Otterblog

If you were like me, you got up this morning, went outside with the dog, looked for the paper, scratched your head, went back inside. And waited. And waited. The problem, as we noted on our Web site, was a severe electrical and mechanical problem that jammed up our press for more than four hours. It involved some bad paper, a broken slitter, web breaks, the whole nine yards.

If you’ve ever seen a newspaper printing plant when it is running flat out, you know what a thing of power and beauty it is. Absolutely stunning. Like every other piece of machinery that is asked to work hard at high speeds and high detail, presses have problems. The difference between our business and most other businesses that have occasional production problems is that customers know about ours ours right away. Or at least a few hours later.

I’ve spend a fair bit of time with Frank Clayton, who’s our production manager. He’s about as dedicated a professional as you are going to find, and when he says that it took four hours of work to get it all fixed, my guess is that it would have taken another crew about six.

This isn’t to dismiss a late delivery as unimportant. It matters to all of us that the paper gets to your house/apartment/diner/box on time. And in this day and age, when home delivery to your computer wasn’t affected, we take it all the more seriously.