Tales of a small town newspaper

Osprey Chief Jennifer Hayes works for the Eureka Times-Standard as a digital imaging specialist and copy editor.

Sitting at my desk, I can hear the bells and shouts from down below me, even through the soundproof walls and doors. The thuds, which happen periodically throughout the night, grow more frequent now. Soon the bells sound again, but this time they are followed by a low rumble that unleashes a small vibration throughout the whole building.

As I open the door between me and the chaos, the sound quadruples in volume, and when I get to the bottom of the stairs and look up, I see the serpent-like press unfold before me.

I am a young journalist. I work at a newspaper. The machinery never lets me forget.

The paper snakes through the press, over, under, over, under, moving slowly, but speeding up even as I watch. The conveyor belt

The Eureka Times-Standard printing press sits, ready to print the next day's paper. The press is about seven years old, and is more advanced than the previous press the paper used. photo by Jennifer Hayes

carries the freshly pressed papers,smelling of ink, up and over my head. I watch as the press picks up speed and the papers become crisp and the colors become sharp on the page as the pressmen settle into a rhythm below me.

The pressmen scurry from one end of the monstrous press to the other, making tiny adjustments with each giant spin of the dials. Finally they are satisfied, and signal that the papers are ready to send out. I reach up above me and grab one from the conveyor belt as they rush past, head back upstairs to the relative quiet of the newsroom and begin to read the next day's, well, at this late hour, today's news.

This is the news of who we are as a people, where we're going as a civilization, this is the information that binds us as a culture. The people who work here write the news, manufacture the news, and deliver the news to the towns and hamlets of Humboldt County.

They work for a small newspaper on the north coast of California called the Eureka Times-Standard. The Times-Standard was formed in 1967 as the combination of the Humboldt Standard, which was established in April 1875, and the Eureka Times which began in September 1854. It has a circulation of about 20,000 papers a day, and publishes seven days a week.

The Eureka Times-Standard is located in a very small media market, number 189 out of 211 in the United States.

The journalists, pressmen, salespeople and others who work here are the newspapermen of a small-market daily -- and they belong to a hardy breed. They don't receive national

"As a beginning reporter you have to pay your dues and learn what it's like to be at the bottom of the ladder." -Glenn Simmons

recognition, they don't have household names like Woodward or Bernstein, and you probably won't recognize them if they pass you on the street. But to their small chunk of America, they are every bit as important as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune or The Wall Street Journal.

It's just after 3 p.m. on any afternoon, and everywhere across the nation, editors, writers, and photographers are arriving in newsrooms to put together tomorrow's newspapers.

As they walk up the stairs, into the Times-Standard newsroom, these small-town newspapermen feel a connection, a tie, between them and the rest of those journalists out there preparing to begin work at the same time.

There are 1,489 daily newspapers in the United States today, and of those, 766 have a circulation of 25,000 or less, according to 1999 Editor and Publisher estimates.

These small-circulation papers are the information source for many small, remote or economically depressed areas of the nation. And many of these papers are the only local newspapers for large areas. This creates an immense burden upon these papers to produce the most news they can for the people they serve, because it may be the only local news they receive.

It also means that staffers earn far less pay than their contemporaries in New York, Los Angles and other big cities. They also work longer hours and do

Ray Hamill, the Eureka Times-Standard's Sports editor, does more than just edit. On most nights he also writes stories and lays out pages. photo by Jennifer Hayes

more things than just report or just edit. Sometimes they do it all. Their sense of pride and accomplishment gets them through their hectic days.

Benjamin Hoffman, the entertainment editor for the Times-Standard said, "The thing that I have come to really love about the paper is that every day 20,000 people, either through subscription or through buying one on the street, pick up a copy of the paper. And whether they read it from cover to cover and love it or scream at it over breakfast, it doesn't matter because they still read it. To think that more people than the population of the town I live in rely on something every single day that I helped put together is amazing to me."

To Hoffman, working for a small-circulation paper, in an area where there is only one local daily paper, is one of the perks of the job.

"I like the idea of putting together a product every day that will be a source of information for people. It serves a purpose for other people," said Hoffman. Many of these small-circulation newspapers are part of larger media corporations, but even those that aren't face the same problems as their corporate-owned counterparts. Most small papers are understaffed and overworked, and many are plagued by high turnover rates.

In the case of the Times-Standard, there are many college graduates from Humboldt State University who wish to remain in the area and are happy to work for the local paper. But sometimes there just aren't enough bodies to fill the positions, and the staff of the Times-Standard has found itself overworked on many occasions.

There are many problems. There are nights when only one person looks over the copy before it goes to press, and nights when one person lays out the entire paper by himself. But for being understaffed and overworked, the newsroom staff is committed to getting the paper out, not matter what problems arise.

Hoffman recalled dealing with one such situation.

"I worked from 12 to 8, went home and was done. I practiced with my band, and then got a call from the paper saying that Dave Jervis, the copy editor, had a seizure and had fallen down the stairs and I needed to come finish the paper. I went in to it totally blind, came in to a stack of photos, a stack of papers, and half-done pages. It was a half-hour from the first deadline, and an hour and a half from the next, and I had to figure out what needed to be done. I came in and started working and got it in by deadline. There was only one error in the paper the next day. I was pretty proud of that."

It is a hard life, and a hard shift to work. Most of the work is done between noon and midnight, and on most days, they're lucky to leave before 12:30 a.m. So what brings them back day after day, night after night? Glenn Simmons, the city editor of the Times-Standard, feels that for most it is a matter of dedication.

David Jervis, the Eureka Times-Standard's copy editor, acts as interim News editor while the paper searches for someone to fill the position. photo by Jennifer Hayes

"As a beginning reporter you have to pay your dues and learn what it's like to be at the bottom of the ladder," said Simmons. "When you go into the newspaper business, you have to know that this is what you want to do, and you have to really love it, because if you don't, chances are you will know failure at an early age."

David Jervis, the Times-Standard copy editor, feels that "you have to have a certain type of personality to be in the news business. It attracts a certain kind of person."

Both editors agree that curiosity is an important thing to have as a small-town journalist. Hoffman added, "You have to be curious, because you can only write about the city council so many times before it becomes tiresome."

In the mid-1970s, enrollment in university journalism programs spiked up by 500,000 because of the glamour of the Watergate saga. Students were drawn to journalism by the promises of meaningful employment, political activism, and yes -- a possible road to riches and fame.

Reality tells a different story now, however. Not everyone is going to become a rich and famous journalist. Many of us toil at small papers.

Pay is definitely not an incentive to work for a small paper. While some individual papers can offer better salaries -- senior staffers at the huge papers can make $70,000 to $100,000 a year -- it is pretty typical to find that most employees of small-circulation papers are underpaid.

Simmons left a very good-paying job with a waste disposal company when the position of news editor at The Business Journal, a Bay Area paper, was offered to him. The newspaper is a weekly that covers business news from Sonoma to Contra Costa counties.

"I took a large pay cut to move to that paper," said Simmons, "but I was doing what I loved, so it was worth it. I love the newspaper business."

Now, as I sit at my desk and read the paper, I feel a bond, not just between me, and all the rest of the people who have chosen to work for a newspaper, and who are doing the same as me, I also feel a bond that ties me to a whole line of "newspapermen" who have passed before me, who have spent their lives dedicated to keeping people informed. I hold the paper before me, and I think to myself, I helped make this, this is why I come to work each day.

And I feel proud.