EXTRA! EXTRA! Read All About It!

Our next big stop for Boy Scouts this evening was our local newspaper office. We started off the evening with a few leaf rubbings while all of the boys arrived. I love when our den mom can knock out a few of those extra activities like this. Leave it to me, I wouldn't think about them on a "Go and See It."



Our tour was after the building had already closed but it was exciting to see the process still going - they were preparing the next day's papers already, but not ours - more on that to come!


First stop on the tour - the news room. Men were still on the phone conducting interviews and a handful of other people were editing stories. Tony made a bet with me in the car about how many papers are printed each day. He said 60,000 papers. I said 7,500. Whose ever guess was closer to the actual number had to pay the other person $1. Totally thought I had this in the bag. This is the photo from when one boy scout asked how many papers do you print and the answer was about 16,000 of just our local paper not the contracted out papers. Tony claims that the answer was the same one he said that I just didn't hear him correctly. Look at that smile ready for his $1 and apparently he shared the news with Cooper. (Ice cream at McD's replaced me having to pay $1)
Next stop was in a back room where they paper is printed on large metal sheets. This is the "chemical bath" the sheets go through before they are finished. Interesting fact: Our local newspaper contracts out and prints sale ads for 2 local grocery stores, the newspaper for another town and the local free papers.

The boys are watching as the metal sheets finish the process. This reminds me of an incubator...HA!

Metal sheets ready to use to print the newspapers...

Ready to head on to see where the papers are actually printed. These are the news print rolls - each one weighs ~650lbs! You can see they are as tall as the boys.

Newspapers were flying through the assembly line, over our heads, up and down the walls, and even through holes in the walls into another room where they were stacked. They were then moved to a circular machine to have the inserts placed in them - all by machines!
(Remember that process that was going on that I mentioned earlier in this post - these papers that are being printed are for Bay City not our local area. This machine must run all night to process all the contracted places plus the main paper!)

And of course any scouting event is not complete without a group photo but getting one of these silly boys was near impossible. I borrowed these photos from another den mom and considering she only had a silly picture we must have been unsuccessful at a serious group picture. I'm afraid to ask what Tony is attempting in this picture...boys will be boys!