The Minnesota Star Tribune Print Facility Tour

 Minneapolis, MN

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The Minnesota Star Tribune

Today Donna and I went on a tour of the printing faculty of the Minnesota Star Tribune and other newspapers.  The tour is given twice a month and it is FREE!  

We arrived a bit early so we decided to talk a walk along the greenway that is next to The Mississippi River.

This is not The Mississippi River

We arrived 5 minutes before the tour started and checked in.  I saw this chair that I liked and it was in front of a very vintage print type setting machine.

These are "robots".  They carry the heavy rolls of paper to keep things running.  When a roll gets low they are automatically deployed.

Donna poses in front of a stack of newspaper print rolls.

During the summer they keep about a week's worth of paper in the warehouse but they ramp up for winter to a month's worth.  This is because the rolls sit in a cargo train car outside and they take about a week to thaw out in the winter.

One of the really interesting things I learned on the tour today is that the rolls of paper are made in Thunder Bay Ontario and shipped by train down to Minneapolis.  The rolls sit in the train cars until the paper is ordered.  When the the printer needs more paper they put in an order and the rolls are delivered the rest of the way to the printer.  They are paid for as soon as they cross into the warehouse.  They trip to keep just enough inventory on hand as they need.  The rolls are about $700 each.

This Scissor Lyft has been sitting broken in the "Do Not Use" state since 2023.

These are the partial rolls that are left when a roll gets replaced.  They splice the rolls here to make complete rolls when they have enough.

This is the darkroom where the printing plates are made.

The page is printed on a sheet of aluminum.  The ink sticks to the blue and doesn't stick to the raw aluminum.  The ink is then transferred from the plate to a rubber roller and then to the newsprint.  

This is an old plate made of lead.  This plate used direct printing.  The ink was applied to this plate and then the plate transferred the ink directly to the newsprint.

This is the printing schedule.  Images are sent from different newspapers like The New York Times, USA Today, and The Pioneer Press to this room where the plates are made and then loaded into the presses when it is time to print that paper.

This is the room where the actual presses are.

This is us looking im"pressed" with the press.

They wouldn't let me push buttons.

This is our tour guide at the end of the tour.  He worked here for 40 some odd years.  He is describing using the type machine.  It uses molten lead to make letters and words.  Sometimes that molten lead would splash on your leg or arm.  He talked about it like it was just a part of the job.

That's it for today's post but we had a busy day so there are 2 more posts coming for just this day.  Check back soon.  If you missed, Spam Spam Spamity Spam! Museum, check it out.  We went to The Spam Museum in Austin, MN.