A step forward, a look back

The Lakeville Journal Company announcement this week that it will soon print its three community weekly newspapers through an outside source, rather than on the more-than-30-year-old printing press at its main office in Lakeville, may surprise some of our readers.

Part of the surprise may be we have been printing our own paper  in our Lakeville building at all. Many visitors who have toured our facility here, and see the four-unit Goss web press and printing department that takes up nearly half of the building, had little expectation they would actually see a press in operation.

Of course it isn’t just the press that produces these newspapers; it’s the people who have run the press, and all the rest of the equipment needed to complete the process. This is the passing of an era, and there is sadness in the loss of some jobs as a result (see Page A1 for more information).

Over time, hundreds of people from the area have worked in the production of The Lakeville Journal Company newspapers. Some collated papers by hand (swiftly assembling the two or three sections and then stuffing in the advertising fliers and special sections), others set up the negatives to be made into aluminum plates that go on the press and create the words and images you see on our pages.

Our production of weekly newspapers happens in a compressed time frame, on deadline, to get the news out to our readers as quickly as possible. Deadlines will remain, but the company’s composing and editorial departments will now get the digital files out to another printer in timely fashion, rather than a few steps away to our own pressroom. The company’s drivers will continue to deliver the papers to post offices and retail outlets throughout the region for Thursday publication for The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News, and Friday publication for The Winsted Journal.

Having a printing press on the premises has been a luxury. It has allowed everyone on the staff to participate fully in the creation of the paper. The Lakeville Journal is unusual among small community weekly newspapers in having owned and maintained its own printing press on site for so many years. Take a look at Bob Estabrook’s column this week if you’re wondering how it happened that a small newspaper group would have such a press. It was Estabrook’s ability to realize his vision that gave The Lakeville Journal the long-term opportunity to have printing on site. He gave the papers the updated press in the 1970s, modernizing the pressroom far beyond the letterpress method used for so many years.

But to upgrade a printing press today takes a monumental amount of capital investment. For a small community newspaper, this just isn’t in the cards. Direct-to-plate, digital technology has become the norm. The primary mission of the company is communication of information, in whatever ways work best for the communities and readers we serve. The Lakeville Journal remains completely committed to the towns it covers, and this step of printing at an outside company is the best way to continue to realize its mission.