THE MECHANICAL PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF A NEWSPAPER
The process of the production of a modern newspaper is one of the
curiosities of industry. It is inconceivably complex. To begin with,
for every single letter used in every word of the day’s issue--there
is an average of about six letters to each word, nine words to a line,
two hundred lines in a column, seven columns in a page and ten or
twelve pages and often more in a standard morning daily--a reproduction
in metal has to be made and placed in its right position between two
others. That is to say about three-quarters of a million individual
little metal stamps have to be made every day afresh in a certain
order, never twice repeated; they are used once and then entirely
destroyed. That is but the first miracle. Another is that in the output
of a popular morning issue from fifty to sixty miles of double-width
paper--that is four times the width of the front page--representing
the denudation of perhaps thirty or forty acres of forest land, will
be devoured every day. The third and most amazing miracle of all is the
pace at which these huge operations are done. All these little distinct
metal stamps will be made in the right order in from six to eight hours
by less than a hundred men. The miles of paper will be eaten up in
perhaps from two to three hours including intervals at a rate of output
representing the printing of something like fifteen thousand copies of
the paper per minute or two hundred and fifty per second in the offices
where the largest circulations are produced.
Let us now take these processes _seriatim_ and see if we can understand
them in detail. The first point to realize about a newspaper is that
everything has to be done, not at the double, but at some quicker
pace, of which there is no example in ordinary life. Perhaps a Cabinet
Council planning some revolutionary legislation may work quicker or a
council of war summoned to meet in an emergency. The feat can only be
accomplished by the strict training of all concerned to do each his
own job with an intense concentration, regardless of the simultaneous
carrying out by others of a hundred corresponding tasks. The news or
special article as it leaves the author’s brain commences at once its
progress in the form of words through the minute mechanical processes
required to carry it to the breakfast table. It may never get written
at all. In several New York offices only type-written matter is
accepted by the city editor and the typed copy has to be either by
dictation to shorthand or to the machine or executed by the reporter
himself. The most progressive method of all, which has not yet been
completely adopted but I have no doubt soon will be, is the use of the
dictating machine, which is a special form of phonograph. The records,
when the proper degree of accuracy and self-confidence have become
general in a reporting staff, will ultimately come to pass direct to
the compositor, thus saving one intermediate stage.
The three chief processes through which the written word has to pass in
order to get into print are composition, or the assembling of types,
stereotyping, or the preparing of the types for fast rotary printing,
and printing proper. Of these the first is the most difficult and
complicated, and has been the slowest in coming to the modern standard
of perfection of all the three. As every one knows, the old-fashioned
method of composition consisted in setting up together various movable
types so that they successively formed words and sentences. This
process has proved much too slow for modern newspaper production. The
hand compositor, as he was called, could not put together more than
1,200 or 1,500 typical letters per hour. The composing room staff had
to be very numerous, and the issue of very large papers was physically
impossible. Besides there was the difficulty of dealing with the types
themselves; they were difficult to handle in a mass for fear their
order might be disturbed; they were easily injured and worn out, and
they had to be distributed afresh in their proper cases after every use.
All this has been abolished by the invention of various forms of
composing machines, of which I shall describe the one that is most
often in use in newspaper offices. I am told on good authority that
out of about 2,000 offices in the United Kingdom only about six have
not at least one Linotype machine. This Linotype machine is probably
the most ingenious mechanism ever planned and, with the exception of
a few calculating machines, resembles the human brain more than any
other. The Linotype is not content to assemble made types, but it
makes them line by line as they are required. It is constituted of a
keyboard actuating a magazine containing matrices, or letter-moulds
in intaglio, together with a casting mechanism. By tapping the keys
the operator can bring to a suitable position in the casting machine,
opposite to the blank end of a small mould of exactly the size of
a line of type, these various matrices in due order so as to form
successive words in a sentence. When the matrices are assembled in
their proper place, as he is informed by the ringing of a bell, the
operator will touch a lever releasing molten metal into the empty mould
and thus obtains a metal slug representing the line of type which he
has to set up. The machine shaves and trims this slug to an exact size
and returns the used matrices to their appropriate channels in the
magazine ready for use in another line. By this method the handling
of separate metal types is abolished. Fresh new printing surfaces are
presented for every issue and the old ones destroyed. Above all the
pace of output is more than quadrupled and very much larger issues can
be produced than was possible under the old system.
