What better way to learn about the newspaper than to go to the place it is made? A tour of the Los Angeles Times was a great opportunity to learn about the process that editors, reporters, and photographers go through every day just to have the paper ready in the morning. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures of many things, but take a look at what we got!

Editors always have a morning conference and debate about what story should be posted on the front page. They read the contending stories, make suggestions, and decide how should the stories be displayed. The editors always pick up their stack of "dummies," legal-sized white pages, each of which represent one page of the following day's paper. They play with the "cold types," photographic paper with entire stories, ads and photographs already printed on it. Each of the thick, glossy papers are cut apart with razor-sharp knives, then they apply wax to the back and they stick them on the dummies. This is the way they can check to see how much room is left to be used. The L.A. Times seem to like using the old method of making newspaper. Once they figure what story goes where, they eliminate the paper dummies and move, as many papers have, to a computer-based "pagination" system, in which pages will be drawn on a computer screen instead of paper and stories "flowed" into the space on the screen. Once in the computer they check for errors and add graphics and more colors. Then they go ahead and print an average of 134 pages daily and 444 pages on Sunday.

Reporters usually file in about 9:30 or 10:30, and begin calling sources for stories or head to news conferences or Beltway accidents or interviews. Editors, on the other hand, sit at their computers and read the latest stories filed by wire services, talk to their reporters and meet among themselves to plan the next days paper. When editors have meetings, the purpose of the meetings are to inform each section what other sections are doing, to avoid duplication of stories and to share advice and opinions. The main purpose is to begin the process of picking the six or seven stories that will appear on the next's day's A1.

The Los Angeles Times is unique for having a special kitchen to test all their recipes in their building. It is there that they test for their recipes and discover new ones for the paper.

It is amazing to see how accurate they can be with the amount of newspaper they have to make each day (and even on weekends). Working in the print business can be very hard and demand a huge commitment!