Every day for about 20 years as the final pages came down and the bells rang, Jeff Lipsey watched the first copies of The Dispatch roll off the press, always listening, looking and waiting for signs of concern as thousands of newspapers flowed through.
It was loud and dirty in the pressroom, where ink inevitably coated hands, paper occasionally snagged on rollers and a machine – older than most of the people running it – had to be coaxed into doing exactly what it was told.
Those memories, said Lipsey, who served as production manager from 1990-2010, were the first to come to mind when he learned The Dispatch will outsource printing at the start of the new year, ending more than a century of printing in-house.
“I was just flooded with memories as soon as I read that, just memories of all the people I’ve worked with over the years there,” Lipsey told The Dispatch. “… Things I’d forgotten about, those memories started coming back to me. I felt sad in a way because it was a big part of my life for a long time.”
Beginning with Friday’s edition, The Dispatch will be printed in Tupelo and trucked to Columbus nightly, a decision made with the age of the roughly 70-year-old printing press in mind. Readers can expect to see a higher quality, single-section newspaper, beginning a new chapter in the paper’s production, with delivery continuing as usual.
But with the shift comes the quiet ending of something the public rarely sees: the pressroom beneath The Dispatch, where generations of pressmen, staff and students have honed the craft of creating a newspaper over decades of dedication.
Ink on hands, lead in lines
Before The Dispatch shifted to offset printing with the installation of its Goss Urbanite press in 1969, the paper was printed using letterpress.
Letterpress printing relied on raised lead type that was inked and pressed directly onto paper, leaving a physical impression on the page. Stories were set line by line on linotype machines and headlines were measured by hand to fit columns, with even small changes requiring the heavy metal type to be reset in a slower and far more labor-intensive process than modern printing.
Berkley Hudson, who once served as editor for the Lee High Mirror when it was printed at The Dispatch, still remembers the smell of the ink as the presses rolled, the “clacking” of the linotype and the lengthy proofing process. As he puts it, the students on the Lee High Mirror staff were “cutting and pasting long before there were computers.”
“We were cutting actual pieces of copy paper and using scissors and glue to move paragraphs around,” he said. “You do that with the paper version, but then you do it with the hot lead type version and you’ve got to move things around. It’s not as easy … and it’s upside down. So you learn how to read everything upside down because it’s a negative basically.”
Josie Shumake, who served on the Lee High Mirror staff with Hudson in the late 1960s, remembers how frustrating the process could sometimes be – painstakingly searching for potential errors in the texts – and the patience Davis Basinger, the mechanical superintendent at the time, had with the students.
“And, the ink … it was always a mess in the pressroom. But we loved it,” Shumake wrote in an email to The Dispatch. “The last time we proofed the paper using letterpress, I think we all smeared a little ink on ourselves as a farewell gesture. I know I did.”
The ‘modern looking Urbanite’
In its Feb. 4, 1969 edition, The Dispatch announced the installation of its new “40-page, full color Goss Urbanite web-offset press,” a transition made only to “offer quickly-growing Columbus and the area around it a better newspaper product.”
The “modern-looking Urbanite,” as described by The Dispatch at the time, consisted of four units. With additions made over the years, it is now a 10-unit press.
The press was 10 years old when The Dispatch paid $146,000 (approximately $1.3 million today) for it. Today, repairing and replacing its equipment is increasingly expensive and complex.
Mark Phillips, who started a print repair business in 1999, said roughly 80% of presses in service at newspapers nationwide in the early 1980s were Goss Urbanites. The Dispatch’s press is the oldest Urbanite he has worked on and probably the oldest of its kind still running, he said, making trips once or twice a year to Columbus to service the machine for the last 12 years.
“It’s probably one of the better printing ones. Better than some of the modern ones,” he said. “They were just made better back then.”
The biggest challenge with the press, Lipsey remembers, was running quality color on more pages.
“We made improvements over the years, but while I was there, we never got to where we wanted to be as far as our color reproduction,” he said.
In 1996, Lipsey traveled to Chicago to purchase a new unit for the press, which allowed for printing more pages, more color options and the addition of a folder.
“Getting that unit off the truck when it came in and having to carry it down into the alley (was a challenge),” Lipsey said. “I think we got a crane (to) lower (it) down into the bottom part. We came through the back, and then we rolled it around.”
Despite the difficulties, he said all of the work was finished in a day to ensure the Saturday night edition was still printed on time.
“Deadlines were important then,” Lipsey said. “We had a strict deadline, and we tried to make it. We kept the newspaper press running.”
