Newspaper offices were at one time fascinating places to visit — with noisy presses, oversized rolls of paper and ink by the barrel.
In my time at the Star Herald, we’ve never printed on our own presses, but there were lots of other interesting things to see and do.
Tourists were photographed at the door and then led to the darkroom to learn how film (remember film?) is developed and prints are made.
We’d traipse through the newsroom and past the sports desk and graphic designers to the deep bowels of the building.
… where it’s cool and dark (completely dark).
One by one, our visitors rolled through the mysterious revolving darkroom door that kept the light out and the dark in. I’d ask, “Did anybody bring any light in with them? We need it dark in here.”
If all this weren’t captivating enough, a strong odor of developer and cleaning compounds hung in the air. The nasty chemicals were stored in bulk containers with skull and crossbones warning labels.
“Don’t touch anything or it will eat the skin off your fingers,” was taken seriously.
In the dimness of the darkroom safelight, visitors peered over my shoulder as an image slowly appeared on silver paper in the bottom of a developing tray.
“Cool!”and “Wow!” could be heard in whispers behind me.
From there, we made our way to the layout boards and light table in the newsroom where each little tourist ran their own column strip of newsprint through the wax machine and stuck it between the vertical blue lines on a layout sheet.
Their parting gifts were “Snoop, the Newshound” coloring books along with a pad of notepaper.
Those were the days when newspaper editors were cool and so were their workplaces.
Today anybody with a digital camera and laptop computer could feasibly do what we do, and with social media playing an increasing role informing the public, I’m feeling irrelevant as well as uninteresting.
That’s why it pleased me last week to be asked for a newspaper tour.
“You want to come here? For a tour?” I asked. “Of what?” I explained that we have no printing presses, no darkrooms and no wax machines.
“That’s OK,” said the email response from Rock County Opportunities. “We just want to see what goes on there and meet the people who write the news.”
I was flattered but worried it would be a short tour (it was).
But I did take their picture and show them — on my computer in broad daylight — how the image gets from the camera to the printed page.
And then we talked about the essential pieces of a news story — who, what, when, where, why and how — and that it’s important to spell people’s names correctly.
Turns out some people find this interesting, and — despite Facebook — still find it an honor to be in the paper (see their photo on page 6A).
Thanks, RCO, for your visit and for finding us interesting at the Star Herald.