Behind The Headlines Every Day!

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1939, Page 2

Behind The Headlines Every Day!

PRODUCING YOUR DAILY NEWSPAPER IS A COSTLY AND COMPLEX BUSINESS

“AJO! There’s nothing in the paper today!” It is heard everywhere, about every paper. Weli, take a good look at the composite picture above. Yet, that shows only a small part of the complex organisation necessary to produce a daily newspaper of the size of the ‘‘Wairarapa Times-Age. Study this picture carefully. A.t the top left sits a sub-editor busily checking copy brought in by reporters and correspondents'. Next to him is a reporter ’phoning for details of a local

news story. Two typistes (top right) are necessary to handle office correspondence. An accountant (middle right) finds it a full-time task keeping proper books of account. Other sections of the photograph show four of the battery of linotypes at work “setting” the type, one of three compositors making-up pages, the printing press and its engineer, an apprentice operating an intricate machine known as a “Trimo-Saw.”

But the picture conveys only part of the story of daily news-

paper production. Nothing is seen of the manner in which costly cables and telegrams bring news from all parts of the world, nothing is seen of the careful attention and detail necessary in every phase of newspaper work, nothing can depict pictorially the rush and bustle of work attendant upon producing a new paper every day. The capital outlay alone on the building and plant pictured above amounted to over £35,000. The plant is the most modern in

New Zealand. Twenty-five permanent members of the staff are engaged wholly on producing every day’s paper, plus a host of paid correspondents from Pongaroa to Pirinoa. The weekly costs of producing the “Times-Age” run into hundreds of pounds. Yet we still hear people say, “There’s nothing in the paper today.” And all this capital, all the heavy weekly expenses are spent in producing, an article that sells for only 2d or Is per week of six daily, issues.

—Composite Photograph by H. Hope Cross.