A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about why the weekday comics and some other news pages were temporarily being printed just in black instead of in full color. It came down to the timing of a shipment of press plates. We have recently increased our volume of plate orders because we are taking on new commercial printing contracts with Gannett, whose Pacific Northwest properties include The Register-Guard of Eugene, Ore., the Salem, Ore., Statesman Journal, and Bremerton’s Kitsap Sun.
We’re going to begin to fulfill these printing contracts in the next couple of weeks. Although most of the impact will be in our printing and packaging division, where we are creating new jobs and bringing some part-time workers back to full time, Columbian readers will notice a few changes. I think they’re for the better.
The best news is that we will resume printing The Columbian later in the evening, which will allow us to get the evening sports scores into the paper. Frankly, that’s become a luxury for print newspapers the last few years as the industry saves costs by combining press operations. As the hub of what is becoming a good-sized commercial printing operation, our newspaper will be the last on the press, and so we will be able to catch those late scores. And, if you follow the lottery, we should once again be able to get the previous night’s winning numbers into the printed paper.
Another change is that we will move the Friday and Saturday classified sections, which are currently pre-run, into the main body of the paper. This move frees up time in the pressroom to accommodate our contract print jobs. It should also leave us with a little more front-section “newshole,” or the area that we have to put news stories once all the ads and regular features are placed onto the pages.
