Nows and Forevers

In the digital age, print still matters. Or at least it’s still causing challenges for some.

Yesterday, a U.K. Parliament report on former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended up being delayed a day because of printing issues. No idea what they were, but we all have had those from time to time, right?

I have been in the news business a long time, and for the first 20 or so years of my career, I spent most of my time working alongside a team of journalists and printers who every day published a newspaper. It didn’t matter what happened, either in the world or locally, there was a paper the next day.

War in the Persian Gulf? Newspaper came out the next day. A blizzard? Ink still hit paper and went out the door, even if we had a skeleton staff and roads too snowed in to deliver to everyone. Power failures on deadline? It might delay a for a bit but we had contingency plans to make sure the papers went out.

The biggest story of my career, the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, shook all of us New Yorkers (and everyone else) to our core. But we sprung into action, and not only did the presses roll the next morning but also a special edition that afternoon. (I can’t remember that happening before that, and credit to my bosses for that brilliant and old-school move.)

All this to say that stuff happens, and we get over it. My reporting career is a daily exercise in hurdles and challenges, and it’s part of the business. This U.K. delay was just a bump in the road on the way to the latest “Partygate” developments.

But it shows the importance of print.