Sunday’s Column – Time For February To Disappear

Feb 23, 2014 by winjaw

Like any business, there are days when you hear the expression “I’ll be glad when this day is over” a lot around here.

Personally, I’ll be glad when February is over. The Little Black Dress does not like the term “hate,” so let’s just say I am not fond of February. As in the whole month. Because if something could go wrong, it did.

We’ve already explained about those two blank pages where the sports section was supposed to go. In a nutshell, our plate maker, which burns pages onto metal plates, which are then put on the press, decided it didn’t want to play anymore. And so we were forced to run those two blank pages. I am not fond of February.

Next up was a newsprint shipment. Now newsprint is pretty important for a newspaper because that’s basically what it’s all about. No newsprint, no print edition. Pretty simple. Now newsprint comes in huge rolls that can only be moved by a forklift. And it comes in two sizes — a full roll (equating to two full pages opened up or 25 inches wide ) and “dinkies” (a single sheet 12.5 inches wide).

We got our shipment at the first of the month. The rolls are wrapped in brown paper, and to save space, two dinkies are packed together. In other words, it’s hard to tell whether a roll is a full roll or two dinkies until you open them up. This becomes important.

So we are going through the daily allotment of newsprint without any problems. But pretty soon the press guys open up a roll and it’s two dinkies. They check another roll, same thing. Best we can tell, the paper mill switched our order. We got way too many dinkies and not near enough full rolls. I am not fond of February.

We are now in what is known as “slight panic mode.” We trade 12 rolls of dinkies for six full rolls with the Fayette newspaper. We are still cutting it close.

But we aren’t too worried. We had a shipment coming, set for last Thursday. On Wednesday of last week, the ice storm hit. And that storm knocked out anything and everything in Augusta, where our paper mill is located. And the paper mill informs us they have no idea when we will get our next shipment. They have no power, trucks can’t get in or out. I am not fond of February.
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We are now in “slightly more panic mode.” It’s kind of tough to print a paper without, you know, paper. So we also went into “total conservation mode,” meaning we did anything and everything to conserve paper, going so far as to run two dinkies side by side (which is highly unusual).

At the same time last week, we are gearing up to do a double run — printing the next day’s paper as well as the previous day’s, which we couldn’t because of the storm.

And I’m down at the warehouse and we all notice it is awfully quiet. Now, even when the press isn’t running, it’s still loud down there. We have four large air compressors that help power the press and inserter machine. The lights are on, but not the compressors. We have three-phase power going down there and determine one of the phases is out.

So we have two dailies to print and we’re getting close to deadline. And we are going to run out of newsprint in a few days. And we don’t have enough power to even run the press or the inserter. I am not fond of February.

Long story short, Georgia Power comes to our aid. And, honestly, they said the problem was fixed by using a hammer to hit some transformer or something that got stuck down the line somewhere.

We got our power restored. We printed the papers. And on Tuesday, we somehow got our newsprint shipment delivered — with about one day to spare.

I am not fond of February.