A Day In The Life At….. The Hamilton Spectator - Part 1

        This week, I had the pleasure of spending a day at The Hamilton Spectator.

         During industry networking night a few weeks back, There were door prizes for attendees to participate in and let's just say I'm lucky #200 ! I had emailed my contact the very next day to schedule a meeting and a few email exchanges later, here we are. I arrived at 9am and was ushered right into the Publisher's office - Holy Incredible View Batman! My picture below doesn't do it justice but it gives you an idea. The meeting at the Publisher's office was a little welcome talk and he basically gave me a brief overview of what I could expect today.

Cool Fact #1 - They made up an itinerary for me (I think that's pretty cool!)


After the meet-and-greet, the next item on the agenda was a tour of the building. For as long as I have been in Hamilton (around 6 years), I have driven, bussed and even walked past the Hamilton Spectator building, so I am aware of how big it is. However actually seeing the building is just a whole different perspective. My God - it was incredible. Bill, who gave me the tour, was very knowledgeable about the inner workings of the sprinting press. He described how the plates are created, how it is pressed on to the paper, how inserts and put between the sheets and I even got to see where it is all dropped off and ready to be shipped. Literally everything from start to finish.

      The picture in the top left - what looks like a roll of paper - I literally froze when I saw it. THAT IS A LOT OF PAPER! I tried to be cool with taking pictures but all that went right out the window when I saw the paper roll. the center is all the ink and the right are the plates. This is what gets stamped on the blank sheets of paper

Bottom Row of pictures is simply how the paper is unrolled, stamped and cut. It was magnificent to watch, It was really loud but I was in total awe of everything so the noise didn't bother me.

After the tour, Bill handed me a copy of today's issue of the Hamilton Spectator and wait-for-it

Cool Fact #2 - He handed me an issue of Niagara News that had tomorrow's date on it ( so what I'm saying is that I got a paper from the future!) This may sound lame to some people, but when I got it, I couldn't stop smiling :)

Stay Tuned for Part 2 :)