Journalism students had a sneak peek of sections of this Sunday’s New York Times days before anyone else after getting a behind the scenes tour of the iconic newspaper’s printing operation.
The visit of the specially-built plant was arranged by De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) lecturer Gurvinder Aujla-Sidhu as part of a packed programme of academic activities.
The New York Times – whose motto is “all the news that’s fit to print” – is the second-largest paper in America, selling 551,000 a day and well over 1.1 million copies of its Sunday edition.
For more than 80 years it was printed in Times Square, until it moved to a purpose-built facility in Flushing, Queens. The print operation is fully automated and monitored by supervisors who can track the progress of each edition. Up to 80,000 papers an hour can be printed.
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Gurvinder said: “For myself and the students we gained a useful insight into how the stories written by journalists actually make it to the news stand. The huge amount of work that goes into the operation is generally overlooked.”
The newspaper’s Sunday edition is famously huge – it holds the Guinness Book of Records for the largest single issue which was printed on September 14, 1987 weighing 12lbs and containing 1,612 pages.
Students were able to take back a copy of Sunday Times’ travel section and read it before New Yorkers.
Lorna White, third year Journalism and Media student, was among the group who also covered the tour on DMU’s Snapchat channel. She said: “It was interesting seeing how it’s all put together. We got our own copies of Sunday’s paper it’s so big they print the sections during the week.”
Posted on Saturday 7 January 2017