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Managing Editor Brooke Rausch goes over a list of stories planned for the local news pages in the day�s 36-page newspaper. A local news editor, layout artists, a copy editor and photo editor discuss where stories should be placed. With the NCAA tournament coming up, the budgets � or story lists � this week are heavy on local ties to Michigan State University. �We�re Michigan State all over the place,� says Director of Photography Brian Masck. Rausch jokes that with two kids going to MSU next year, she�ll be giving her paycheck to the school, so she likes the coverage. 7 a.m. The first reporter arrives in the newsroom to help edit and flesh out the day�s stories, covering a shift called �rewrite.� 8:30 a.m. Workers at inserting machines in The Journal�s warehouse on E. Court Street stuff preprinted ad inserts into comics sections. The package of inserts is set aside to be placed in the Sunday paper.
The machines are loud; some workers wear earplugs. The floor stays surprisingly clear of paper. Inserts are stacked on skids. The warehouse employs 40 part-time employees and six full-timers working two shifts. These workers are always a few days ahead of the daily paper; the Sunday paper takes five days to complete because of the large amount of advertising inserts. 9:15 a.m. Workers in the press room just returned to their posts from a �lunch break� and are readying for the day�s printing run. As soon as the printing plates � metal sheets with the reverse image of a page embossed in orange plastic on one side � are sent to the press room, workers snap them onto the press drums, ready the gigantic machines for test runs and check for correct registration of color. The smell of machinery is heavy in the large but crowded room. The center aisle between the banks of presses has the feel of a submarine�s close quarters. Decades of ink smear the three-story press units with color, mostly black. It�s a wonder press room Superintendent Max Kuehling can keep his white shirt so clean.
The workers must register each page, making sure the four ink colors that combine to make full-color photos are aligned. Once every three months, tanker trucks pull up to refill the five tanks of thick ink like gas stations refill their tanks. Jim Mercado, supervising the press crew, registers all of the black color. He says the 1950s presses are well-made machines. �You can still balance a nickel on the folder (the machine that folds and cuts the pages), it was built so solidly,� he says. The first edition of the paper is registered and ready to run. A bell rings to alert workers that the machines are moving. After about 15,000 copies run off, the presses are shut down and the cycle repeats for the second, or suburban, edition. The same goes for the final edition. While workers fine tune the registration of the first edition to balance the amount of color, the machines are making 40,000 impressions an hour. One impression is one page. First press start is 10 a.m. 9:50 a.m. The last plate descends the elevator shaft from the second-floor composing area to the main-floor press room. Martin Harris, assistant preprint supervisor, says 59 page negatives � much like photo negatives the size of newspaper pages � came through the plate room from 8:45 until now. Platemakers take each page completed by designers and editors and create the negative, turn it into a printing plate, clean it, bake it and send it to the press room. Only a few workers are needed. �Once we finish a page on the computer, it takes two minutes to the time the negative drops out, 40 seconds to process, eight minutes to wash out and bake,� Harris says. Every second counts. Two plates are made for each page, and each page goes through this process. Most pages are assembled on computer screens, but classified and obituary pages are still created the old-fashioned way: Long strips of text are cut and pasted by hand onto white cardboard layout sheets by workers using razor knives and hot wax. The sheets are photographed to create the negative. Harris keeps a daily production report to make sure the three workers are on track and haven�t overlooked any pages. 10:30 a.m. Wanda Taylor, a Journal advertising sales representative, heads out of the office to visit two advertisers and offer new ads. Her first stop is Pasta Mama�s on King Boulevard. Owner Vicky Lopo comes out of the kitchen to tell Taylor about her ideas for next week�s ad. �We can take the breakfast special off to put a coupon on,� Lopo says. �Is it going to hurt to change the ad?� Answering questions like this are part of the job, Taylor says. �I think we�re more ad consultants than sales reps. We�re encouraged to wine them and dine them. We want to maintain a rapport.� In addition to making sure Lopo�s paid ad appears correctly every week, Taylor gives the restaurant a window poster to advertise specials. It�s another way to serve the customer, she says. Journal Creative Services Specialist Michael Bowers created the ad for Lopo. 11 a.m. Bowers is working on spec ads � ads created to show advertisers their options before they purchase.
Today, he is looking over a series he created for Assenmacher�s Cycling Centers. �I like to build ads with customer benefit statements,� Bowers says. �You�re not buying the product, you�re buying what it does for you.� When he gets an idea for a clever ad, Bowers makes sketches. He jots slogans on Post-It notes. A computer version comes later. He has several scribbled-on Post Its at his work station. The Assenmacher ads, to be presented to the shop owner Friday, have catchy phrases like �Get your Assenmacher in Gear.� The phrase is above a photo of a bike. Bowers also coaches the eight display advertisement designers and teaches them how to use Internet photos and graphics for ads. If the art isn�t set up correctly, it won�t appear well in the newspaper. �Most ads are black and white,� Bowers says. �Essentially, we�re printing on gray toilet paper, so what we have to do is make sure the contrast is good.� 11:30 a.m. Marcy Yurk, a classified advertising artist, is working on ads for Sunday�s paper.
