XPost: rec.arts.sf.written
On Feb 22, 2024, Mark Jackson wrote
(in article <
[email protected]>):
On 2/22/2024 5:14 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:
Unfortunately, the way the internet is monetized with ads means that
every link becomes clickbait, trying to force you to click through
to find out what its really about. You also see this on most US TV
news, with teasers of what's coming broadcast to make you sit
through minutes of ads for the ten seconds of data you're really
after.
Print media avoid this, since you've already bought the paper, and
its ads, when you read the story. "Don't bury the lede" is the slogan
of good print journalism - give the important stuff right at the
beginning of the story. Internet and TV news bury the lede to the
maximum extent possible.
ISTM that these problems have crept into print media as well. We still
get a daily paper (and the NYT in print on Sundays), which is
unfortunately part of Gannett. There's been an increase in
sensationalized headlines, possibly in the belief that this will help
slow down the decline in subscriptions. (They're certainly not
retaining subscribers for timely news, as they appear to go to press
well before midnight the day before, and often splash a story on their
front page that was on their mediocre website three days before.)
I used to work for a newspaper. The first (usually the only) edition had to
be done in Editorial by 10:30. Editorial would send copy to Pre-Press. Pre-Press would burn film and then burn plates from the film, and hand the plates to Press. Press would load up a five-ton roll of newsprint, slap a few 55-gallon drums of ink into the system, and crank. The plates were good for 50,000 to 75,000 impressions, then Press needed new plates. If something important happened, Editorial would change the front page, or, usually, the sports front page, Pre-Press would burn new new film and new plates, and
drive on. That’s the second edition. If nothing important happened,
Pre-Press would burn plates from the old film, repeat as necessary to get 500 to 550 thousand copies out the door. If the first edition wasn’t on the trucks for delivery to remote areas by 11:00 pm, we were late, and there
would be lots of screaming in the morning meeting.
Parts of the daily paper might be sent to plates days in advance. This would include full-page or multi-page ads, the holy grail of newspaper advertising guys. The Sunday paper would start printing on Wednesday; by Saturday night usually just the front page and the sports was left. Have a look at your
local Sunday paper; count the full-page, double-page, and, if the ad gods
have smiled, four-page ads. All of those would be on plates and often on newsprint by Thursday. Things like the TV guide and the ‘magazine’ would
be on paper by Friday at the latest, stacked up to be inserted when the rest
of the paper was printed. If some department store was having an
extra-special sale, there might be an eight-page advertising insert. (Note
that it’s been 30 years, things have changed, what’s a ‘department store’?)
The sports guys were the bane of Pre-Press and Press’s existence, they
would hold for late scores, and God help us if there was a Test series going
on in India, Pakistan, or much worse, Australia or New Zealand. There would
be multiple editions to try to keep up. Same kind of thing if the World Cup
was being played in Europe or Asia.
Modern imagesetters bypass the film step and print straight to plates. If everything is working properly, one Pre-Press guy can burn all the plates for the paper in under two hours. If things are not working properly (the usual state) Pre-Press will start burning at 4:00 pm or earlier and might be late, causing Press to be late, causing the delivery trucks to be late, causing screaming in the morning meeting. It would get worse if Editorial changed the copy after film and/or plates had already been burned, causing Pre-Press to toss plates and Press to junk printed pages.
It could be worse. It could be assembling the copy using a copy stick and individual letters. Mirror-reversed. It still ain’t easy to get a paper out the door.
I ascribe most of the remaining mismatch between headlines and content
to lack of staff, which breeds sloppy writing and absent editing.
Mostly they’re under serious time pressure. If Editorial is late,
everything is late. Regular columns are ready to roll days in advance, but current news must be updated Right Now. Especially sports. It’s not so much the actual writing, it’s using Quirk Xcess or Adumbe InStupid to move stuff around on the pages so that everything fits, kicking a copy to the mono laser if a black-and-white page or a copy to the color laser (the incredibly expensive color laser) if a color page to make sure that everything works (it’s amazing how many errors are invisible on screen but are glaringly obvious on paper) and then sending the completed copy to Pre-Press. Black-and-white pages are one page of film ($3/foot). Single-color pages are two pages of film. Full-color pages are four pages of film. Each page of film gets its own plate. The imagesetter (in our case, the $150,000 imagesetter; a fast imagesetter would have cost considerably more) moves slowly. Pre-Press
has to develop the film, then use it to burn plates. The plate-maker is
slower than the imagesetter. Note that the film developer and the plate-maker were free... if we bought film and plates and chemicals from that vendor. And we had to have a service come in and collect used chemicals; there’d be,
for example, silver in the water chemicals, but more important there’d be nitric acid and various cynides. Just pouring that stuff down the drain was
Not A Good Idea. (There’s a reason why making plates is called burning
them.) Pre-Press was supposed to wear protective aprons and gloves and such, but you could usually tell the pre-press guys by the holes in their jeans and the discoloration of their hands. You had to stop burning film every now and again to remove the old chemicals. And, yes, the film developer was in the
dark room. Film had to be transported to the dark room in a container, taken out of the container, fed into the developer, chemicals added as necessary. A roll of film was 300 feet, a.k.a. $900. Pre-press would eat multiple rolls
per day. God help you if you slipped up and exposed film to light.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)