IN 1913, on the last page of the Church Times's
50th-anniversary edition, was written:
The workshop and plant of any industry are not matters in which
the public take great concern, except at such times as the present,
when its curiosity is aroused, and any information in respect of
the production of the paper and the producers, apart from those
en-gaged on its literary side, will, we feel sure, be read with
interest.
The author went on to describe the "great strides" that had been
made "in the printing presses of the world" during the 50 years
since the first edition. In 1863, a cylinder press could produce
fewer than 1000 copies an hour. By 1913, a double-roll rotary press
could produce ten times that number, cut and folded, in the same
time.
Great though these strides were, however, they seem
insignificant compared with those made in the past 30 years.
When I began work at the Church Times in 1988, as third
reporter, it was in its last days in Portugal Street, under Dr
Bernard Palmer. By then, it was one of the last hot-metal papers in
the country (outlasted only by the Hampshire Chronicle).
Having been used to word processors while out in the real world, I
had to reacquaint my soft fingers with a manual typewriter (and my
lungs to the Consulate smoke in the newsroom).
The journalists' copy, mine very faint, with rows of xxxxs (no
delete key), was sent to the editor, and from thence to the
compositors on the top floor. It was then retyped on Linotype
machines, so called because they produced a line of type in a metal
slug. These slugs were arranged for a galley proof, and, when
corrected, made up into a page, leaving room for photographic
bromides. If a story was too short, the compositors had different
thicknesses of metal spacers to put, seemingly at random, between
the lines of type, i.e. "leading".
Printers in those days were heavily unionised, though the
Wapping battles with Rupert Murdoch had signalled the end of their
militancy. At the Church Times, industrial relations were
amicable, largely because the editor acceded to the printers' every
request - or so it seemed to us journalists, who, each afternoon,
listened to the printers departing early down the back stairs.
THE move from hot-metal to computers was dramatic and brutal.
When the lease was up on the Portugal Street building in 1989, and
Bernard Palmer sold the paper to Hymns Ancient & Modern, the
Linotype machines were smashed with sledgehammmers to get them out
of the building.
Three floors were found above a building society in Upper
Street, Islington, and the staff, minus all but one of the
compositors, began learning (or in my case, relearning) computer
keying.
I had the good sense to take myself off during the worst of
this. When I returned four years later, to become news editor, the
second generation of software was working reasonably smoothly. My
colleagues couldn't bring themselves to talk about the first
generation. I noticed, though, that most of the staff used a
computer mouse unusually: the IT trainer had been left-handed,
apparently.
Layouts were done on paper, lines counted assiduously, and
everything made up on press day, which entailed a visit to the
printer in Essex, until a modem was installed to send the pages
over the phone.
As news editor, one of my responsibilities was finding photos.
Some, mainly portraits, came from the Church Times files.
For the rest, we relied on the Press Association.
Nowadays, in 2013, we scroll through the thousands of new photos
added to the PA website each week, downloading what we choose.
In 1994, we awaited a visit to the office each Monday evening
from Glen, bearing a brown envelope. "I think you'll like these,"
he announced invariably, producing, in a good week, five or six
prints. In a bad week, there were only one or two, mostly
funerals.
Applying for the post as editor, part of my pitch had been the
introduction of full colour. It took sixth months to organise, but
the 29 September 1995 issue had a muddy-looking protest march on
the front. In those days, the printers allowed us colour on the
front and back, page 2, and the middle spread. Registration was a
constant worry: we learnt not to scheme small detailed photos
towards the bottom of the page.
Since then, the paper has changed in two respects. It has grown
larger: in the 1990s, three news pages were standard, and in August
just two. Second, during the course of 2002, I moved news off the
front page and introduced a full-page photo, variously described as
"iconic" and "a waste of space". The news at that time was going
through a repetitive phase, and I was sure readers were picking up
the paper and mistaking it for the previous week's.
BUT, by then, the concept of "picking up a paper" was starting
to be old-fashioned. In 1997, to coincide with the paper's 7000th
issue, we had launched our first website: four or five stories and
the leader comment on an orangey parchment background.
There was another version of the website a couple of years
later; then, on 28 June 2004, in a third redesign, we put the whole
paper on the web. There was a subsequent web design, and another IT
company. The most radical move, however, came with our redesign
last summer (i.e. the fifth in 15 years). Until then, we had
treated the web as a weekly repository for the paper's content
(laboriously reformatted over two days).
Now, although most of the content is uploaded at the start of
Friday to coincide with the paper's publication, the news is
regularly updated during the week as stories break. For the first
time in the paper's history, therefore, the newsroom is becoming a
daily operation. And that's not to mention our 7000 Twitter
followers.
And the next step? Many in the industry are talking of the death
of newspapers. Watching commuters accessing news on their tablets
and phones, it is tempting to agree. But our circulation figures
suggest that the paper will be around for a while, and we're not in
any hurry to finish it off. But a key to the paper's longevity will
be our readiness to keep up with the latest technology.
Paul Handley has been Church Times Editor for the
past 18 years.