It was in the bowels of the Indianapolis Star that I saw my first photo typesetting machine. The Army has lots of Temporary Duty Training opportunities and I grabbed at this one, even though I knew I would be out of service by 1973, God and Nixon willing.
The machine was as big as a refrigerator, and inside its light-tight chamber, a couple of font strips spun madly around an axle, faster than a clothes dryer. A sharp beam of light, timed by something called a computer, shot through the spinning font strip, perfectly timed to expose photo paper with a single letter of the alphabet.
Our squad of Information Specialists from around the country gasped as eventually a cartridge of photo sensitive paper was run through a light-tight box of chemicals, resulting in a column of newspaper type.
Photo offset, huh. A miracle of ingenuity. Little did I know it would be life-changing.
Heretofore, my only experience was akin to that of Johann Gutenberg, stamping ink on paper via letterpress. As a high school newspaper sports editor, I had watched Bud Akers (I think that was his name) manipulate heavy lead slugs into a page of news at the Lake Region Farmer. I couldn’t help notice that a career of heavy metal machines and saws had apparently left Bud missing a few fingers. I didn’t ask.
The same Compugraphic refrigerator box was grinding and overheating at the Chaska Herald when I got out of the service and took the only job available to me: an editor at $6 an hour.
The emerging technology and the fast-growing suburb would create a space for me to grow and raise a family. Timing is everything. The new efficiency and innovation of the industry forced the consolidation of smaller papers, collectivizing them into chains and corporations, changing forever the ownership of local news, with profits leaving the community, after expenses were paid.
I was part of that revolution and benefitted from it, the ultimate result of capitalism and its mandate to merge and grow.
I innovated and took advantage of every opportunity presented by the digital age and it brought me a good life. Eventually, all typewriters were replaced, telephones were replaced, paste ups were replaced, floppy disks were replaced.
And then local newspapers were replaced.
Self-publishing enterprises on the internet followed new rules. It was the end of an era, spanning my entire career, lasting just long enough to retire me in comfort.
All the newspapers that I ran are gone now, there are new voluntary groups emerging who have realized what a hole in the quality of life they have left behind in their communities. They are bringing local news to the internet in a whole new way. I wish them well.
