Montana Kaimin's printing - By Leslie Brown

Leslie Brown
J415-Feature writing
Odd-job/explanatory story (my own hybrid)
March 11, 2008


When the air is still heavy with sleep, and there’s not enough light to see if the dark patches on the sidewalk are fallen leaves or dog droppings, Mary Ann Flockerzi arrives at work.
Time is crucial in Flockerzi’s world.
“If I’m late and the paper’s late, I’ve messed up a whole lot of peoples’ schedules,” says Flockerzi, a petite woman with an easy, light accent.
Flockerzi and a handful of other employees work together to prepare, print and deliver 5, 000 copies of Montana Kaimin every Tuesday through Friday.
Flockerzi’s day starts at 5:30 a.m. when she pulls the Kaimin’s computer pages from a computer server in the University of Montana Printing and Graphics office. Flockerzi, a pre-press technician, groups them on the screen so they will print correctly, and then sends them to the “imager.” Eight minutes later, the large imaging machine lasers text, ads and photos onto blue aluminum plates.
While the machine images the plate, she swivels over to the side computer where her cooled oatmeal sits. She multitasks until the imager beeps at her like an oven timer.
The slim woman then carries the plate into the next room where she slides it through a developer, a large machine that pulls the aluminum sheet through like a conveyor belt. In mere minutes words and images appear on the would-be blue plate.
Next, Flockerzi trims excess sides off the plates. Above the cutter reads a poster:
“Play
Be there
Choose your attitude
Make their day”
Flockerzi says she likes printing the Kaimin, and, even after being offered a job that starts later, she declined. Once accustomed to awaking early, it’s enjoyable, she says.
“It’s sort of like you own the world for an hour or so.”
When all the plates are imaged, developed and trimmed, Flockerzi tapes together the appropriate pages with red tape. She delicately tucks the edges under so the pressmen will be able to remove it once the plates are clamped into the printing machine.
In the pressroom, Karl Solheim, an older man who is a press operator, places the plates onto the rollers of the 1968 machine. If not clamped on correctly, the plate could fly loose and damage the machine.
Solheim pulls up a stepladder to the bow of the machine and starts to mete out ink into a trough on top. Below the ink bowl, one can adjust levers so more ink distributes to certain areas for graphics and photos.
He sets down the 32-pound bucket of black ink and checks the paper. Huge rolls, 40 inches in diameter, rest at the bottom of the machine. The workers operate a special crane to move these 1, 200 pound rolls.
Once the students come in to help bundle newspapers around 6:45 a.m., Solheim starts the baby blue machine.
Gary Adolf, a press technician who has worked in the department for 14 years, says the tricky part about printing is balancing the right amounts of water and ink. Once the machine starts running, he whips a paper off the press, quickly unfolds it and scrupulously examines the appearance of the ink. If one headline is brighter than the others or if the coloration of a photo is off, he adjusts the area. He rushes to the machine, tinkers with levers and repeats the process.
By the time the ink’s correct, two 32-gallon trashcans are full of discarded papers.
Mammoth rubber rolls spin other rolls, which sling the paper along the top of the machine to be cut and folded at the end by little contraptions. Meanwhile, two work-study students “fly the web-” collect and bundle the newspapers. Sam Luikens, a junior studying creative writing, and Kevin Lannoye, a junior studying marketing, tie the papers in a sort of rhythmic waltz. They have it timed so each bundle will have about 100 papers.
After a half hour, the machine pumps out 5,000 editions of the Kaimin, and the “flyers” have bundled and stacked them on a pull cart and flat bed.
The beginning rays of dawn top Mount Sentinel as the Luikens and Lannoye start their route. In the van, classic rock resounds. Lannoye explains they have a compromise: because Luikens likes NPR and Lannoye likes to listen to sports, they just listen to music.
Lannoye stops the van and Luikens jumps out, dropping off bundles of papers in front of Shreiber Gym. The boys make their way around campus, stopping at the necessary areas, filling their arms with papers and dropping them into stands. After an hour, the sun is mostly out, and the Kaimin has been distributed to all outlets on campus. A walking route, manned by another student and pull cart, has covered some of the interior buildings around the oval.
Lannoye, behind the wheel, says he’s delivered newspapers for five years. Luikens has worked for three years. Although he enjoys the job, his original conception of the paper was a classic image of delivering papers.
“I wanted to ride a bicycle with a basket of papers.”