A look inside your newspaper
By Staff
Jason Cannon
Occasionally, I like to use this space to explain a little bit of the newspaper business to our readers. I like to let people in on some of the things we deal with every day. Our business is unique, as are many others, in many different ways.
One of the most important aspects of our business is the paper it's printed on, which we call newsprint.
Newsprint is available with a variety of options.
First of all you have weight. Paper thickness is measured in pounds. The higher the pound, the thicker the paper. The Franklin County Times currently uses 32 pound newsprint.
Then, you have the width. Newsprint is cut to order, which means you can get it in practically any size you want. Here, we use 25-inch newsprint.
Newsprint is shipped on a roll, with each roll weighing nearly one ton. On a typical month, we will order 52 rolls of newsprint.
You can print four pages on one 25 inch web. As paper feeds through the press, they are called webs. It takes one web to print four pages, two to print eight, three to print 12 and four to print 16.
On the occasion we have a page count of 6, 10 or 14 pages, we have to use what we call a dinky roll. A dinky roll is newsprint 12.5 inches wide. It's exactly half the width of a full roll and allows us to print only two pages.
Traditional newspapers are printed on what we call a broadsheet format. Our newspaper here is a broadsheet.
Some of our special sections are printed on a tabloid format, which open like a magazine. They are printed on the same kind of paper and they are the same size, the lone difference being that the pages are cut from the top so the tabloid will open like a book.
For example, if you'll take this edition of your Franklin County Times and turn it 90 degrees clockwise, you would basically have a tabloid.
Page count here can be tricky. There are two tabloid pages per broadsheet page, one on the top and one on the bottom.
For example, a 12 page broadsheet edition would be 24 tabloid pages. Our newspaper averages 12 pages, so if we were to switch to tabloid format, it would appear to double in size. However, in all actuality, nothing has changed.
And for the environmentally conscious, all the newsprint we use is recycled and we recycle all our spoils and returns.
If your civic group, church group or anyone else would like to take a tour of our facility here, please give me a call. We'll be happy to set that up.
There are many steps involved in getting a newspaper to you three times per week and they are each an experience to behold.
