Production Problems at the Los Angeles Times

In my thirty-eight years working at the Los Angeles Times, last night was the very first time I wondered if we would deliver today’s edition to our readers. Yes it was that bad last night at the Olympic Production Facility.

The trouble began with one of the new platesetters failing, giving the pressroom a plate starter (when the last plate arrives to the printing press) sometime around 7:15 p.m., or one hour and fifteen minutes late. The new platesetters are computer to plate, which eliminates the need for negatives that had to be hand placed onto the 38 50 plate burners, which is suppose to save time in the newspaper production process.

Once the plates are mounted onto the plate cylinders the presses begin running, but last night every press experienced web breaks upon starting. I would estimate we lost a minimum of fifty webs last night, which is extremely high.

It was so serious last night that pressroom manager Johnny Walker had to turn off the Laker game and return to work at 8:30 p.m., with Mr. Walker still working when I departed the pressroom this morning at 4:30 a.m. It’s not often I have anything positive to say regarding our management team at the Los Angeles Times, but I have to say Johnny Walker did a hell of a great job last night and into the wee hours of the morning today.

Mr. Walker was next to the men on the catwalk as everyone was attempting to get the presses to produce today’s newspaper. He also ran up and down the catwalks and stairwells trying to identify what was causing all the web breaks, and remember five of the six presses were experiencing problems last night. Many do not care for Mr. Walkers style of leading, best compared to a Marine drill sergeant, but he has his hands full with all the issues in the production of the newspaper. Let’s hope he was able to get home this morning and grab a few hours of sleep.

Our plant manager, which we call Happy Boots, was no where to be seen so I’m assuming he was sleeping while the plant he’s charged with running was burning down. I’ve suggested to our plant manager that he needs to don a pressman’s uniform to see for himself the pressmen are not the cause of the problems, as he suggests often.

The text messages began arriving on my Droid just after 3:00 a.m. from several of the delivery agents I happen to know. They asked why their newspapers had not arrived yet, with one agent mentioning his drivers had other jobs to attend to after delivering their draw of newspapers. I did my best to reassure the agents the newspaper would be there, four to five hours late.

Before the newspaper shuttered the Orange County Production Facility, our supervisors would call for help from our brothers in Costa Mesa, which meant sending trucks and production down south. Today we have placed all our eggs in one basket, and have no one to call for help, with one production facility printing all of the newspaper.

Let’s hope the morning shift at Olympic can catch up, so this afternoon’s shift is not backed up to the wall when we arrive at the newspaper for our 4:00 p.m. shift.

BTW, I’m up to 22.5 hours of overtime in six days, which is in addition to my regular hours.

The Los Angeles Times Blog LA Now, has the story on the late run at the newspaper.

I'm just your average pressman and say we need to reopen the Los Angeles Times Orange County Plant, for the remainder of this year, if anyone's listening?