Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1987-09-30, Page 29PAGE 10 Everything comes together in composing It has been said the composing room is like the centre of the universe for any newspaper. It is in -the composing room that "everything comes together ... and in a hurry". The Goderich composing room for Signal -Star Publishing Limited is where all nine of the company's publications are typeset and pasted up. Naturally then, it takes a highly technical and well -organized facility to get the job done. Seven weekly newspapers are produced Monday and Tuesday in the Goderich com- posing room and FOCUS Newsmagazine is produced every other Friday. The many special feature publications are produced between these normally scheduled times, often Thursday and Friday. After the news copy and the advertising has been run through the 8400s and col- lected inside the light proof containers, the photographic paper to which the copy has been transferred is run through a pro- cessor which contains developer and fixer plus water. This chemical combination brings the image out on the paper in the form in which it will appear in the newspaper. It comes off the processor at the rate of 12 in- ches of paper per minute. At this stage, the news copy and the advertising is given to the proofreaders where it is read, mistakes noted and corrected. When all copy is ready for the/paper, it is pasted up by the page pasteup staff along with those from editorial and from advertising who assist. Staff in the Goderich composing room consists of typists, ad pasteup staff, page ne s s° pasteup staff, an expeditor and proof readers. Supervisors in this area are Lloyd 13usi Lounsbury and Linda Vance. There are 19 mini disk terminals (MDTs) in the SSP system. These are specialised word processors produced by Compugraphic and used to set news copy and classified word ads. in bindery is good Copy is set on a floppy five -inch disk Don Kellestine and his staff also provide which looks similar to a record single such the manpower in Signal Star Publishing as you would buy in a record store. Limited's newest up and coming profit A disk offers 34 "records", each record centre - the bindery. holding 2560 individual letters, numbers, In the bindery, the four -pocket Mueller spaces, punctuation marks etc. Martini stitcher -trimmer -stacker is the (characters). The entire disk will hold main event. 87,000 characters before it is filled, or vir- This machine takes up to four sections of Wally the content of an entire newspaper. printed material (up to 56 pages) or three Reporters and editors type their news sections plus a cover. The sections are col - stories directly onto the disk; typists in the lated by the equipment, stapled in two composing room also type onto these disks. places and trimmed on three sides as well as counted and stacked. The floppy disk is then fed into a corn- Completed book -like publications or puter called a Compugraphic 8400. This magazines are now possible because of the machine takes the information off the flop- bindery. Presently, SSP does the Auto py disk and transfers by photographic pro- Trader and its related publications; cess the story onto light sensitive paper Leisure Life, OnSat, a new Anglican collected inside a sealed container. Church magazine and the company's newest telephone book. The 8400 offers 16 possible type faces fonts) -for news copy, ranging in size from six point (small) to 72 point (large). The copy produced on the 8400 comes off with each line automatically exactly the same length as the one above (justified). The computer also automatically hyphenates words as necessary in the correct place. The 8400 generates copy at the rate of 325 lines per minute with an average of five -six words per line. Advertising is produced on equipment known as PowerView 10s. There are presently two of these machines in the Goderich composing room, with another machine required soon. The operators of these PowerView los can visually see the ad as it is being typeset by them. The ad appears in a box of the proper size on the screeen in front of the operators who set the copy inside the box, according to the instructions of the advertising department, by simply feeding the correct commands in the PowerView 10s. The operators of these machines can completely finish an ad on this equipment, with the exception of pictures and colour work and other artwork and logos which must be added later by the pasteup staff. The information inside the PowerViews is transferred to a second 8400 used ex- clusively for producing ads. This 8400 of- fers 50 different typefaces in sizes from six point to 72 point. rage the Betty Helesic (top) and Lloyd Lounsbury (bottom) demonstrate equipment.