The latest development of the Linotype composing machine is the
provision of several magazines of matrices of different founts of
type, so that for varied setting such as is generally required in
advertisements successive lines of type can be used from different
magazines. As many as four magazines have been attached to one machine.
Besides the Linotype which is the most useful machine to a newspaper
there is a German machine called the Typograph, operating in a similar
fashion. The Monotype machine, very valuable for certain purposes such
as catalogue work in a general printing office, casts each single type
separately and sets them together. Matter set in this way lends itself
more easily to small corrections.
The Linotype slugs with their new type-shaped faces are then assembled
into columns and screwed up in frames so as to form a page, but they
are as yet very far from being a suitable printing surface. The reason
for the next transformation of these type surfaces is, as follows: it
is impossible for any fast printing to be done from a flat surface. The
only possible device for securing rapid pace according to our present
notions of machinery is the use of rotary motion. In other words the
paper must be made to run between two wheels, one of which has a type
surface and the other a soft blanket. So that we have to convert a flat
type surface into a curved one for our fresh purpose. This process is
called stereotyping.
[Illustration:
FIG. 1.--END SECTION OF TWO STEREOPLATE CYLINDERS. C is a
cylinder holding two plates W & Y; D is a smaller cylinder
of half radius; M is a tubular plate; E and F are impression
cylinders.]
Stereotyping accomplishes this purpose in two ways; it can make a
semi-circular plate or a tubular plate. In the first case, which is the
more usual method, the printing cylinder in the press is of double size
and will contain two full newspaper pages on its circumference. In the
second, adapted to a new form of press, the page encircles the whole
cylinder. The process of transforming a flat surface into a circular
one was long done by hand, and in a great many offices continues so to
be done. On the surface of the square page of type is placed a damp
mould, resembling _papier-mâché_, composed of several overlying sheets
of thin tissue and heavy backing papers; the type with the mould on
it is placed inside a steam press, when it is effectually squeezed
into the face of the type and dried by heat at the same time. A hard
mould is thus made in about six minutes, showing the impressions of
the newspaper page in intaglio. This dry mould is of course flexible
and can be placed in a cylindrical casting box and cylindrical plates
having an exact reproduction of the type surfaces on their curved
exteriors are rapidly cast and sent down to the machine-room. It is
from these curved plates that the newspapers themselves are actually
printed and not, as many people naturally suppose, from the type itself.
The hand production of stereotype plates is already out of date in
most progressive offices. The first improvement is the substitution
of a dry “flong,” as the paper mould is technically called, thus
eliminating the five or six minutes spent in drying at the cost to
some extent of accuracy, a fault which is in process of diminution.
The second is the use of elaborate machines called variously
autoplates, junior autoplates or multiplates according to size and
design. These also arise from the newspaper passion for speed and
they carry out automatically the casting, trimming and planing to a
true edge of stereoplates, which was formerly carried out slowly by
hand. To see a double autoplate turning out these monstrous heavy
page-sized plates complete at the rate of six a minute gives one an
impression of an intelligence also something akin to human. The only
limit to their speed is the necessity for allowing the metal of the
plates to cool sufficiently during the process to ensure that their
cylindrical accuracy will be exact before they start on their journey
to the machine-room. In a few minutes later these same plates will be
revolving on a fast modern press at the rate of 16,000 revolutions an
hour with a surface speed of rotation of approximately twenty-two feet
per second. The degree of accuracy of plate-casting required in order
to get good printing at this rate of production is very great and has
only been effectively secured in very recent times.
