By Staff
Jason Cannon
Several weeks ago I wrote in this space about how our newspaper is printed. It has been brought to my attention in the subsequent weeks that I overlooked something I assumed everyone already knew: The newspaper is printed here, too.
The Franklin County Times is equipped with it's own press, where we print our newspaper, the Classifieds Plus and several other commercial jobs.
We print newspapers for several other surrounding counties and a few in Mississippi.
In fact, your Franklin County Times is the only newspaper that services our county that's actually printed in Franklin County.
Tommy Nichols and Alton Sills both operate an eight unit News King web press, which prints our newspaper.
The press is capable of printing up to 16 broadsheet pages, or 32 tabloid pages, in a single run.
Tommy is our lead pressman. He's responsible for all functions and maintenance on the press. That could mean anything to replacing belts to changing newsprint rolls.
Alton is his assistant. In the newspaper industry, Alton would be called a jogger.
Alton can do pretty much anything but he spends most of his time refilling ink trays, changing plates and catching the newspapers as they come off the press.
Also in the press area are four additional employees who place preprint advertisements inside your Franklin County Times. Many people assume this is done by machine or that they are placed in there as they come off the press.
Newspapers come of the press as completed sections, ready to read. If there are preprints, or an additional sections, those have to be put in there after printing is complete.
We have four hard working ladies – Courtney Honey, Betty Jo Bray, Charlene Crochet and Sandra Rhea – who hand insert everything that you have delivered inside your newspaper.
They also provide these services for our commercial customers.
We also have Thomas Douglas, who is one of the best drivers in all of Franklin County. Not only is he one of our prized newspaper carrier force, he drives our truck to deliver printed products to our commercial customers.
In all, the press facility here is responsible for providing seven jobs to members of our community.
These seven people are very good at what they do and are great employees that I'm proud to have on board.
I hope now that you each understand their role here, you can see how valuable they all are to your newspaper.