Stop the presses
Behind the Fold is turning four and I didn't even remember until today. It's been a hectic couple weeks since Water Follies and I didn't even get to plan a proper birthday party for the little guy.
The mood around here has been far from celebratory, though, and I spent last Sunday documenting the final press run at the Tri-City Herald. While it would be disingenuous to wax nostalgic as a mere 5-year veteran of this rapidly changing (some would say dying) business, witnessing such a big shift hit me harder than I thought.
Part of why was the sad realization that I had never seen the process from start to finish. While every job at the newspaper is vital to producing the daily miraculous fish wrapper, the pressmen produce the most tangibly important part and the crucial step is often overlooked.
It'll be weird to step out after late nights now that the paper is printed in Yakima. I remember staying up as an intern in 2007 and marveling at the 24-hour bustle of a daily newspaper. It's hard to believe those times are over here.
Fitting, maybe was how I documented it, opting to shoot mostly video and iPhone snaps of the process since I'd photographed the press room before. I hope it does these long-time veterans and unsung heroes of the Herald some small justice.
I opted to embed to YouTube to allow a slightly higher video quality:
In other headshaking news...
There's a nice Q&A at Lens with Mickey H. Osterreicher about recent arrests of journalists.
Lens also has a cool look at Jed Jacobsohn's work covering his seventh Olympics. Really miss the games? Take a peek at Usain Bolt's amateur camera work or an interesting read about the dizzying job of a Reuters photo editor scrambling to make the right decisions fast enough to try and beat the competition.
And for some too-cool old vs. new, check out this sweet slit-scan camera and Ramesh Raskar's insanely fast Femto cameras.
This story was originally published August 17, 2012 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Stop the presses."