Before proceeding to examine the habits and constitution of the
printing-press itself let us take a peep inside a modern press room. In
the first place it is almost sure to be irregular in shape and though
very large and high not large enough or high enough to hold comfortably
all the machinery that is in it. Expansion is the law of a newspaper’s
existence and hardly any newspaper ever succeeds in building itself
a machine cellar, which it will not ultimately grow out of. The
difficulty and expense of acquiring new printing press accommodation in
crowded and valuable areas assures an irregular shape to most modern
machine rooms. Imagine an immense cellar perhaps twenty to thirty feet
high with huge irregular piles of machinery reaching almost to the
ceiling. There is no general lighting, for the path of the rays from
the ceiling lights is broken up in all directions by the tall presses,
but everywhere there are bright handlights conveniently placed so as
to illuminate instantaneously every square inch of the masses of metal
work. In some cases lights are turned on for the moment in the central
parts of the gaunt machines themselves. Everywhere on the outside of
the presses are to be seen handles and bells and indicators so that
to the uninitiated there seems to be no central point of control, no
pineal gland where the soul of things is situated.
Just before press time in a big office order begins to appear. The men
group themselves systematically at various stations round the presses,
which are half ready to start. That is to say, that the machine is
more than half clothed with the plates of those pages, which have
been the earliest to go to press. Then comes a clang, indicating from
the stereotype room above that the last plates are cast and probably
on their way. Down the hoist they come singly, almost too hot to be
handled. One by one the cellar-hands take them and fit them on the
plate cylinders, where the turning of a single cog fits each into
position. A big double sextuple machine such as the one illustrated
(Fig. 2), printing a twelve-page paper, will want eight plates of the
last page to start it, so that this last operation may take as many
minutes. Then the lever is pressed down and the printing begins with a
sound like a sustained purring, punctuated by regular sobbing. In this
respect the latest presses are showing marked improvement with every
fresh design and the noise is by no means overwhelming. A few years
ago rapid printing in great masses involved considerable distress to
the ears for any one forced to remain for very long downstairs in the
printing cellar.
[Illustration:
FIG. 2.--This ILLUSTRATION OF A SKELETON SIDE ELEVATION OF A
MODERN DOUBLE-SEXTUPLE NEWSPAPER PRINTING MACHINE made for the
_Daily Mail_, is reproduced from a drawing kindly supplied by
MESSRS. JOSEPH FOSTER & SONS, of Preston.
Explanation of figures in drawing:--A B C D E F, six reels of
paper in position for printing; G H I J, four reels of paper ready
to come into position; K L M N O P, six double pairs of printing
and impression cylinders; Q R, assembling points, where on each
side three printed sheets come together for the purpose of being
cut and folded; S T, two folding apparatus; U V W X, two pairs of
inking apparatus carrying ink from the ink-boxes by reciprocating
rollers to the printing cylinders of the lower tiers. (_The inking
mechanism for the higher tiers is omitted._) Y Z, delivery of
printed papers from each side.]
There are now-a-days so many distinct varieties of printing-press
available and used for newspaper printing that it is a matter of some
difficulty to select a suitable type as representative. I have chosen
two, which are here illustrated. One is the double-sextuple press
recently installed by Messrs. Joseph Foster & Sons in the office of the
London _Daily Mail_ (Fig. 2). It is not by any means the largest in the
world but it is the latest in design and a typical fast rotary press
for rapid work. The other (Fig. 3) is a typical small press such as a
provincial evening paper would find convenient. The small illustration
(Fig. 1) above, shows the end-on section XYZ of a semi-cylindrical
plate of large size compared with the smaller sized section of a
tubular plate M, where a single page of the paper to be printed goes
completely round the circle, except for a narrow margin at the bottom
of the page, a space, which is taken up on the cylinder by clamps,
which hold the plate firmly.
On the double-sextuple machine here illustrated by a section of the
machine from the side the reader will observe that it is really a
combination of six separate machines arranged in three tiers. The paper
is carried in six huge reels, three at each end of the press. The
paper in the course of printing comes from the reels at each end to
the central portion of the press down into the four folding mechanisms
in the centre of the press, where they are automatically folded and
delivered ready for sale.
Now the chief marvel of a modern combined printing press is its power
of being used to print separately a large number of small sized papers
or by leading the paper through the press in a slightly different
way to print a mammoth paper folded all together and receiving
contributions from all six reels at once. In the particular machine in
question, which is used to print a comparatively small sized paper, any
six of the separate machines can be run separately, if a small paper
and a small output only is wanted. When required, they can be combined
in pairs or in threes or all together, either for an immense number of
small papers or for a moderate number of very large ones. With a _Daily
Mail_ of eight pages the two lower tiers of the press could be run with
an output of 132,000 copies per hour. For ten pages half the upper
tier, using half length reels, could be run to supply the supplementary
two pages per copy at the same rate. To produce a twelve-page paper the
whole upper tier could be run and again produce them at the same rate.
