Our paper was printed by the same printer that printed the De Smet News and Lake Preston Times – Leader Printing in Madison. Jon Hunter, the owner, has been very helpful in getting our first issue out the door. There were some last minute changes to the color pages and Jon and his team handled it like pros.
Meanwhile, watching a paper get printed and folded is a great experience. Gary Wolkow and Tim Aughenbaugh, both members of the volunteer team that made all this happened were really impressed by the printing process.
"We had no idea what the process was like. It's incredible how efficient it is," said Aughenbaugh. "Now that I know what it's like, I would have taken the day just to see it. It's amazing."
Large rolls of newsprint site below the presses. The steady stream of paper is pulled up into the press and rollers print four colors of ink – black, magenta, cyan and yellow – which, in combination produce all the colors you see on the printed page.
The paper is folded and cut and drops out of the press as a fully finished newspaper. The rolls of paper never stop as the end of the first roll is automatically glued to the beginning of the next one so the paper keeps coming.
"Seeing a press take a big roll of blank paper and pull those sheets through a print press – printing, folding and cutting pages in a constant stream – is an incredible thing to see," said Bill Ostendorf, president of Creative Circle Media Solutions, whose team produced our first issue and built this web site. "I went on a tour of The Chicago Tribune when I was in elementary school and the massive pressroom made a big impression on me. I think that's what started my interest in newspapers and led me to become a journalist."
