The evolution of newspapers

We’ve  come a long way in the newspaper business in the past 140 years, and that’s an understatement of the year.

Can you imagine setting individual pieces of type in a line and doing this line after line? That’s the way printed material like newspapers were originally produced. Each piece of type was the same height, .918 inches to be exact. 

Type was placed in a form which was tightened and an ink roller was passed over it. Then a sheet of paper was placed over the inked form and another roller pressed the paper against the inked type. Presto! You had the printed product in your hands.

Joseph Kubler, like most all early newspaper editors, was an excellent pressman who is credited with turning out an incredible 300 newspapers an hour using this method. When the newspaper was off the press and out the door the early editors turned their attention to printing other things like sale bills, tickets, etc., besides gathering news.

Over the years, printing presses were improved and typesetting machines called Linotypes were invented  which greatly improved the quality of the product and cut down on production time. A Linotype machine invented in 1884 used a keyboard to drop single letters into a form where they were cast in a line of type, hence the name.

Believe it or not, this was the typesetting method used at the Hot Springs Star when I went to work there in June 1972, fresh out of the Army. The paper was printed on a loud, monstrous press in the basement in our building on Jennings Avenue.

The press was actually located under the adjacent Wilson Law Office. When the press was running it shook the entire building as it rumbled back and forth. I don’t know how they got any legal work done during that time.

The newspaper converted to offset printing in 1975 when it began to be printed at the Chadron (Neb.) Record. Offset printing is a method whereby ink is transferred from a thin aluminum plate wrapped around a cylinder on to another cylinder wrapped in a rubber blanket and then on to the paper. You have to see it happen to understand it completely.

Digital photography came along shortly after this time and completely changed the newsrooms. No more developing film in the dark and printing black and white photos and developing them in trays. It was a great innovation.

The Chronicle and Hill City Prevailer News have been printed at the Rapid City Journal since July 2001. The move to our present location from what is now Highmark Credit Union meant that we (thankfully) left our old two-unit newspaper press behind.

We sold the press to the newspaper in Mariposa, Calif. which added the two units to its existing press for increased printing capacity. Best move we ever made!

It’s been a pleasure these past 20 years to see the newspaper continue the great tradition of informing and entertaining the public.

This is your newspaper. We and our employees are merely its custodians for the time being. Thank you so much for your support over the years!