News: Abbotsford – New Press for Tribune-Phonograph (Aug 1974)

Transcriber: Stan

Surnames: O’Leary

----Source: Tribune/Phonograph (Abbotsford, Clark Co., Wis.) 01 Aug 1974

Publisher J.A. O’Leary announced the arrival for a new newspaper press for printing the Tribune-Phonograph and Record-Review.

Installation on a new American Type Founders News King web offset newspaper press started today with expectations that the first edition will be Thursday, August 15, 1974.

“The new press will allow the newspapers to be printed considerable faster”, O’Leary added. “Our old sheet fed press and folding equipment is operating approximately 24 hours each week producing papers. The new press will produce the entire newspaper in one continuous operation and will cut press time to about two hours each week.”

The new press allows a greater flexibility with pictures, news and advertising. “If we have more news some weeks we can add pages to the paper easier and with little more time involved,” O’Leary stated.

Each section of the newspaper (16 tabloid pages or less, will be produced in about 30 minutes. It now takes about six hours.

It is also possible to take on additional outside publications of newspapers and other types of printing in that general size range.

“One other point is that the new web offset press can produce papers from the regular full size newspaper sheet down to the tabloid newspaper, giving us the possibility of running the large page size in both the Tribune-Phonograph and Record-Review, should we so desire.” O’Leary added.

The News King press will print off of rolls of newspaper and fold the newspaper product at the same time. It can print up to 16 tabloid pages all at the same time and fold them into one newspaper section. The older equipment printed one side of a sheet of newsprint at a time, and had to be put through the press a second time to print the backside. Folding was accomplished by collating a number of pages, then putting them through a folder.

The new press features a better inking system and automatic controls to enable the pressman to get top production with automated operation.

Every new piece of equipment has its bugs and different operating procedures which must be master, but we are hoping that our initial product will be equally as good as our present paper. We are confident that after a few weeks of operation that it will be a better publication,” O’Leary said.