of getting out a newspaper takes on an accelerated tempo. The advertising men are putting the finishing touches on advertisements they have sol during the day and making last-minute efforts to secure others, the reporters who have been working all day are beginning to come into the office to prepare their copy. Much of the society-news has been gathered and the staff is hurrying to get the copy into the shop.

The work takes on another aspect at 5 o’clock when the full composing room force goes to work. The advertising men are moving the last of their copy toward the machines, much of the day copy from the news room comes in about this time, the classified advertisements office usually has a last-minute rush before closing time. It is one of the high points of the day.

The telegraph printers continue to chatter their stories of the world in the news room, the big typesetting machines begin to turn over and the work of the night is well begun. There is a slight lull during the supper hour after 6 o’clock, but as the lights go on up and down the streets the work of hammering out the physical manufacture of a newspaper really gets under way.

The news editors begin to select the leading news stories for the day. The machines are still clicking in the shop while the lights etch the figures of the men each intent on his job, the whine of type saws, the clatter as some machine man dumps his “take,” the clack and clash of the Ludlow typecast, man moving swiftly on the floor assembling the type and placing it in the big steel chases on their steel, wheeled tables.

Meanwhile work of the adjacent stereotype room has started. Each page as it is made up is rolled over to the big mat machine which squeezes it under 30 tons pressure, outlining it in a specially treated cardboard sheet. That cardboard sheet or mat is dried in a gas dryer to make sure that no moisture will spoil the work and is then inserted in the big page caster. The fire hisses under the huge metal melting pot, an assistant stands to the heavy crank, there is a slosh of metal and a few minutes later the cast page is pulled out of its case and slipped into the trimming machine. There is a whine of cutting tools as steel meets metal, the cylinder whirls and comes out a shining tube of silver trimmed and almost ready for the press.

The preceding page is already on the router where the stereotyper sits turning two small cranks, first one and then the other as a steel bit whirrs and bites, whirrs and bites down the page, picking off irregularities, outlining headlines, insuring a clean, well cut page for the morning paper.

Meanwhile the news room has received the “dummies” from the advertising department outlining the position of each advertisement and the space it will take in the page. While the shop has been working on the editorial, society, market and comic pages made up during the day the news editors have been filling in with the news they designate for each page.

The copy has been moving steadily into the shop where the foreman gives it to the typesetters. An apprentice boy takes a proof of each galley as it comes to the stone the proofreaders makes corrections and the changes are made in the type as it moves into the chases.

About midnight there is a last rush of activity in the news room and shop, a second high point of the day, the last hour before press time when every man is on his toes, the machines move a little faster, the hum of the shop rises and rises to a climax until the last page moves down the alley, the stereotypers are ready for type, the business office makes a last adjustment of advertisements and news and pushes it home in the heavy mat roller.

Suddenly the shop is dark and the drama moves to the press room where the pressman is waiting for the last pages from the stereotype room. The elevator clanks down, the metal pages are pushed home and locked into the press. Last minute adjustments are made, a button is pushed and slowly, to the accompanying of low rumblings the press begins to move.

It is the third high point of the day, another button is pressed, another and another, the rumble of machinery rises to a higher pitch, climbs to the full throated roar of a newspaper press in action. The papers whirl away from the knives of the folder. The mailer goes into action preparing the bundles for distant towns.

Then the newsboys get their papers leave the plant by automobile, train, bus, bicycle and with the boy salesman on foot, the day in the newspaper plant is over, the paper has “hit the street.”

But there is little respite. The night is waning and as the sun begins to climb up over the Santa Ritas, the circulation men open the front office and being the work of another paper and another day.