Editor’s letter: On the edge of the missing print edition

The Oregonian print almost never appeared last Monday as technological issues compromised our ability to get pages to the press.

I can think of a couple of near-disasters in my years at The Oregonian, but we never failed to publish. Longtime news editor John Harvey started with The Oregonian in 1961, the year I was born, and he remembered not a day of publication.

“The newspaper has to publish” is part of the DNA of an editorial team. It’s like “the show has to go on” in the theater.

We had a shock once when a particularly sensitive part in the pressroom did not ignite and the employee who knew the right trick camped far in the woods of the Olympic Peninsula. We were about to rent a helicopter to retrieve it when another production worker managed to bring the machine to life.

In times of great tension, grizzled editors could safely say to panicked newbies, “Well, we’ve never published anything.”

This just raised the stakes, to be honest, with non-negotiable deadlines approaching and stories not being submitted or photos missing (a cab driver took a dinner break once without knowing what package he was bringing from the Trail Blazer game at Memorial Coliseum unedited film for spending that night).

Despite the nail biting, reporters would deliver, the film would be processed, the white space on the page would fill up again, and the roar of the printing presses would calm them down in their steadfastness and power.

All of this came to my mind last weekend when I was considering going out of print for the first time in my 38-year tenure.

I thought back to the worst publishing crisis I could remember. In 1986, an electrical transformer blew under the street in front of our old Oregonian Building on Southwest Broadway and Columbia Street. The explosion provided power to eight blocks downtown, including our building, but most importantly not our printing presses, which were then located near what was then the Civic Stadium (now Providence Park).

“Computer screens in The Oregonian’s newsroom went blank when the building went out of power,” read the front page of the news the next day. The editorial team had switched from typewriters to computers only a few years earlier.

Desk phones, which were the only ones available at the time, also threatened to die as their backup batteries ran out.

As a young editor, I have never seen so many “suits” – senior executives, almost all men at the time – scurrying around worriedly and meeting behind closed doors while smoke poured out of manholes in the street below.

Fortunately, we had a mutual agreement with the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington, and a contingent from our newsroom went across the river to produce a stripped-down newspaper.

The horror of the past weekend has reminded us that our business, like most now, is at the mercy of our normally very reliable computers, servers, and systems.

My first inkling of problems came by email from chief print editor Megan Otto on Sunday evening at 8:47 pm: “All our systems have failed at this point and we are at a standstill.”

This was a little worrying about the hour. Monday issues do not have home deliveries, and the run for single copy sales is early and short. It was only about an hour away from the deadline for the final pages to be sent to Signature Graphics, which The Oregonian prints.

Computer crashes usually don’t last long, however, so I returned to my book.

However, we then received a message that it would take two hours to estimate before the system would run again.

At 9:22 p.m. I gave my boss, the publisher John Maher, an advance warning. Print a paper at all costs, he said before signing out.

I have connected with Steve Alberts who is responsible for our shipping and circulation operations. What was our drop dead time for the first truck to bring papers to Salem and point south?

Mims Copeland, the print editor on duty in Portland, and I made a quick estimate of how many pages were unfinished, how long it would be while the system was restored and examined and any workarounds struck out.

As the logs passed, the realization began to weigh on us both: Without access to our pages, we could not send them to the press shop. The press could not run without pages.

The trucks carrying other releases couldn’t wait. It was a bit like watching the floods rise inexorably as the press launch deadline came and went. The Salem truck waited until it could no longer. Then it left the dock.

Glimmer of hope from the computer specialists, then nothing.

At around 2 a.m. on Monday, Alberts and I faced the very real possibility that even if we were to print the newspapers, we would not be able to get them to kiosks and retailers. Our independent distributors waited empty-handed for hours. They had different jobs and obligations.

Would we also take a hard stop at the press shop? Would the press officers, who had been on call for five hours, do their duty? Do the presses have to be reconfigured for other jobs?

Alberts and I consulted with Jason Vest, the senior manager for monitoring production systems at Advance Local, our parent company. He had worked on the problem all night but could not be certain when it would be resolved.

Sip. Did I really want to be the first editor in modern history to oversee such a disaster? Would The Oregonian, a daily newspaper since 1861, really not appear?

At 2:24 am I called Maher back. Such a decision would ultimately be made by the publisher.

I’m approaching the possibility of not printing, I told him.

Keep it up, he said.

We continued to work. I prepared reader notes for OregonLive and social media and explained why newspapers were missing. Thank goodness we would have the website to post important news.

We have agreed to open our eNewspaper replica edition via a link for all readers. At least the pages would be published, if not in ink and paper. Alberts and I agreed that we would meet again at 3:15 am

Signs of life at 2:51 a.m. Copeland has emailed that print editors can send pages.

Finally, at 3:06 a.m., a message arrived from the press shop. Most nights it’s routine – but that night it was almost like a miracle: “All pages have been received and approved!”

Had we been in the newsroom there would have been cheers and high fives. Maybe a round of drinks at Higgins’ backbar if it weren’t for hours.

But in 2021, a congratulatory email should be enough. Fortunately, the computers cooperated.

Editor’s Tip: Betsy Hammond researched the growing phenomenon of Oregonians choosing to identify more than one breed. Your analysis is part of our data points series for subscribers.