BIG PRINTING PRESS

The Statesman has four printing presses. There are three Goss/Metroliner presses which cost around $10 million each. And those are the smaller presses!

The large printing press above is nicknamed “Big Blue” and was purchased from a company in Germany called KBA. This is the Statesman’s newest press and it was a $28 million project for the newspaper. The press itself cost $14 million. The pressroom actually had to be expanded to fit the huge Big Blue inside, which cost another $14 million. Big Blue is six stories high and more than 60 feet tall!

The Statesman uses offset printing. This means images are first etched onto the aluminum plates that are then mounted onto printing press rollers and inked with a combination of water and ink. The ink adheres to the areas with emulsion. Water then washes away the excess ink. A blanket roller picks up the ink and transfers it to the newsprint. The aluminum plates never touch the paper directly, which is the reason for the name offset.

Press operators monitor the newspapers as they are being printed, visually checking them for print and color quality. They don’t stop the presses to make adjustments; they use computers to change what the presses are doing as they are running.
The operators make these changes from computer consoles in “quiet rooms,” which are small, enclosed rooms where operators can shut the door and concentrate away from the noise of the presses.

The Statesman presses can print an average of 1,000 papers a minute. That’s 70,000 papers per hour! However, the presses usually do not operate at full speed to maintain quality control. The average speed for producing the best looking product is 55,000 papers in an hour.
If the paper tears – a “web break” – newsprint is often referred to as “web” – the press will shut down automatically. Operators must rethread the paper by hand, slowly and carefully. In fact, the paper goes so quickly through the press that it can become brittle. To prevent this, the pressroom must be kept moist by using a sprinkler system.