The pressmen behind the pages
More than anything, Lipsey remembers the pressmen that worked with the Urbanite, many of them for 20 to 40 years, he said, noting former pressroom workers like Jerry Hayes, Jamie Morrison and Dan Brown.
“I think it just gets in your blood. That’s what they are,” Lipsey said of the pressmen. “Once they start, they’re down there – they’re pressmen. It’s a tough job. It’s a dirty job. I know after a good run when everything looked good, they were proud of their work. I think they took a lot of satisfaction in that. … They were proud of what they did.”
Kadee Holmes, one of only two women who have worked in the pressroom, remembers feeling that sense of satisfaction after each press run.
“It was always a relief whenever we would get done printing, and I would know we did it. We got it out,” she said. “(Now) it’s up to the rest of the people to get it delivered.”
Holmes said each day started with cleaning around the press and filling ink and water wells. Metal plates from the previous day’s print were replaced and the press was prepared for the new run. Once it started, she would guide the newsprint through the rollers, adjusting ink flow, paper alignment and speed to ensure the print quality.
Holmes would move across the hulking machine, making adjustments, keeping the paper rolling and troubleshooting when necessary. Sometimes the paper would snag on the rollers, requiring a pressman to manually remove the snag. Holmes found that particular frustration rather entertaining.
“That was fun. You basically were on a jungle gym, or at least that’s what it was for me,” she said. “I’d be climbing all over the machine to get it up there. So that was always a fun part of it, just redoing the paper.”
The physical demands and precision required to operate the press aren’t suited for everyone, a reality Publisher Peter Imes said defined the role for generations of Dispatch pressroom employees.
“It takes a unique person – mechanically inclined, detail-oriented and willing to get ink absolutely everywhere – to be a pressman, and for more than 100 years, we’ve been fortunate to have dozens of men and two women devoted to that work,” Imes said when the decision was announced. “Our mailroom has employed even more, serving as the first job for many and the careers for some.”
Aside from the technical work, Holmes said the pressroom fostered a strong sense of camaraderie.
“The Dispatch is like part of my family,” Holmes said, specifically noting lead pressman Tom Hudson, who is like a father figure to her. “I’ve always had a pleasant experience with everybody there.”
Tom Hudson agreed.
“You get to be kind of like a family down there,” he said.
After about 12 years of working on the press, Tom said he’s come to think of the press as his own.
“To be over something like that, you’ve got to take ownership because if you don’t, you’ll put stuff off. You’ve got to act like it’s yours,” he said. “I have a lot of sweat and tears down on that thing. It’s made me scratch my head. You’ve got to think, if something tears up … I’ve got to get in there and get it going.”
Tommy Pate, who worked at The Dispatch for about eight years beginning in the 1970s, said in between printing papers and correcting errors, days in the pressroom often came with laughter and practical jokes that made for great stories.
He said Hayes, Brown and Arthur Blanchard once stuck gum wrappers between the spark plug and spark plug cap of his motorcycle when he wasn’t paying attention.
“I couldn’t get it cranked, and it’s 32 degrees outside,” Pate said with a laugh. “They were a great bunch of guys. They sure helped me along. I learned a lot about the press and the pressroom and this, that and the other. I loved that kind of work.”
Beyond the pressroom walls
The impact of the pressroom extends well beyond its walls, reaching not only the pressmen and Dispatch staff but also the readers who rely on the newspaper and even to the local students who watched the press come to life during tours – an experience Lipsey found especially rewarding to watch.
“For 20 years, I was touring school kids through here,” he said. “They always loved watching the press. That was the highlight of the whole trip, always. … I could only imagine it was probably thousands of kids.”
For Phillips, The Dispatch press is one of several that will no longer be in his rotation of repairs as it and other newspapers shift to outsourcing printing.
“Columbus is one of my favorite places, he said. “It kind of reminded me of the place I started – the old building, the smells and the sounds. It feels like going back in time 50 years.”
Holmes said the news was bittersweet.
“I’m glad they’re still technically printing, but it’s not going to be the press that I learned how to print on,” she said. “Somebody else is doing our paper. To me, it was kind of sad because I was so used to helping print other people’s paper.”
For Berkley Hudson, his time in The Dispatch pressroom fostered a deep understanding of the role newspapers play in communities and eventually motivated him to pursue a career in journalism.
While technology and printing methods for newspapers have greatly shifted from the letterpress days, the mission – and the need to adapt – remains the same, he said.
“I think it’s great that the print will still be there,” Berkley Hudson said. “… I think there are all different methods of conveying stories and that we need to learn to adapt to whatever those are in the best ways they are.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
