A few weeks ago, I left on a scheduled two week vacation to Europe, leaving the Tribune in the trusted hands of my co-workers. This is nothing new – we have a small staff, and so everyone is cross-trained to do various jobs, covering for those who take time off.
What wasn’t expected, though,was what happened shortly after my departure. The facility where we print the Tribune suffered a fire in the press room, damaging the presses and rendering them unusable. We needed to find a new printer, who can handle newspapers, in a matter of literally one day – we received the news about the fire on Monday, and we print on Wednesday morning, in order to get the papers in the mail to subscribers on Thursday.
The Tribune staff did an absolutely amazing job of figuring out how to get the paper printed. Advertising representative Garry DeYoung has 40 years of experience in the newspaper industry, and many, many contacts. He reached out to a half dozen print facilities, and was able to secure us a press run time with the Star-Ledger, a huge relief to me as I was freaking out, more than 4,000 miles away.
We haven’t missed publishing even one issue of the Tribune in 94 years, and, as editor Michael Izzo stated, “We weren’t going to miss one on my watch!”
By the time I returned to the office on May 8, the first two issues at the new facility had been published. This part of the story may be a bit confusing, as it deals with the nuts and bolts of newspaper layout, but bear with me...
The April 27 issue, the first printed at the Star-Ledger’s facility, was created with our normal six-column (13” wide) layout, the way we always put the paper together. However, unbeknownst to us until we saw the printed product on Thursday morning, it was drastically reduced to fit on the much narrower web width that the Star-Ledger uses. We were quite disappointed with the tiny print and squashed look of the paper, and it led to a scramble to completely change our layout for the following week.
The printed area of the Tribune is usually about 13” wide, however, we needed to get the width down to 10.75” to fit on the Star-Ledger’s narrower newsprint and avoid the drastic shrinking of the page that occurred on April 27. So, our production department created a new template on which to build the paper – this one at 10.75” wide, the size needed for the narrower newsprint. 10.75” is our normal five-column width, so, for the May 4 issue, the paper was back to being of a readable size, however, we lost one full column of space.
Last week’s issue, the one that published on May 11, was my first try at laying out the paper at the narrower width. Let me tell you, it was not easy! I’ve been in charge of page layout for decades, and I sometimes joke that I can do it in my sleep. Well, not any longer!
Where our usual six-column format allows us to build pages so that two ads, each three columns wide, can be next to each other, now they have to be on top of each other. It makes for a very difficult “stacked” layout, and one that, in my opinion, isn’t as easy for the reader to follow.
Most weeks we run quite a few three column wide ads, so at this narrower column width, it means that we have to add additional pages to get the ads in. To be fair, we’d likely need to add more pages anyway, since we need room for news articles, and being one full column shy per page eats up a lot of our editorial space.
All of these factors add up to one major problem – it’s costing us more money each week to put out the Tribune than it usually does. Between the higher price of printing at the new facility, plus the need to add pages to fit everything in, we’re spending quite a bit more per issue than normal.
As they say, though, “this too shall pass.” With any luck we’ll be back to our regular print facility within a month or so, and we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief! In the meantime, I can’t thank the Tribune staff enough for all they did, and all they continue to do, to put out a paper every week... no matter what!
And thank you, as well, to our readers, for your patience and for rolling with the punches as we work to adapt to the narrower paper size. We haven’t missed an issue yet, and we remain committed to providing our readers with all the news of Livingston every Thursday, come hell or high water... or a pressroom fire!
Recycling works! The West Essex Tribune - like most newspapers - is printed on recycled paper.
