Day 4: A Closer Look at the Staff and Production of the New York Times
Today was a cool, rainy day in the city, making it the perfect atmosphere for a morning in the classroom. After wrapping up breakfast around 9:15 a.m., our class got the opportunity to meet Liz Robbins, an immigration journalist at The New York Times. Robbins spoke briefly about her job, and her surprising entrance into the journalism industry as a sports reporter. She told our class that the reason she enjoys reporting on immigration is because “when you learn about another culture, you really learn about yourself.”
Afterward, she opened up the floor to the class, and we were encouraged to ask her questions about her career. One student from North Carolina asked Robbins about her perspective on journalism for advocacy, a personal interest of the students, especially because of the controversy over House Bill 2 in her state. Robbins, being in a field of journalism where many stories and struggles of immigrants have the potential to come to light, explained the importance of empathetic objectivity, or empathizing with the person she was interviewing, without taking any sides on the subject. She explained that over time, she has learned that she needs to be very careful about advocacy, because it is her job to tell immigrants’ stories without being their advocate.
Robbins said she was once put in a position where a woman she was interviewing attempted to hug her after an interview. She explained the importance of boundaries, and how crossing those boundaries can lead to bias, which is important for every aspiring journalist to comprehend and avoid.
After lunch, at around 3:00 p.m., the Writing in the Big City class, along with two other classes, went to Flushing, a part of Queens. In Flushing, we visited The New York Times’ center for the printing and distribution of newspapers — part of the business side of the operation. Upon our arrival, we waited in the lobby of the plant, which had recognizable design similarities to the New York Times Building we visited on Tuesday. It was filled with bright colors, yet modern and simple.
We met with Mike Connors, the managing director of production at the plant. Connors is a fourth-generation employee of the New York Times, and has been working at the production plant since 1976. Connors led us up to a room where we were given vegetarian pasta and chicken milanese for dinner.
After eating, he talked for a brief amount of time about the importance of this specific plant. We learned that they were responsible for about 50% of the 750,000 newspapers printed on a daily basis, with most of their responsibilities lying with the distribution of newspapers across the atlantic coast. However, some of the other 25 printing locations print newspapers globally, to countries such as: Italy, Korea, and Britain.
After explaining this, Connors showed a short video of the tour site. The one piece of advice he gave us before the tour was that we should try and recognize the importance of the large process taking place. “Everything in life is a process,” he said.
As the tour began, we were led through large and loud rooms, with thousands of newspapers flying through the air on fast conveyor belts. The first room we stopped in was the room where they receive the actual content of the newspaper. After the plant gets the digital final of the newspaper, they burn the content onto sharp metal plates with bright lasers. Once they have several plates in different colors, they move to the ink rollers, where ink pads steal the image from the plate and put it on the sheet.
Connors then lead us downstairs, where they keep the rolls of paper, or sheets, that make up the newspaper. The rolls weigh about 2,000 pounds each, and if you were to completely unroll one, it would keep going for 10 miles. 30,000 copies of the newspaper can be made with one roll of paper.
We were able to watch the paper rolls in action, as they switch from one roll to another. While we were there, there was a malfunction in the transition stage, which they call a “break in fire.” The paper started breaking and flying off the roll. When this happens, the team has to rip off the excess paper, tape the roll up, and send it to the floor above to be fixed. If the roll were to break again, they would throw it out. Of every 100 rolls of paper, only two or three usually break.
We were then lead through the mail room, the quality check room, and finally the packaging room. Every so often, it was funny to see bikes scattered throughout the plant, which workers frequently ride to get around faster.
In my opinion, the most amazing aspect of the production plant is the tolerance they have for margin of error. While walking through the production sight, it was noticeable that some newspapers fell off the conveyor belt onto other machines, or ripped in the process of packaging. And although these errors occur, the company is so large and successful that the mistakes don’t make a difference on the large scale. At the beginning of the tour, Connors spoke about how, on rare occasions, he’s had to stop the production of newspapers for breaking news. If the printing of the news is dire enough, and they’ve only printed, for example, 8,000 copies of an issue, they will throw those 8,000 copies away, and start fresh. He explained that in the grand scheme of things, 8,000 is a very small number, and almost insignificant to the company. In Connors own words, the reason for this was that the workers New York Times production plant “focuses on producing the best content, not getting home early.”
