NYTimes Pop Mechanics Sun 02-15-15

Popular Mechanics did a long and interesting story — especially fascinating for ex-journalists — about the nuts-and-bolts process of taking The New York Times from bits and bytes to finished product, one of the last profitable daily newspapers.

Tatiana Repkova of Media Managers Club spotted this and included it in her weekly list of significant journalism stories. If international journalism is an area that interests you, I recommend you look at her site, MediaManagersClub.org, and read her book.

When I was in journalism, offset printing was a strange new technology just appearing over the horizon. Pages were cast in lead type and the ink was always black. Now, the Times’s 515,000 sq. ft. plant in Queens uses 3,000 aluminum plates to print 300,000 color copies per night. Other printing plants around the world add to the output.

This well researched story also dives into The Times’s digital operation, which is rapidly becoming the dominant part of the company.

Highly recommended.