Leah Finnegan thought the noise was coming from construction.
It was a late night at the office and one of her first as editor-in-chief of The Daily Texan.
But construction at 2 a.m. didn’t make sense. It must have been coming from somewhere else — somewhere closer to where she sat, she thought.
She realized the dull, repetitive mechanical hum was coming from the Texan’s printing press — one of the handful of remaining college presses in the United States.
Almost a year later, the press punched out its last issue of The Daily Texan on Tuesday night. After 36 years of operation, the press is up for sale, and future printing operations for the Texan — starting with the June 4 issue — will move to one of four presses owned by the Austin American-Statesman.
Quietly sitting when not in use in the basement of the William Randolph Hearst Building, the Texan’s 50-by-8-foot printing press, separated by about 60 feet of hallway from the Texan newsroom, resembles a piece of outdated farm equipment. The Gross Urbanite press was purchased brand-new in 1973 for $222,000, or $1,080,606 adjusted for inflation.
During the day, the machine sits under a stream of light that flows in from the basement windows, spotlighting its ink-stained parts.
But at about midnight every Sunday through Thursday, the unmarked knobs and giant spools, held together by tan steel, come alive as a giant roll of blank printing paper circulates from one end to the other. After only a few seconds, the flat paper emerges from the other end as a colorful, neatly folded edition of the next day’s paper.
“I went in and saw it run. … I saw newspaper flying through the air and saw it doing its dance,” Finnegan said. “Watching the newspapers multiplying into the thousands and getting folded up and ready for the morning — it’s amazing. You can feel the process happening.”
In October, Finnegan and then-Managing Editor Adrienne Lee heard of the Texas Student Media Board of Operating Trustees’ plan to sell the press. Finnegan said TSM Director Kathy Lawrence and clinical journalism professor Wanda Cash approached the two with the decision.
A general downturn in advertising revenue and plans to remodel the William Randolph Hearst Building’s basement infrastructure led TSM — which also includes the Cactus Yearbook, KVRX, Texas Student Television and the Texas Travesty — to sell the press in March, Lawrence said.
TSM Assistant Director Frank Serpas said he took labor and material costs into consideration and compared benefits with cost to determine that outsourcing would be absolutely necessary in about three years. Serpas estimates that by moving printing operations to the Statesman, TSM will lose $13,100 of its $3 million budget in fiscal year 2009 but gain $30,944 by fiscal year 2012. No one has bid on the press, Lawrence said.
“I was floored; it just came out of the blue,” Finnegan said. “It seemed very sudden and rushed and seemed like a final decision even before any students had talked about it.”
Lawrence said that because TSM board meetings are open to the public, students could have learned of the decision early on.
Cash, Finnegan and Lawrence then met with an agent who could put the press on the market.
“There was literally no time to process the loss,” Finnegan said.
That’s when Finnegan began receiving the complaints — dozens of e-mails and phone calls from and conversations with Texan staff and alumni who were concerned that selling the press would affect the paper’s integrity, as only a handful of other college newspapers, including Eastern Illinois and Purdue universities, can boast their own printing presses.
Much of the outcry stemmed from the fact that the five TSM employees who run the printing press would lose their jobs.
“I realized that this was not only an issue about upholding the Texan’s integrity and uniqueness, but it was a humanitarian issue as well,” Finnegan said.
Arnold Wiggins, the Texan’s 55-year-old press foreman, and his team of four tend to the press for about six hours every night, ensuring that every part of the machine runs smoothly. Wiggins jumps into its rafters, barely turns one of the many unmarked knobs and jogs to the end of the press to grab a folded copy, checking for perfect color saturation and text alignment. Wiggins and his crew continue this process until about 3 a.m. when all 18,000 copies have been printed.
Wiggins, who has worked at the Texan for five years, will begin his new job as a dayside crew operator at the Killeen Daily Herald in the fall. Some of the other pressmen have jobs or interviews lined up at other newspapers, but most have yet to find employment.
“I’m just worried about them,” Wiggins said as he took a quick break Thursday night. “We all thought we’d be here for forever, but I guess the times are changing.”
A ‘fast-growing age’
“In all, the new revised version of The Daily Texan you now have in your hands is a sign of the times. And that sign is the fast-growing age of computers.”
This is Texan staffer Steven Renfrow’s concluding paragraph in an article he published in 1973 about the adoption of the current press. The Texan has published on three machines since its inception in 1900, and each machine has ushered in eras of technological advancement.
Art Rinn, who worked at the Texan from 1957 to 1993 as a printing press apprentice and, eventually, a production superintendent, was there the day the old hot-type print was sold and the current letter-press machine was implemented.
“I remember the first night we tried to put out a paper,” Rinn said. “Well we did put out a paper but it took us a long time … ’cause we didn’t have much experience. I don’t think we went to press until 7 a.m. that day.”
Rinn said that while the hot-type print was cheaper to operate than the letter-press machine the Texan used for the next 36 years because it required less manpower, production quality was lower. The new press offered more color capabilities and a much faster printing speed.
Peter Franklin, the Texan’s current photo editor, says he is concerned about the quality of the Texan’s printing at the Statesman.
Franklin sat in the Texan’s photo office and carefully inspected a copy of the Statesman to illustrate the differences between the two newspapers.
Because the Texan’s press uses more ink, the paper’s headlines are a bolder black, and the color photos have more contrast and saturation, Franklin said. And because the Statesman prints on thinner paper, more wrinkles appear, he said as he traced his finger across the front page of Tuesday’s edition.
“The photos printed on the Texan’s press represent what the photographer saw better … because the pictures look more real,” he said.
Stephen Keller, the Texan’s incoming managing editor for the summer and fall semesters, sees the sale as an opportunity for the Texan to further develop its online presence.
“It’s a pretty scary time in the industry,” Keller said. “But I also see it as an opportunity for innovation and an opportunity to roll the dice.”
As managing editor, Keller plans to increase the paper’s blogging and social networking efforts and publish more up-to-date information, such as breaking news, and video reports online.
The transition
Computers and other high-tech equipment manage all four of the Statesman’s presses, which sit in a warehouse about 15 times the size of the Texan’s. The press that will publish the Texan is similar in make but about 22 times larger than the Texan’s press.
Kit Yearty, the Statesman’s director of production, says printing the Texan will not alter the Statesman’s nightly schedule. In April, the press on average printed 165,000 copies of the Statesman every day, enough copies of The New York Times for Austin and San Antonio and many surrounding community newspapers. The Statesman’s press can publish about 35,000 copies of a newspaper in one hour, compared to the Texan’s 16,000, meaning the Statesman can begin printing the Texan at 3 a.m. and still meet a 4 a.m. deadline.
More stringent deadlines were imposed at the Texan this semester, and certain steps — such as viewing pages on negative film to check for errors before printing them onto metal plates — were phased out to prepare for the transition, Keller said.
Yearty said the Statesman is willing to work with the Texan’s needs. If a Texan staffer finds a mistake, a phone call to the Statesman would stop the printing process and allow staffers to make changes, he said.
“[The Texan’s] in the same boat that we are in,” Yearty said. “Our newsroom gets extra time sometimes. We work with them, and we’ll do the same with [the Texan].”
Ronnie Hampton, the Statesman’s night pressroom supervisor, recently limited his caffeine intake to one cup of coffee a night. Hampton will soon field calls from Texan staffers if they need to make changes or foresee the need for an extended deadline.
When asked if he was ready for those phone calls, Hampton smiled and inserted a quarter into a coffee machine that stands just outside the Statesman’s massive pressroom.
“That just makes things exciting,” he said. “And we need a little excitement around here.”
Texan managing editor, 1981