Just days before the new year, a giant roared to life at the corner of Roger Smith and Montezuma avenues in Cortez.
Five pressman watched the 120-ton “Rainbow Press” press start up Dec. 29. They stirred the ink, set the plates, checked ink registration and alignment and printed 2,400 copies of the Free Press.
It was the last scheduled press run at the Cortez Journal.
The Durango Herald, Cortez Journal, Mancos Times and Dolores Star are now printed in Farmington. The press stopped printing the Moab Sun Times and Dove Creek Press on Dec. 23, and pressmen have begun dismantling the 35-year-old Goss Urbanite press. Ballantine Communications announced a partnership with the Farmington Daily Times in October to reduce printing costs.
Pressman Doug Riedeman said he remembers seeing the press when it was state-of-the art 35 years ago in Fort Collins.
“We called it the Rainbow Press,” Riedeman said. “Now, we call it a dinosaur.”
“It has also been called Frankenstein,” said pressroom manager Donovan Barb.
The Goss Urbanite is colorful. It has 10 sections and two levels, and each section is a different color.
The large press has ripped the shirts off of a few men and taken part of one’s thumb.
On Dec. 29, Barb grabbed a printed newspaper spit out by the Goss Urbanite and inspected the print and photographs, to check for color and alignment. The press let off a low-pitched rumble. He ran up and down the length of the press and up and down the ladders to the top level adjusting color and alignment.
“All those dots have to line up,” he said.
At 3:40 p.m., the run was over, and copies of the Free Press were stacked and bundled. The press room fell quiet.
It was fast and complicated work.
“It’s a science, really,” maintenance manager Riedeman said.
“Not many people can read upside down as a paper rolls through a press, but we can,” said Riedeman.
“A good pressman can read upside down, is usually partially deaf and has bad knees,” Barb said.
Riedeman has been a pressman since 1972, a profession that has taken him across the country.
“My whole family was in printing,” Riedeman said. In fact, Barb is Riedeman’s nephew, and Riedeman’s brother, George Riedeman, works at the Journal, along with nephew Dusty Ellis.
Riedeman, 58, worked in Cortez for three years. He started in a pressroom in Riverside, Calif., when he was 17 years old, and traveled to South Dakota, San Diego, Alaska, Arizona and Chicago.
“I’m a loaner,” he said. “They loan me out to put in presses and to bust strikes.”
Riedeman was a loaner in Chicago, hired during a strike in the mid-1990s. He said a brick was tossed through his window.
He said he wants to be closer to his grandchildren in Arizona, so he plans to retire after helping to dismantle the “Rainbow Press.” Barb will manage the press for Morris Communications, which is consolidating printing of its 11 Texas newspapers in Lubbock. Morris also outsourced printing at some of its newspapers in the Southeast.
“It’s my life, it’s all we’ve really done. It’s something I like, and it’s something I’m good at,” Barb said.
“There will always be printing,” he said.
The digital transformation
Newspapers in Colorado have been consolidated printing for years. In 2001, the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News consolidated printing to cut costs under a joint operating agreement. In 2013, the state’s second-largest paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, outsourced its printing to the Denver Post shortly after the Gazette was purchased by billionaire Phil Anschutz.
Readers are turning to online delivery of their news, and advertisers are moving online too. Newspapers are undergoing a digital transformation, and cutting print costs to do it.
In October, Ballantine CEO Doug Bennett wrote about the need to contain costs: “Accordingly, we executed a joint operating agreement with the Farmington Daily Times that will allow us to reduce printing costs, improve product quality and better adhere to home-delivery schedules.
“The decision to seek a printing partner in Farmington was predicated on the cost savings produced through the economies of scale of combining operations into one location.”
Ballantine operates across print, video, and digital platforms and employs about 200 employees that work at The Durango Herald, Directory Plus, BCI Media Services, 4 Corners TV, Cortez Journal, Mancos Times, Dolores Star, Pine River Times, 4 Corners Expos, Adsperity, and other businesses within the organization. The corporation has expanded its digital products and is rapidly positioning itself for new business.
Ballantine Communications also expanded its lineup of newspapers in 2014 to include the Pine River Times.
A boutique shop?
In Mancos, printing is making a revival.
The Ballantine family has transferred ownership of the Mancos Times building and press to the nonprofit Mancos Common Press, which plans to create a center for another generation to learn the art of printmaking.
“This is fantastic,” said Betsy Harrison, secretary/treasurer of the Common Press. She added that the Common Press is waiting word on a Colorado Historical Society grant to get the press running again.
Larry Hauser, who retired from the Journal in 2002, was a pressman for 50 years. He holds out hope for the old lead type machine from The Dolores Star, and that it will be used again, like the Mancos press.
“People still like to sit down and read the printed word,” he said.