Watching the press

Tonight I watched the first few papers come off the printing press at the Odessa American. Cade White had suggested it to me over a week ago, but I am usually out of the building long before the files are sent "upstairs" so I hadn't gotten around to it until now. Tonight I happened to be at the office late due to some spot news that came up literally as I was ready to walk out the door and go home. One of the reporters and I went to check out the operation upstairs and were told to come back in half an hour. Michael, the reporter, decided to go home but I just had a feeling I should stay and check it out since I only have a couple more weeks left and I might not be up at the office that late again.
It was worth the wait just to get a look at the operation. Although the printing press at the OA is over thirty years old, it works pretty fast. I got to keep one of the first papers off the press, which isn't really that big a deal but meant alot to me tonight. Somehow, seeing how things work up in the printing room was what I needed tonight. I know it's just a newspaper being printed, but it's "my paper", the one I work at (at least for a few more days). It's kind of like how I think my camera is special and performs 'better' at 3200 ISO than all the other identical camera bodies out there. (For those non-camera folks out there, pushing the sensor to this sensitiviy level loses detail in the shadows and creates excessive noise but is necessary sometimes when in low light such as indoor stadiums or when shooting an accident scene at night. No camera out today does very well at this sensitivity.) I also think my camera and I (yes I typed that correctly) can shoot at lower shutter speeds and still get a sharp picture where everyone else would fail. It's a foolish idea (don't tell Gertrude the camera I said that), but something that I think alot of us feel when we become attached to a thing or place. It becomes that much more special.
I felt like I was watching something special tonight, although in the end it was just another edition of the paper being printed like others all around the country. It's just ink on glorified toilet paper, uh, I mean really thin paper. My photos never look right, and somehow my copy always has crinkles in it, but when everything comes together you have a newspaper. So tonight, I didn't just watch another newspaper being printed, I watched the Odessa American being printed and somehow that made all the difference to me.