There’s nothing like watching a newspaper being printed. And getting to yell, “Stop the presses!”

 A newspaper displayed at a restaurant.

At my first newspaper job after college I was on the night news desk, where your shift didn’t end until you checked the first copies of the next day’s paper as they came off the printing press.

That was cool.

Of course, when I wanted to go home it wasn’t quite so cool to wait that extra half hour, often past midnight, for the huge printing press to finally start churning out a few newspapers so us last editorial folks in the building could make sure there weren’t any major errors to fix before thousands of papers were made.

But now I know how special it was to watch the press transform all the blood, sweat and tears of everyone in the building into a neat package I could hold in my hands. Those were moments of pride and wonder unlike any others.
 

For those moments, though, I had to brave another realm, one carefully separated from the newsroom by a claustrophobic hallway and a very heavy door that I was only supposed to open when the press wasn’t running. Even with the press quiet I found that room overwhelming: The size, the smells, the lights, and especially the faces of all the near-strangers anxious for me to leave without finding a reason for them to strip the press and start their work over. 

 

But the worst thing I could do was barge in when the behemoth was at full blast, like I did the time I got to order, “Stop the presses!”

It was a Saturday afternoon and the first two sections of the Sunday paper were already being printed when I happened to check one of the pages my co-worker prepared and saw a mistake that had to be corrected. A crucial “r” was missing in the main feature’s headline, so it yelled: “beast cancer.”
 

I ran to the press room and flung open the heavy door. Most of the workers inside didn’t notice, as they all had thick ear protectors on and were busy getting the first run done so they could prepare for the next, but the supervisor looked at me when the door opened.

 

Knowing he couldn’t hear a darn thing even if I shouted at the top of my lungs, I just dragged my index finger across my throat, and he signaled to stop the press. As the machine ground to a halt I showed him the error to prove my demand was necessary, then hurried back to the newsroom, where my co-worker had already fixed the typo and started the many-step process of creating all new negatives and plates so the press could start again.

 

I will never forget the sights and sounds of that day, just as I will never forget what it was like to hold a freshly printed newspaper and smell the ink staining my fingers.

If there is a temple of journalism, it is the press room: A huge space that demands humility, inspiring prayers and pleas of forgiveness from those who enter. Even the notoriously robust ego of a journalist is easily shrunk when that massive machine shows just how small a part one person plays in putting out a newspaper.

 

And seeing all the time, energy and money it takes to create that roll of information, which will soon be dropped in thousands of driveways, it’s hard not to pray — Pray that you don’t find any mistakes to stop the press, but also that you do find the really bad ones.

 

Of course we humans can't catch all our mistakes, so we also ask for plenty of forgiveness in the press room, both for the minor typos and the major missteps. And while the finality of the press run can be terrifying, few end-of-shift rituals are as tangible and triumphant. 

 

A few years later, that newspaper shut down its printing press to cut costs, and I haven’t gotten to watch another press run since, as every other newspaper I’ve worked at no longer had a press in the building to create their papers on site.

 

Seeing a press run is something I’ve sorely missed, not just because of how cool it is to watch one, but because that machine felt like the beating heart of the newspaper. When every day you’ve spent in an industry you’re told its dying, it’s very comforting to have that heart close by, where you can check on any time you want. If it’s far away all you can do is hope it’s still alive, ready to keep bringing the words you to love to life.

 

A page from "News of the World," by Paulette Jiles.

I turned down my first newspaper job and almost didn’t meet my husband. But luckily “Mr. Wrong” steered me to “Mr. Right.”

A month after graduating college, I had gone on three interviews and received one job offer. But the newspaper wanting to hire me was not the one I wanted to work at, so I declined the offer, sure another was coming. Once it clearly wasn’t, I gathered all my courage to call back the man who offered me the job, hoping it was still available and he still wanted to hire me. It was, and he did.

That was cool.

Cool not only because that job began my career in the business I have loved for nearly 30 years, but because the man who became my husband was working at that newspaper, and we never would have met if I hadn’t called back about the position they offered me.

And who convinced me I should? The man I was seeing at the time, a man I’ll just call “Mr. Wrong.” Wrong because I shouldn’t have been seeing him, and he certainly shouldn’t have been seeing me. Because he already had someone at the center of his life, only offering me a few hurried encounters scattered over one agonizing year, a year I spent hunkered like a fisherman on the ice, waiting for a pull on my line.

I used to think all those months straining for more of someone who could never share my life were wasted, but now I thank them for steering me to someone who could.

See, I hadn’t just declined the offer, I had lied. Instead of simply turning down the job, I claimed I had gotten hired at another newspaper, thinking that would release me without any hurt feelings. But of course my lie just made everything worse, as lying usually does.

While I waited for my invented job to become real, my roommate got hired and moved away with her furniture. For weeks after I sat on the living room floor next to a phone that never rang, my lie keeping me from using it to call that first newspaper back.

And my shame keeping me from telling anyone what I had had done (not even the roommate who was the only other person who knew about Mr. Wrong), until finally I confessed my sorry situation to Mr. Wrong, probably because all the shameful stuff we did together made me willing to admit another bad deed.

Which turned out to be a very good decision, because Mr. Wrong had enough life experience to know what I should do next, and cared enough about my future to tell me to do it.

“You have to call that paper back. It’s a job offer. You don’t know when you’ll get another one.”

So I did. And I got the job. But I didn’t tell the whole truth at first. That came a bit later when I felt more comfortable with my supervisor. And though he likely already knew, he was kind enough to act like he didn’t, and to say I was forgiven.

All that happened twenty-five years ago this month, and I couldn’t be more grateful that I called back for that job. And that Mr. Wrong told me to.

Of course, he’s not the only person who would have given me that advice. But he was the only person I gave the opportunity to do so. And he could have just laughed at my stupidity, but he decided to help.

And because of that I met not only the center of my current family, the man I’ve shared all my shames and successes with for the past 25 years, but my first newspaper family, as well.

 

Thanksgiving with my Times-Herald family in 1997.