HOW IT’S MADE newspaper production

WORDS BY MEREDITH SHAMBURGER

The way newspapers are produced and published has changed in vast ways since the Watchman’s founding in 1873 — but editors and reporters throughout the years have kept a tradition of high standards through it all.

And sometimes what’s old is what’s new again.

In the 1880s, your local newspaper reporters were limited by time — it took forever to set type by hand — and by the lack of quick ways to get information. Mail was common, but there were no phones, no cars, no computers. Local news came by word of mouth, and many community newspapers of the day often carried reports from newspapers across the country.

In December 1915, under Publisher R.M. Park, the Watchman purchased the paper’s first linotype machine and effectively made the switch from the antiquated and slow handset method of setting type to linotype or hot type.

In the later half of the 1900s, “cut and paste” style production gave way to computers and digital mock-ups. Today reporters write and edit photos, and editors proofread and lay out stories, entirely on computers. The Watchman originally printed its newspapers in house, but today digital PDF pages are sent to Longview for printing. The Watchman also publishes stories online for those readers who don’t want a physical copy.

Tom Bowers may have relied on word of mouth for stories, but later editors found telephones to be a great way to gather information, and then faxes, email and social media. As always, the best way Watchman reporters have done their jobs is by simply being out in their community instead of locked inside the office. There’s no substitute for being in the room where something happens.

Photographic reproduction in newspapers did not become a reality until 1880, and indeed up through the first half of the 1900s was mostly confined to national items.

Local photography first was published in the 1930s by Neal Estes, but it was the late 1950s before the investment in photographic and reproduction equipment necessary for regular local photo coverage was made by

U.O. Clements. From the ‘50s until the early 2000s, photos were taken on film negatives, often in the darkroom at the back of the Watchman building. Today we have the luxury of digital cameras, where taking hundreds of photographs at a single event is possible.