News

Stop the presses! Residents amazed to watch
a modern print shop in action

February 8th, 2019

A group of Points West Living Wainwright residents got an inside look at the guts of a 111-year old local institution recently, with a tour of the Wainwright Star News printing plant. Owner Roger Holmes personally showed everyone around, and residents watched in awe as the big equipment ran through a print run of two separate newspapers. 

A million papers a month

In addition to the Wainwright Star, which is produced weekly and delivered to each doorstep in town, the Star Press plant prints weekly newspapers for another fifty communities. When the PWL group visited on January 23, 500-thousand papers had been printed that month. By the end of January, the production number would reach one million.

Preserving local news coverage

Roger Holmes told the group he believes small town newspapers can survive the current movement away from print news in larger centers. While we can get lots of information from Internet news sources these days, he says those media don’t cover local news in smaller communities, and that’s what he is trying to preserve.

Watching her Ps and Qs

Care partner Shauna Lee Carlson shared her recollection of the last time she was in a newspaper print shop. “Shauna worked on the custodial staff at the Provost paper in her younger years,” says recreation coordinator Jenna Doll, “and was always fascinated with the production. She said she can remember back then the template was set with each individual letter, and how easy it could have been to accidentally knock them over, so she was always very careful when cleaning.”

New appreciation for the printed paper

“Betty Peterson (resident) noted that she has always loved reading the Wainwright paper, and that she’ll have a new appreciation the next time she reads it,” adds Jenna. “I’m sure we all will.”

Photo: President of Star News Publishing, Roger Holmes (second from right), shows PWL Wainwright care partner Shauna Lee Carlson, and residents John Scott and Betty Peterson an aluminum template being made to create newspaper pages at the Wainwright Star print shop.

More photos at Flickr: Stop the presses! Residents amazed to watch a modern print shop in action https://www.flickr.com/photos/pointswestliving/albums/72157705210736391