The larger sizes would involve a lesser rate of output. From fourteen
to twenty-four page papers would be produced at the rate of 66,000 per
hour, and twenty-four to forty-eight page papers at 33,000. To change
over from printing one size paper to another would not be a matter of
more than half an hour.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--ILLUSTRATION OF A FOUR-REELED PRESS WITH
TUBULAR PLATES IN SECTION.
The paper from the four reels runs through the machine from left
to right. Each sheet passes between two pair of cylinders, such
as A A, following the direction of the small arrows. The four
sheets after being printed respectively between rollers A A, B
B, C C, and D D, are all carried up together to the assembling
roller E, where they are timed to meet exactly so as to form each
4 pages of a 16-page paper. They will pass down the triangular
folder, where they receive the longitudinal fold, and then are
cut into separate papers. After being cut the papers pass into
the side folder F, where they each receive one cross-fold, and
are delivered one above another, so as to make up a stack. (By
courtesy of Mr. Lock, of LINOTYPE AND MACHINERY, LTD.)]
The course of each sheet from the reel through the printing cylinders
is exactly the same. The paper has to be printed on both sides and
on one only at a time. To effect this it passes between one pair of
cylinders, one of which carries the stereotype plate containing the
raised surface of type, whose course we have already followed; the
other is covered with a hard rubber blanket, sufficiently pervious
to allow the slightest possible indentation of its surface as the
irregular type faces come opposite to it with the rapidly-flowing paper
ever between them. This slight but rapid indentation gives a clear cut
impression and applies the ink without smudging to one of the surfaces
of the paper. The impression of ink on the other surface is given by
going through another pair of similar cylinders but with their relative
positions reversed--_i.e._, the plate cylinder must now come in contact
with the other side of the paper.
The merits and defects of fast rotary printing depend wholly on two
conditions, as far as the workmanship in the press is concerned,
apart from the several qualities of paper, ink and accurately made
stereotype plates, which are here supposed to be all of normal
excellence. These two conditions are the degree of the impression
allowed between the plate and the impression cylinders and the
proper supply and distribution of the ink. Both these are matters
requiring the highest technical judgment, and where illustrated work
is concerned, as is increasingly the case in modern newspapers, slight
variations have enormously different results. Conveying the ink, which
in printing is a thick glutinous fluid, mostly oil and lamp-black,
from the long ink cases running from side to side of the press, is the
work of a number of subsidiary rollers with various conflicting and
combining movements. The ink is allowed to ooze out generously on to
a large metal cylinder, where it is pounced upon at once by a cohort
of gelatine rollers and pounded and smeared in various directions and
ultimately taken by carrying rollers with reciprocating motion to
larger gelatine cylinders, which are in contact with the plate-carrying
cylinder itself. All this pounding, squeezing and manœuvring are the
only means of getting an absolutely even distribution of ink, which the
reckless speed of newspaper printing requires. It must be remembered
that the speed of the printing peripheries in contact with the moving
paper often amounts to more than twenty feet per second.
There is a further complication of refinement required in the printing
of illustrated work, which the increasing accuracy of modern times has
not yet eliminated. The depth of the hollows in between the raised
printing surfaces is very much less in plates reproducing photographic
illustrations than in the case of type. It is found that “half-tone”
work, as it is called, requires a degree of exactness in the printing
plate, which at present it is impossible always to get. One part of
a picture to be printed is very often slightly higher or lower than
the other. To remedy this in the plate is impossible. Another plate
might have fresh faults. Good printing is secured at a fast pace by
a process called “making ready.” The printer runs his paper slowly
through the press and discovers the faults in the plates containing
illustrations by a trial impression on the paper. He then corrects the
lightly-inked parts of his illustration by raising the corresponding
surface of the impression cylinder. To do this he pastes on various
thicknesses of paper on the latter, so that the paper to be printed is
brought more firmly in contact with the printing cylinder, wherever the
illustration appears to him to require it. The object is to get an
even blackness of impression all over the illustration. The correction
requires good judgment and skilled attention.
