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Phone (419) 448-3200 Fax (419) 447-3274 General E-Mail: adtrib@bright.net Newsroom E-Mail: atnews@bright.net | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bear with us as we take a step ahead By John Kauffman Take a step back in order to take two steps forward? Well, it's not exactly that way nowadays at The Advertiser-Tribune. But some people around here at times feel like they're stepping sideways as they try to go forward. The good news is that we are in the process of moving ahead once again in terms of modernization. It's no secret to any regular newspaper reader that during the last 20 years, papers of all sizes have experienced a steady growth in the number of advertising inserts included with them. There was a time when having 10 or more inserts in one edition was considered a big deal. There have been numerous weekends in recent years when we have delivered more than 20 inserts with the Sunday paper. Those inserts already are inside the papers when they reach those who deliver them. It takes a surprising amount of planning, time and work to get all the right inserts in the right paper ... and on time. The Advertiser-Tribune traces its roots to the start of the Seneca Patriot weekly for Tiffin readers of 1832. A-T Publisher David Frisch quips that from that time until this week, inserts were placed in the paper by hand. On Monday, an inserting machine was installed in the mailroom, where the papers are prepared for delivery after they come off the press. The change from hand inserting to machine inserting does not mean people are no longer required for the process. A team of employees must be at a number of work stations for the inserting machine, placing inserts in the trays from which they are fed and making sure the insertion work is going properly and smoothly. I can tell you from watching some of the initial run early Wednesday morning that it is quite an interesting process. Through a combination of mechanized moving parts and both air pressure and vacuum, the papers are moved along and opened, the inserts placed inside, and the resulting package counted and stacked. When there are a lot of inserts, some of them are placed into early sections of the paper, and that package becomes an insert for a later section. There is a lot of learning to be done. The people who are in training to operate the inserting machine have a number of possible situations to which they must learn to react. There are lots of adjustments they are learning how to make. In short, it will take time for everyone to get up to speed. Once they are there, the inserting process will be quicker and more consistent than it has been in the past. To make time for the on-the-job training that is necessary, we have moved our press time one hour earlier. That's so that delivery times will remain the same. So far this week, this has had little effect on the paper you have found at your door or at the newsstand. But there will be times &emdash; especially on the sports pages &emdash; when the earlier deadlines will mean an item or two is held over until the next edition. We all are working to minimize this, but it will happen a few times. It may be most evident when Ohio professional teams &emdash; like the Blue Jackets or the Cavaliers &emdash; are playing night games in the West. Those games probably will not end soon enough for us to report the results the next morning. We should be up to speed well before the Cleveland Indians start the regular season. And the end result should be a further smoothing of the process of assembling your newspaper. Please bear with us if we need to delay a few items for a day while we learn.
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