Publication Date: 08/08/09
Sunday night was special and sad as The St. Augustine Record closed out its printing press operation after 114-plus years in four buildings.
Presses of all sizes have produced The St. Augustine Record since its first edition as The Daily Herald on Oct. 21, 1894 from the office of Record founder Charles F. Hopkins in the vicinity of 18 Hypolita St.
For years, the company kept a hand-cranked press "just in case." At least two times in the Record's modern era on Cordova Street, it actually produced a half-sheet edition so The Record could keep its streak alive of continuous publication since 1894.
The first was in 1944, during the height of an unnamed September hurricane and again in October 1950 during a nor'easter and devastating downtown flood.
As the modern press prepared Sunday night for its last Record run, all the ghosts of pressmen and presses past were likely watching over the operation. It went like clockwork, business as usual.
Prepress made the plates from the pages of news and advertising. Each page moved on time to prepress from the newsroom. The plates made from the page negatives were attached to the press.
And then the moment came, the switch was thrown and the behemoth Goss Urbanite slowly turned the ribbon of paper. It became The Record somewhere in that process as it moved to the bottom of the press.
The press crew continued to pull papers intermittently from the stack to check them for any imperfections, including color balance and possible page plate slips that would cause the print to look slanted on the page. Nothing was out of order. The press gained speed and papers move faster to the stack.
The mailroom staff lined up the paper bundles from the press conveyer, stacked them on a pallet for transport to the nearby insert machine. Then the papers moved on another conveyer belt and out the door to waiting carriers.
The energy flowed. A few people snapped photos and many people shook hands; the only indications that this was a landmark night.
Outside around 12:30 a.m. Monday, carriers moved about as usual.
It was more like the first night the press ran in the new building in October 2001 than the last. The excitement and the feeling of accomplishment that always comes when the paper comes off the press hadn't changed.
The people who transformed the work of the newsroom and advertising department into the finished product were professional to the end. It was a job well done turned over to the circulation department on time.
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