Watch the video report here (spoken in Dutch, with English subtitles) or view the photo reportage below.
This is the press on which Observant is printed, one of several (and much larger) presses at Janssen/Pers in Gennep. In the foreground are the rolls of paper waiting to be printed on. These are the “small” rolls. The printing company uses so much paper in a year that it could wrap the Earth several times over.
Thanks to modern systems, customers receive an automatic notification as soon as they upload their newspaper if something is wrong—for example, a photograph with insufficient resolution or text that extends beyond the margins. Even so, the files undergo one final check at the printing plant itself.
A printing press uses the CMYK colour model: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black). For that reason, printing plates are produced in all four colours. During the printing process, these layers are superimposed to create the full range of colours. This is a major difference from the past, when printers had to mix colours manually, making colour printing much more expensive.
The printing plates are prepared for the press. Because Observant has a relatively small print run—nearly two thousand copies—this entire preparation process takes longer than the actual printing itself.
When the press starts running, the colours first need to settle. As a result, blank paper initially emerges from the machine, followed by pages displaying a rainbow-like effect. In the past, this process took much longer and resulted in much more waste.
Incidentally, it is a misconception that trees are cut down specifically for newspapers. Newspaper paper is made from recycled paper and sawmill by-products from the furniture industry.
The newspapers are bundled into packs of 80 copies by another machine.
Once the entire edition has been printed, the newspapers are stacked on a pallet ready for delivery. At 4 a.m., the storage area becomes a hive of activity as drivers arrive to load “their” newspapers.