Wrapping up 2021, in the news, has been difficult. I have seen so many struggles. We have had such a difficult year as a community and a region. I made a decision at the beginning of December to refrain from publishing a “Year in Review” edition. I did ask our columnists to submit their own version of “looking back” or “looking forward.” In this edition you will see a bit of both.

We are wrapping up our #newsCOneeds grant this week. With your help, we are very close to our goal of $5000. Looking to make a contribution? Look at the ad on page 5 with the QR code. You can donate right up to midnight on December 31, 2021.

This week is also an “It’s Your Turn” Edition. That means we have reader written content, mixed in with our regular content. We hope you enjoy it!

Here is a bit of fun information on the process it takes each week to produce this paper, gathered from several sources.

Newspaper production process

Newspaper production starts with assigning and gathering news stories, articles, opinions and advertisements, and moves on to printing and folding of the hard copy. Our newspaper is printed onto newsprint, at Prairie Mountain Publishing (see story page 18).

The whole production process can be divided into four parts: Content gathering, Pre-press, Press and Post-press.

Content gathering

Typical newspaper content can be divided into two parts: News/Information and Advertisement.

News production starts with the publisher assigning stories, then reporters gathering stories and covering events. It also involves the marketing department getting ads into the newspaper. News gathering and dissemination is paramount to every newspaper as this is the responsibility of the publisher to the people.

Pre-press

Pre-press is where photos are edited, advertisements are created and composed, and the whole pages of the newspapers are laid-out and designed.

After stories have been edited, the editor and the publisher determine what goes inside that issue, and where to place it. The marketing department forwards the advertisements that have been paid for, specifying how many pages are allotted for advertising (The Mountain-Ear is at 32 pages for all of 2022!) All of these are forwarded to layout to be transformed to a meaningful digital form.

At the pre-press, content, photos, cutlines and advertisements are put together to form the newspaper pages. The Mountain-Ear uses InDesign to layout the paper each week. This software enables the graphic designer to easily compose pages and output them in a PDF format for proofreading and sending the corrected and finished pages to the printer.

The final stage in the newspaper prepress phase is preparing the imaged offset printing plates for mounting onto the plate cylinder inside the offset press.

Press

The printing process is the next step during newspaper production.

The first functions of a newspaper press are loading and unwinding of newsprint reels. These functions are provided by the paster, which unwind paper reels and automatically change paper reels at full production speed (as much as 35,000 copies per hour). Modern presses can print full color on every page. The printing units cannot just print one page like in digital printing; instead printing towers in newspaper presses can print up to 24 broadsheet pages in full color. If the press consists of several towers many more pages can be printed at once.

The folder starts where the printed webs come together. The folder can produce ribbons and combine these ribbons as the pages of the newspaper are separated from each other and the folder lays down the newspaper copies onto the delivery belt.

Post press

The copies are collected on the delivery belt and transported to the mailroom. Newspaper copies are bundled so that they are ready to be put into a truck for transportation. Our newspapers are delivered from Berthoud to Boulder. We pick them up each week in Boulder, then bring them up the mountain. Alternatively, extra preprints from the newspaper press or flyers/brochures from external sources can be inserted into the newspaper copies before creating bundles. Those who subscribed for hard copy, get them delivered by mail.

As always my door is open (in Nederland and Black Hawk), my phone is on (303-810-5409) and my email gets checked regularly at publisher1977@gmail.com. The Mountain-Ear is YOUR community newspaper. Thanks for reading!