Get to Know How The New York Times’ Printing Presses Work

January 4, 2017 5:00 am

With a daily circulation of 590,000 (and 1.1 million on Sundays), The New York Times there sure is a lot of that “all the news that’s fit to print.”

The majority of the print editions of the venerable newspaper are printed out of its plant in College Point, Queens. The Times’ eight, three-story printing presses are maintained by a number of machinists, including Greg Zerafa, Jerry Greaney, and Chris Bedetto, who make some news of their own in a new video.

The video below takes a deep dive into the vanishing world of newspaper printing. Both the team and the presses could be considered endangered species, given our current rate of technological advancement. “Print presses are an animal of their own,” says a member of the team. Much like a doctor, machinists need intimate knowledge of every part inside the presses to maintain them properly. Sometimes they have trouble even getting parts to repair them, turning to eBay or Amazon to find them. Yet somehow, they manage to keep the plant churning out hundreds of thousands of newspapers every day. Learn how in the video below.

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