The Printing Facility Tour

Conery made friends with one of the distribution managers at The Chronicle.  In one of their conversations, Conery found out that the printing press isn't on-site in the City.  The paper is printed off-site in Fremont by a third party company.  The manager, Jay, has regular meetings at the off-site facility and offered to take Conery and me on a tour.

We showed up at the loading dock door around 6pm.  Most of the work to print, compile, and load the paper is done after 10 pm.  While we were there, they were compiling the advertising inserts which would go in the next day's paper.  Jay said that they usually start the run of the paper around 11pm and finish printing the 200,000 papers around 2am.  If there is a sporting event that goes beyond 11, they hold the printing of the Sports section until the story is complete.  

Walking in from the truck drivers' lounge.
All the snaky yellow lines contain grippers to grab papers.

The papers are compiled on the left;
the papers are loaded onto carts;
and the carts get loaded on the trucks through
 the doors on the right.

The loading of all carts is done through
a completely automated process.

The snaky lines closer up

Five story printing press

The Datebook insert rolled up and ready to be loaded onto a
machine which integrates the inserts into the paper.

The Datebook scroll unwound and ready
for that integration magic to happen.

Below are a few videos that Conery shot while we were on the tour.