Each month, the Community Alliance arrives at the Fresno Center for Nonviolence in the back of a truck. It comes in bundles on pallets, stacked about five feet high. If you’ve ever wondered about how the paper was printed, you are not alone.
On May 1, I got up before dawn to visit Mineral King Publishing’s print shop in Sanger as they produced the month’s issue of the Community Alliance. Mineral King owns three periodicals, the Mid Valley Times, the Sun Gazette, and the Kerman News.
When I arrived, I was directed to Geno. I found him rolling a roll of newsprint about four feet in diameter across the shop toward the printing press.
Once that was squared away, Geno explained how aluminum plates are burned from the computer image of the paper, which was being worked on by Maria in the next room.
The plates are hung on the press, one for each color: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. They must overlay perfectly to make the color image. The way the overlay is calibrated is called registration.
Registration and color balance are not adjusted digitally on a computer. They are analogue adjustments done by eyeing the papers coming out and changing things with knobs and levers. It is truly a craft, combining technical skill with artistry.
Yet, it is also a blue-collar profession. The printing press is noisy, so much so that the workers wear earplugs. It is dangerous, too—a hand can easily get caught in a roller. Every time the rollers are about to be engaged, a bell rings warning employees.
After seeing the newspaper produced at Mineral King, I have a new appreciation of the effort that is made to bring it out. It’s a minor miracle that the computer file of the paper that we send to the printer each month gets to them on time, and how that file is turned into our paper edition is a bit of a miracle, too.
