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Students
visit Omaha World Herald
“That is one big printer.”
These were the words out of every Journalism students’
mouth as they visited the Omaha World Herald headquarters in
downtown Omaha. Journalism students took part of their day on
Wednesday, May 4 to visit this hub of news activity. After they
walked into the door they were greeted by a public-relations
representative and given a tour.
The first thing the students noticed
would obviously be the massive printer they have in one giant
room. This printer is multiple stories tall, prints 75,000 papers
in an hour, and is one truly impressive piece of machinery.
The students had the pleasure of watching this machine in action.
It was unbelievably fast, and fully completed papers popped
out of the bottom of it. The machine is German, and according
to the PR Rep, the entire building, plus the machine, cost them
$125 million. This printer is much better than their old printer,
which the Omaha World Herald is currently removing from the
building across the street. The old printing press is so large
that they had to knock holes in the wall and are still working
to remove the press. The new machine took two years to construct.
The actual papers are written across
the street and e-mailed to the printing area. Advertisements
are loaded into bundles by robots and people, and are prepared
early. The  entire
process is like a giant assembly line. However at the end of
the assembly line are carriers who have to actually bind the
paper together after it is delivered to him.
Paper for this giant printer is
loaded onto massive spools with roughly 600 miles of paper on
them. These are loaded under the machine by a monorail that
goes under 13th Street. Apparently, this paper rips three times
a week, give or take, and they must remove all the paper from
the machine and thread new paper back through. This takes about
25 minutes, showing the skill of the technicians, whose names
happen to be “Roy” and “Lenny.”
In short, the machine that prints
the Omaha World Herald is amazing, and all the students were
duly impressed. The only really big problem with the printer
is that it can create one heck of a PC Load Letter.
- Mason Tye; Pictures by Scott Ritzman
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