The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

In the modern era of small-time newpapering, it’s important, of course, to have the gumption and perseverance to go out and talk to people and write stories. And also, to have the wherewithal to sell advertising.

But beyond that, all you really need is a good computer, good software and a good internet connection. Now you’re in business.

When Tom Baker took over as owner, publisher, and editor of The Times more than 50 years ago, you needed every bit of newspapering skill you do now. But in that pre-digital age, you also needed to practically be a mechanical engineer.

Tom was the consummate small-town newspaperman. He was active in the community, and took great pride in his ability to keep the residents of Waitsburg informed about all the town’s goings-on. But he had other important skills as well.

He received a degree in printing management in 1953, and had worked for a printing company in Denver for many years.

In Waitsburg, besides being a reporter and editor, Tom ran a sophisticated printing operation.

Until the end of 1975, The Times was printed every week on a Miehle letterpress, located in the Times’ building. Type was set with an ancient Linotype machine (which still sits in the Times office as a museum piece). Lead was melted to make plates for the press.

About 1,000 four-page sheets of newsprint could be run through the press in an hour. They were then moved to the folding machine.

The Times also had a smaller letterpress (it’s still here) and the Bakers ran a full-service printing business.

It took three or four employees, along with the entire Baker family, to keep all the machinery working.

At the end of 1975, printing of The Times was hired out to a large publisher with a modern offset press. The Linotype and melted lead were retired.

In an interview with a Union-Bulletin reporter that year, Tom talked about his hesitation to give up the old way of printing:

“The tremendous costs were a factor, of course,” he said. “But then there was also my heritage as a printer and newspaperman. Intertypes, matrices, ink, make-up – the whole mechanical basis for producing a newspaper – was something that had become a part of me, or me a part of it, and I wasn’t that anxious to toss it all over. I even found satisfaction in taking something that everyone else had kicked out the back door, and making it go for another ten years.”

As I sit here pecking away on my laptop in my cushy little office, worrying about whether my internet connection will stay on, it’s humbling to think about what it took to put out a newspaper back in the old days.