Newsroom 1971

[kiev4a]

This photo was shot in the newsroom where I started my newspaper career. This photo was shot about 1971 -- Nikon FTN. The lens was eithera Vemar 28mm or a Nikkor 24mm f2.8. Film was Agfachrome

You can see the old teletypes in the background and a very crude wirephoto machine (back right) that produced photos using a heated blade reacting with a chemically treated paper.

John Faith, the wire editor has apparently found something on the "paste-up" he is proofing" that doesn't seem right so he is checking the information with an encyclopedia. John was an old school journalist. He occassionally started small fires by knocking the ashes from his cigarette into a wastebasket filled with discarded teletype copy!

[PeterW]

Manual typewriters, scissors. paste-up table, galleys ... Brings back memories. When we first went over to web offset we used to cut galleys and paste them down on a layout sheet, only we used a wax machine not paste, with the advantage that if you didn't drop it in straight first time you could lift it and move it. Pictures were made on a PMT (Photo Mechanical Transfer) camera and pasted in. Then the page went for printing.

Journalists were allowed to do this for a short time pending a merger between NATSOPA (the print union) and the NUJ (National Union of Journalists). But when the merger fell through only NATSOPA compositors could do it.

Before that when we were on letterpress each page was made up by the compositiors using slugs from the Linotype and metal blocks for the pictures. NUJ members were NOT allowed to touch. If they did, the print workers would walk out.

Much later when I was editor of The Automobile it was with a small non-union publisher. Everybody was expected to turn their hand to anything. Even my son John, then 12 years old, used to come in sometimes and do some paste-ups if deadlines were getting tight. He got the trainee rate for the job too, which pleased him no end.

Peter W.

[kiev4a]

Peter:

Yep, we used wax, too. I came to the paper in 1967, one year after it switched to offset (Grew up on a weekly "hot metal" paper). Type for offset was set on some machines called Justo Writers -- mechanical keyboards that punched paper tape which was fed into a machine that printed it out in columns on a types of light sensitive paper.

Up in editorial we only handled the pasteups for proof reading. if there was correction or change one of the back shop people was supposed to do it.

When I worked at a weekly offset paper in Seaside, Oregon all the type was set by one gal on an IBM justifying typewriter!