
The Daily Miracle: Finding Magic Inside the Times’s Printing Plant - noer
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/magazine/daily-miracle-times-print-plant-college-point.html
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js2
I feel like this article should be paired with a watching of "Farewell, Etaoin
Shrdlu" (1978):

[https://vimeo.com/127605643](https://vimeo.com/127605643)

A quote from the film:

 _Printer: "I find it very sad. Very sad. I've learned the new stuff. The new
processes and all. But I've been a printer now for 26 years. I've been in this
place for 20 years. Six years apprenticeship, 20 years journeyman, and these
are words that aren't just tossed around. They've always meant something to us
printers.

I hate to see it. It's inevitable that we're going to go into computers. All
the knowledge I've acquired over these 26 years is all locked up in a little
box now called a computer. And I think probably most jobs are going to end up
the same way."

Questioner: "Do you think computers are a good idea in general?"

Printer: "Oh, there's no doubt about it. They're going to benefit everybody
eventually. How long it will take, I don't know."_

Also:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/1966-2016-the-
las...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/1966-2016-the-last-hot-
type-printer-puts-down-his-tools.html)

~~~
ea016
I also really enjoyed the beautiful "Meet the Machinists Who Keep the New York
Times Running":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGHStfuLdyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGHStfuLdyY)

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LocalPCGuy
Used to print the New York Times at a newspaper plant I worked at 10+ years
ago now. Fun and a bit nostalgic to look at those photos and note the
similarities and differences to the machines I worked on. It was/is more of an
art than people realize, and in many ways set me up well for working in web
development (color, attention to detail, working under time pressure, handling
multiple crisis at a time as a few instances of things that translate). Due to
the time spent as a newspaper printer, I follow the industry a bit and it is
really sad to see how they have mismanaged the transition online so badly. But
also how the printing process hasn't really changed that much even since I
left - they're just riding the wave to the bottom in many cases,
unfortunately.

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Symbiote
The UK is small enough and with good railways so newspapers in the 19th
century were (I think) printed in London and distributed by rail.

How did that work in the USA, before fast electronic communications? Or was it
not possible to read the New York Times in, say, Texas?

~~~
esilver
There’s actually a really interesting historical relationship between the U.S.
postal service and newspapers in the early republic; basically, newspapers
could be mailed at a rate far lower than then-expensive personal and business
correspondence.

Check out David M. Henkin’s _Postal Age_ [0] if you’re interested in learning
more.

[0]
[https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo41...](https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo4134270.html)

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athenot
As a subscriber to the paper version of the NYTimes (weekend editions), it's
nice to see the behind-the-scenes of how it is printed—even though my copies
are printed in a different state, I assume the process is the same.

And yes I consume news online but I like the act of timeboxing news-reading
into a more thoughtful moment than how it usually plays out when reading
online.

~~~
sigi45
I was holding onto it as well but at the end my fingers got dirty reading it
and it's just huge thing to handle.