Yurk says Fridays are the busiest for her department: strict deadline, last-minute ads. She�s putting together ads for Martin Buick, Albert Chevrolet and Heritage Crossing Real Estate. Meanwhile, in the cafeteria, Publisher Roger Samuel is delivering company news and presenting the monthly Publisher�s Excellence Awards before an informal gathering of employees. The awards � and a prime parking space � go to employees picked by their co-workers for good customer service. Noon Wednesday is check-printing day. Tim Berlin, assistant controller, says The Journal employed 280 full-time employees and 117 part-timers at the end of February. Berlin is also busy checking a ledger 3 inches thick before it�s given to the newspaper�s corporate owners at the end of the month. 12:30 p.m. Activity in The Journal mail room, or distribution center, has slowed from a few hours ago, but papers are still coming off the presses and onto conveyor belts. Distribution Center Assistant Foreman Tom Harmon jokingly described the main function of his department. �We�ve got to move the paper about 100 feet,� says Harmon, a 33-year Journal employee. But the logistics are, of course, more complicated. The papers come off the presses, into the distribution center, and right into trucks and vans to be delivered to carriers or directly to readers. Along the way, they must be stuffed with inserts or packages put together from the warehouse. Harmon orders the press run based on the number of papers ordered by readers (subscriptions) and carriers who buy their own and sell them. He also tells computerized bundlers how many papers to put in a bundle and how many bundles each rumbling vehicle at each loading bay gets. Today, Harmon has 93,845 papers run � 6,103 to dealers or stores, 17,582 for newsstands, 28,724 for carriers who drop papers on doorsteps, 40,482 for orange tubes at homes and 954 sent by mail. 1 p.m. Lazarre Johnson, clerk in the library, is preparing stories to post on The Journal�s internal library system, available for reporters� research use. �We make sure they�re as easy to access as possible,� says Johnson, who has worked in The Journal library since 1979. Until 1995, the library was comprised only of envelopes containing clipped-out articles. Files since then are in an electronic archive. Part of Johnson�s job is to read the paper every day so he can answer questions from callers. He already has received about 20 today. �Usually they ask when an article ran so they can order a copy of the paper or a photo,� Johnson says. 1:30 p.m. Hilda McShane is making sure schools in the Newspapers in Education program don�t receive papers over spring break. She is The Journal�s NIE coordinator, in the marketing department. She holds workshops with teachers on how they can use newspapers in their classrooms. There are 452 local teachers taking papers through the program. There is a charge for the papers, but McShane helps them find funding through local businesses. Events Marketing Manager Lois Revenaugh is meeting with Charlie Chesbrough of Chesbrough Consulting. She and advertising managers are looking over a customer satisfaction survey created by the firm. Revenaugh says anything that promotes The Journal comes through her department. Among the marketing department�s responsibilities are: helping nonprofit groups develop ads; creating TV, radio and billboard ads for the paper; overseeing books written by Journal writers; creating business cards, logos and stationery; selling Journal merchandise; and overseeing Journal-sponsored events. Later this evening, Revenaugh will attend a Journal-sponsored spelling bee. 2 p.m. New Media Manager Mary Ann Chick-Whiteside is checking to make sure the ads sent to MLive.com � The Journal�s online affiliate � by The Journal were posted. �We make sure stories are on MLive, too,� she says. �Today we have two VoiceLines, that�s unusual.� The new media department is in charge of making sure the call-in VoiceLines are working and readers� calls are being saved to the answering machine. The Flint Journal Connect, a 24-hour automated phone system, offers recorded information ranging from entertainment to news to weather. Sometimes it is used to update stories or as a place for readers to leave messages about a topic. There is a small studio in the new media office that�s used to post new information. �We work with the ad staff to sell ads, hold contests for the Answer Book (guide to Genesee County), Academy Awards,� Whiteside says. 2:15 p.m. Shari Brock, district manager in circulation covering the Beecher and Mt. Morris areas, is getting ready to take packs of information to 144 new residents at Bristol Court apartments. Brock, who has worked for The Journal for nine years, now supervises 53 carriers. �I don�t want customers to encounter a problem more than once,� she says. �I stay in contact with my carriers.� Brock says she has to be doctor, lawyer, social worker, teacher, salesperson and marketer to her carriers, paper deliverers, customers and potential customers. At 2:30, a carrier calls because a customer on his route didn�t get a paper. Brock�s assistant loads her car with papers for the carrier who was short and heads out to deliver them. 3:30 p.m. The personnel office is quiet. Bonnie Raymond, switchboard operator, has made a few employee ID cards, answered lots of phone calls, talked to lots of employees. A new employee is meeting with Personnel Manager Vertie Brewer in his office. Janet Taylor is typing notes for Raymond, who is taking over when Taylor retires. 5 p.m. Night cops reporter Bryn Mickle stops by the Genesee County Jail to pick up a mug shot of a person he�s writing about. There, Mickle runs into two police detectives he has worked with in the past and they discuss a story idea. One of Mickle�s nightly duties is to go to the Flint state police post and the city police department to ask if they have any news and look through police reports. Tonight doesn�t yield any major stories; the police reports tell about things like lost cellphones, key-scratched cars and malicious destruction of property � not events that make it into the daily newspaper; there are just too many to report. 6 p.m. Security guard Art Henry of Alert Protective Services is taking a short break at the front desk. Security guards are on duty around the clock at The Journal. Henry says at night the only other people in the building are reporters in the newsroom and Sports. �I learned where everything is at, and I do a lot of walking,� Henry says.
Janitor Mark Miehm walks up to see how Henry is doing. �We kind of double as maintenance men, too,� Miehm says. �We paint and patch walls in addition to cleaning sometimes.� 7 p.m. Barb Modrack, a copy editor filling in this week as night local news editor, is editing stories for Thursday�s paper. The editor at night supervises reporters going to night governmental meetings or writing stories after the day-shift editors have left. In the nearby sports department, reporters head out to night games. Tonight Brendan Savage is at a Flint Generals hockey match against the Muskegon Fury. Unlike the newsroom, sports often has more reporters in the office at night, when sports action is happening, than during the day. Listening to the police-band radio scanner in the background, Modrack prepares stories for the morning crew to go over the next day. That�s when the process starts all over again.
Staff writer Emily Robinson started this year as a Journal intern. 
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