Overall, they've improved -- Dave's Linotype Website

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Subject: Overall, they've improved

Author:
Dave Hughes

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Date Posted: 10:26:00 06/06/01 Wed
In reply to: Dave Hughes 's message, "What effect has New Technology had on newspaper quality?" on 10:24:10 06/06/01 Wed

Overall, I would say the introduction of new technology has had a positive effect on newspaper quality. However, I have one or two reservations that I will mention later. I remember working for my local newspaper in the Good Old Days. Occasionally a brave sub-editor would decide that he wanted some type to appear ON a photograph. This caused much panic in the production areas. Firstly the people who made the zinc photographic plate had to go through an extra process to cut a hole the right size in it. Then in the composing room the block of lead that lifted the plate to the correct height had to be made out of several pieces to allow room for the Linotype slug to be inserted. The Linotype slug itself had to have any shoulders it had sawn down to avoid raising the plate. And at the end of the day the result usually wasn't anything to write home about. How much simpler it is these days to create all sorts of effects: Tints, wobs, type at an angle, the list is endless. So from a page design point of view great advances have been made. Now to my reservations. When I worked for an evening daily paper in hot-metal days it was possible to put the horse racing results in the Stop Press box while the print run was taking place. Special angled slugs were cast and placed into things resembling bicycle pedals. These were then sent to the Press Room where their contents could be added to the Stop Press column without actually stopping the print run. The Stop Press column was dropped with the introduction of new technology. The excuse was made that people now got their racing results from other sources, but the fact of the matter was that it was technically too difficult. My other reservation is that is now all too easy to digitally alter images. I know that images were altered occasionally using the old production methods, but nowadays the possibilities are endless. This could be very dangerous in the wrong hands.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
What Happened to Spelling and Punctuation?	John_Henry	10:28:34 06/06/01 Wed