The last stage of the passage of the paper through the press is cutting
and folding. It will be remembered that the printed papers are coming
down two at a time, side by side into the central folding mechanism.
The first operation is a longitudinal cut separating the two papers
and making two half width running strips instead of one. Taking one of
these strips the next operation is to run the paper over a V-shaped
plate, drawing the two edges of the paper together at the bottom and
making the central fold of the journal. A transverse cut separates each
journal from the other, which are then taken separately sideways for
one final revolution round a cylinder, where a knife pops out from the
interior and neatly gives it the last fold, which we recognize across
the front of our daily paper every morning.
So the papers come out at a pace about a thousand times quicker than
one can read the description. Enormous efforts are required to deal
with the advancing flood. Any accumulation would be destructive of
order. Most of the papers go straight to waiting carts and motors.
Others go to the mailing room, where, as in some American offices, they
are fed through machines, which with the same operation print the names
and addresses on wrappers, affix and gum the wrappers and deliver the
newspapers into assorted bags, whose destination is already fastened on
the outside.
Once outside, distribution is very much a question of population and
locality. Different methods have to be employed to meet fresh problems.
In London internal distribution is very difficult, because the local
railways and tubes are not organized to handle goods traffic. Horses
and carts are now outdistanced except for small consignments. Bicycles
can be used to some extent but the motor will be the chief reliance of
the future. In this case the problem must be divided up into two parts
owing to traffic considerations. At night the roads are free and high
speed can be kept up for long distances, so that the utility of the
motor is only limited to its capacity, otherwise its tonnage. It has
been calculated recently that a motor van can run from Fleet Street
to Barnet, a distance of about twelve miles within an hour, stopping
twenty-seven times in the last seven miles to deliver separate parcels
to newsagents on the way.
The problem of the distribution of evening papers during the day is
very much more difficult. One prominent evening newspaper in London has
estimated that it costs as much as £1,000 per week to each paper.[8]
In the first place competition is much more keen, because, while the
morning paper has to reach a limited number of important distributing
points at one stated time, _i.e._, before breakfast, it is the business
of an enterprising evening paper to multiply occasions of distribution,
as for instance after every race or at short intervals during an
exciting cricket match, and also for the same competitive purpose to
multiply points of distribution, so as to cover the widest possible
field. In the second place the general traffic in London is still
conducted at the same pace, at which the animals entered the ark. At
all important centres the streets are blocked for half the daylight
hours of the day. At Wellington Street, the westward boundary of
newspaperdom, five hours daily are lost; in the city the average rate
of progression is three miles an hour. For these reasons a large and
fast unit of distribution, like the motor-car, is discounted in utility
by the blocks in the traffic so that light carts and men on bicycles
can hold their own in pace and serve a greater number of independent
centres. The bicycle has a special power of penetrating a block because
the police are indulgent to newspaper distribution and generally allow
them to pass.
[8] See _Newspaper Owner_, July 27, 1912.
The modern method of distribution in London--it was invented first
in the provinces--is conducted, as follows: various centres are
selected--take the corner of Pall Mall and Cockspur Street for
example--where staffs of boys are assembled at stated periods during
the afternoon. At fixed times there come at breathless speed bundles
of evening “specials” or “extras” by cart or bicycle, which are
instantaneously served out to the waiting newsboys. There are thus
perhaps a hundred local centres of distribution awaiting the trigger
to be pulled in the central office, which will deliver the selected
news all over London. Here is the point where the skilled judgment of
an experienced journalist is required to select the right news and
the right moment. It is a fatal thing to pull the trigger on a small
occasion too soon before a big one, as for instance, if one sent all
the boys away with a county cricket result ten minutes before the
result of the Cambridgeshire. As a matter of fact most boys would know
too much about their own business to take a special, just before an
important racing event.
The distribution of evening newspapers is probably the chief point of
organization, where we are probably well ahead of the American press.
On the several occasions, when I have had the opportunity of comparing
the two systems, I have found New York papers conspicuously behind ours
in this department. This may be due to lesser competition or a less
developed organization but more probably to the fact that the American
public pay much less attention to sporting events than do our working
classes.