I was in Williams Lake, which I have decided to affectionately call “100 Mile House’s big brother”, last Monday to meet journalists from the Williams Lake Tribune - our sister paper that is owned by the same company that brings you the 100 Mile Free Press - Black Press Media.
The journalists of the Tribune were very nice and showed me around the whole office where people are hard at work bringing the stories that matter to the roughly 11,000 residents of the city. However, they also showed me where not just the Tribune but also where the Free Press and many other northern papers owned by Black Press are printed.
Since this isn’t sausage or the law, I am pretty sure Otto von Bismarck would approve of me finding out how the paper is made and telling you, the reader, what I learned.
You see, although we are in the age of the internet and social media where news articles often take mere hours to create instead of days, we still obviously have a physical paper. Usually, when it comes to newspapers, it is printed from specialized equipment and then, copies of the newspaper are shipped off to where it is distributed to subscribers of the paper, like our office on Birch Avenue.
I was given a tour of the main printing centre and saw them do a printing run for me to simulate how the paper is printed.
No, it was not the Free Press sadly, we print on Wednesdays, but instead copies of the Terrace Standard. Gigantic rolls of paper feed into the printers which uses several inks to create a mix of coloured and black and white pages filled with local stories, ads and photos. Then, after it is all said and done, a fresh batch of newspaper copies are produced.
What I did not realize is that a press is almost like a factory, in all actuality. When the press was operating, the employees gave me a couple of earplugs because it was so loud.
So, where does the paper go after it’s printed? Obviously, like I said before, it goes to the distribution centres across the north and interior, depending on the paper.
I feel quite bad for the driver - he has to do an important job of getting the news there, but the distance from Williams Lake to Terrace is a whopping eight hours. Quite a drive.
Seeing the press in action made me proud to be a journalist with the Free Press. We have a duty to inform readers of what is going on locally, especially in the age of blatant, politically motivated misinformation on both sides, and we seem to be doing a good job of it.
Our company covers several regions of the province so we aren’t leaving people behind to be confused by the modern post-truth world.
I believe we must continue serving local communities such as 100 Mile House and I will continue to bring you the news that matters to you, just like my colleagues across the province.
