Visiting The Adirondack Daily Enterprise: Witnessing The Hill News Being Printed!

After three years at The Hill News, I feel pretty confident in telling you that the paper doesn’t just manifest itself out of thin air.  

First, it needs to be planned out. Maybe you’ve been to one of our editorial meetings — maybe you haven’t. Regardless, every week our talented group of editors and writers convene in our office on the third floor of the student center to bounce ideas off each other, shoot the shit, and plan out the general direction of the next week’s issue.  

I’m sure you’ve seen an email, or two, or 11 (yes, I forgot this week’s) this semester soliciting your help in producing our paper. That’s (usually) written at the editorial meetings! At that point it’s up to the writers to let us know if they’re planning on writing. 

Wednesday afternoon is when the real fun starts. At around 4:00 p.m. our chief copy editor, Skylar, comes into the office alongside a loyal crew of copy editors. Together, they check all of our submissions for grammar, syntax, and most importantly (or most loathingly) for Associated Press style.  

Next, the editors take those edits, put them into their sections, and start laying out the paper onto digital templates. Sometimes that aspect goes into the wee hours of the morning.  

What do all of those aspects of our production process have in common? They all happen here on campus and literally anyone can come and watch them. But there’s one thing missing — how does all that time and production effort end up on paper.  

Well below the 46 high peaks of the Adirondacks and the evergreen pines that dot them, sits the serene village of Saranac Lake. Opposite the village’s historic post office, and a former masonic temple turned Jreck Subs franchise, is the office of The Adirondack Daily Enterprise.  

The Enterprise has been printing six days a week since 1894 according to their masthead, about a decade longer than The Hill News has. Over that time, they’ve managed to do something that many other, more prominent newspapers have failed to — keep their printing press at home.  

In an age where month after month we get news that a different regional newspaper is running its presses for the last time, and where my hometown Buffalo News travels two state borders from press-to-palm, The Enterprise has stayed true to their origins.   

Last week, I had the honor of making the trek into the Adirondack Park to see The Hill News printed in person at last. Once we finish the final touches of The Hill News, we export PDF copies of the pages and send them over to Donna Leonard, The Enterprise’s business manager. There was a point in my Hill News career that I emailed Donna at least once a week for about two straight years. Last Thursday, when I walked in the door to The Enterprise was the first time I ever met her in person, and I have to say she’s just as sweet in person as in the emails.  

I walked into a room of desks, each outfitted with desktop computers, chatting reporters, and most familiar to me and our paper’s staff, clutter. I joked with Aaron Marbone, The Enterprise’s senior reporter, that cold coffee, mounds of paper, yesterday’s lunch, and journalism go together better than a pair of socks.  

Past the reporters is where the magic happens — the room that houses the printing press, and the man that knows how to speak to it, Jesse Phelan.  

The room smells like hot oil, but, like the forests above and around the shop, there’s a hint of pine — a reminder of the trees processed to make paper.  

“It all starts with paper,” says Jesse, whose been in the pressroom at The Enterprise for the better part of two decades, as he slaps his hand onto a roll of 34-inch printing paper.  

Jesse sees his role at the paper as more than just a job. “I’m a craftsman,” he says, “It is my life. It’s the same to me as getting in a car and driving. It’s the same as walking down the street to any average person, you know?” 

“Then it goes through a process called CMYK: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black,” says Phelan, pointing at a pair of rollers doused in those respective colors. Unlike a digital printer that prints everything at once, which you may be familiar with, this one applies and mixes colors in layers.  

Using those four colors, Jesse is able to make just about any color show up in print. But first, he needs to figure out which colors are going where. He starts by converting all of our PDFs into CMYK format (so that it matches the colors he has).  

Then he sends them over to a gray machine that engraves their color splotches onto aluminum sheets, and with a few more clicks on his computer, he prompts an orchestra of compressed air and vibration noises from the machine. After 30 seconds, a sheer pops out with an outline of The Hill News freshly engraved onto it. 

The Enterprise uses what’s called a web press. You’ve probably seen it in movies and television before. Basically it takes rolls of paper and feeds them through a series of rollers with different colored ink on them, one for each of the colors represented in the CMYK acronym.  

Jesse takes the alumni sheet, walks it over to one of the rollers, and wraps the sheet around it. He tightens it into place with a wrench and repeats the process until there’s a sheet and corresponding roller for every page of The Hill News. Jesse looks more like a dancer or an athlete than a pressman as he moves between roller units, tightening dials, banging levers into place with mallets, and preparing the machine for the print run.  

Jesse presses a red button, ringing a bell meant to warn anyone around the press to remove their hands from the general vicinity of the rollers — unsurprisingly it’s advantageous to not stick appendages into a spinning piece of machinery.  

“I’m gonna go ahead and engage it to run without me holding a button down,” Jesse takes his hand off the red button, “then I’m going to bring it up to full speed.” 

Suddenly the machine springs to life. “We’re gonna hear it for here,” says Jesse, “for the first time.”  

The rollers start spinning — slowly at first — pulling long, uninterrupted sheets of paper through, dousing them in ink. As the rollers speed up, a low droning sound turns into a loud drum beat that if you close your eyes, sounds a lot like a train rolling over metal tracks.  

At the end of the press line, there’s a machine that Jesse called the “folder.” It takes the long paper, chops it into individual pages, and folds the paper just how you pick it up on a Friday morning.  

Off the line, the papers are stacked, banded together, and placed in plastic bags before they make their way into the back of the delivery driver’s car. If newspapers had the gift of sentience, I’m sure they’d agree that they make their way to Canton before they know it.  

There are so many moving parts that come together to make The Hill News what it is. Unfortunately, due to our geographical distance from Saranac Lake, we don’t often get to see the paper printed.  

However, I’m confident not a single member of the editorial board would understate just how integral printing is to a newspaper. After all, the word “paper” wouldn’t really fit if it was produced any other way.