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The timing couldn’t have been worse.
Last Tuesday morning, a technology glitch occurred at the News-Register, with the end result visible to all of our readers.
In case you’re wondering, the poor print quality of sections A and B of last week’s edition was no accident, and no, you didn’t accidentally get a bad copy out by mistake. They were all like that. Terrible. Difficult to read. Unacceptable.
Such poor quality printing did not meet the standards you expect from your hometown newspaper, and I sincerely apologize and assure you that it did not meet our standards either. Not even close.
For the record, the culprit in this episode, which in all honesty was one of the most stressful days of my 25 years as ANR co-editor, was a faulty laser. The high-tech machine we use to burn the image of a newspaper page onto a metal plate shorts out at 6 a.m., the busiest printing day of the year. Our experienced production superintendent quickly identified the problem, but the solution involved a part that had to be shipped overnight to Aurora.
This meant we had to activate our backup imager, which was methodically maintained for this specific scenario. The problem was that the plates used in this machine were not fresh and we found out the hard way, as you saw in print, that the quality coming off the press was not good.
However, postponing publication indefinitely was not something we could do to save more time, as some elements of the weekly edition are dated, including the legal notices. As the county’s official newspaper, not printing a newspaper on time is simply not an option.
That’s why we reluctantly sent out a product that we knew would disappoint our loyal readers, and it did. We offered a free link to our online electronic edition to anyone who called or asked what was wrong, and we also printed 11×17 copies of specific pages upon request. This was not enough, in our opinion, which is why we have reprinted these two sections from last week’s newspaper and included them in this week’s edition.
The hardest part of this whole story is that this misfortune struck just as we were releasing our annual holiday edition, which reads like a giant Christmas card to the community, from the community. Please be assured that the message of goodwill was as sincere as ever and, on behalf of our hard-working staff, Paula and I humbly apologize for unintentionally placing a lump of coal in your stocking.
From all of us to all of you, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
KURT JOHNSON can be contacted at kjohnson@hamilton.net