Courier-Journal nightmare

Doesn't Louisville also print the Sunday NY Times and USA Today during the week?
For some reason I thought so.
Seems like they got a fancy press that skips a step. I think it is direct to press printing and they kept the old press around for commercial print jobs and as a backup to the new press.
But if they did have electrical problems that meant the backup plan was fucked and the backup to the backup, printing in Indy, didn't work right either.

More fail
Here's the video statement from the publisher, only problem is that I can't get it to load.

http://www.livestream.com/cjnews

 

When three transformers blew up at the Arizona Daily Star back when (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1821&dat=19820723&id=HDwtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=or4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=2719,2089880), we packed up and went to Phoenix and used their gear for a day. Still printed the next day. ... Hard to believe there was simply nothing the LC-J could do. But man, I do feel for the writers and desk people there.

 

Yeah, I don't see why they'd have to wait a full day, either. Most places I've been have had some kind of contingency doomsday agreement with the closest similar-size paper even if they were usually competitors.

I am shocked that they still get to do 20-page sections. And a fine 20-page section it was, I'd bet. But it was overkill in the fat days and it's certainly overkill now. Most people wouldn't wade through 20 pages unless you ran explicit, full-color horse porn on every page.

 

Something similar happened to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1999, but in a strange twist it benefited the paper.

A passenger jet crashed in a bad thunderstorm at the Little Rock airport, killing about 10 people. The same storm blew out a transformer at the paper, delaying publication for several hours. The plane crash happened right after deadline, but the delay allowed them to get it in the paper.

 

After Katrina, the Loma Prieta Earthquake, floods in North Dakota, and tornadoes - companies found a way to get their newspapers out. It was possible to get a paper out, it just came down to some higher up at the LCJ making the decision not to do so.
It might have been money, it might be they didn't want to short change their Derby presentation and coverage for contest entries. But I've seen more things I'd never imagine I'd see a newspaper do in the last 15 years - I figure not publishing wasn't as difficult as a decision as it would have been 10 years ago.

 

This was in their note:


About 43,000 copies of the newspaper were run off the press and delivered to subscribers in parts of the state before the problems occurred. The remainder of the newspaper was being printed at The Indianapolis Star. Copies of the full newspaper are expected to be available in stores and in sales racks by later this afternoon.

 

It's always -- ALWAYS -- an epic presentation. They do a tremendous job. It's the town's great moment in the world order, and the runup of track-and-town activities leading to the race is covered, exhaustively and extensively.

 

I LOVED overkill in the fat days. And I was right there overkilling with the rest of them.

 

Having lived in Louisville for a few years, I can tell you that you are 100 percent wrong about that. People LOVE the big Derby sections. Just as folks in Indianapolis (and beyond) love the large Indy 500 section the Indy Star produces the day after its race.

 

As a guy who was one of the first to do a wraparound in a U.S. sports section -- one of the first, but I was right there, I'd say you could look it up, but you probably can't -- and who once ran the full scorecards of everybody in the local mega-PGA event (complete with circles around birdies and squares around bogeys, blowing up the typesetter) -- I think there are big hometown events you just went crazy over, and the cost vs. expense and all that just kind of went out the window. It was a source of pride for the paper, for the event and even for the community. I think it was worth it.