"Pressed for Time" / CQ Productions

Linotypes at the SF Chronicle, circa 1960s.

"Pressed for Time": Documenting the Last Days of the Newspaper Printing Trade
"Pressed for Time" is an in-progress video documentary on America's newspaper printers and the grand 300-year heritage these men and women represent. Automation of the newspaper composing room, through a digital process called pagination, has ended their way of life and work as a proud community of skilled crafts people.

We have spent the past decade chronicling the last days of the newspaper printer, capturing the changes in the composing room at each stage of the pagination process. Through their words and their feelings about these immense changes, viewers also gain insight on how one community of workers coped with what automation truly represented: making an entire industry and workforce obsolete.

The rich heritage of newspaper printing, with its important political, social, and literary roots, has been undocumented—until now. Our video, when completed, will be the first to provide a lasting historical document, of importance to all Americans but especially to a younger generation that has little or no knowledge of past technologies, of the working-class trades, or of the role organized labor played in the American workplace.

Importantly for history, "Pressed for Time" captured the final day of the newspaper printing trade. On October 10, 2003, we brought our crew into the composing room of the San Francisco Chronicle to document the last full cycle of hand composing the daily news section. The Chronicle was the last major newspaper in the U.S. to install a full pagination system, which allowed us access to this pivotal moment in labor history as well as hours and hours of interviews and on-site footage. Our film documents the changes in a workplace as they occurred.

At the heart of our film are the printers themselves—the men and women who were still on the job at the San Francisco Chronicle prior to October 2003, as well as those who have now retired or moved on to work in other industries and jobs. Their stories about the days before pagination and their feelings about their craft shine a clear and fascinating light on what it meant to be a printer in a nation that, from its very beginnings, championed freedom of the press.

These contemporary printers frame the historical segments of our film. Newspaper printers were the standard-bearers of America's First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press. Counted proudly among their numbers: John Peter Zenger, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Carrie Nation.

Printers were the glue that held our nation together—they were the men and women who journeyed west "with shirttails full of type," as one of our film's advisers, Ben Bagdikian, said. Their lexicon, including playful phrases such as "get the lead out," has enriched our language. Through the International Typographical Union (ITU), printers were at the forefront of the progressive labor movement, championing equal pay for women and the eight-hour work day. The printing trade also encompasses a group whose labor has been an integral part of the composing room: the deaf.

"Pressed for Time" depicts the evolution of printing as it chronicles this storied community of workers. Through the use of archival film footage, vintage photographs, and the re-creation of historical printing processes, we invite viewers into the composing room as if they were working alongside the printers. The past comes alive as we illustrate the technological transformation of the printers' domain from the 17th to the 21st centuries by highlighting:

– The earliest days of hand-set type, from Colonial times to the migration west;
– The advent of the Linotype during the Industrial Age;
– The modern era of computers through today's pagination systems.

To add perspective to the history of newspaper printing, we call on the expertise of our advisers, including Ben Bagdikian and Thomas Leonard of the University of California, Berkeley; printing arts expert Kathleen Walkup of Mills College, Oakland, California; Tom Johnson, San Francisco State University, and labor scholar Daniel Leab.