Leroy N. Soetoro
2024-04-06 21:40:37 UTC
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-10/olympic-plant-last-day
The swing shift is about to start at a plant that is about to close. Late
winter sunlight casts long shadows from workers crossing the parking lot,
where stray cats skulk among the cars.
Only two weeks left, and the routine is unchanged: clocking in at 5 p.m.,
heading to the locker room, trading street clothes for work wear. If
anyone feels sadness or loss, no one shows it. They have a newspaper to
put out.
Were trying to do this with a little class and dignity, said shift
supervisor Kal Hamalainen.
Sixteen months ago, they were told that the Los Angeles Times, their
employer, would outsource the printing of the paper and that the Olympic
printing plant, once a crown jewel in a vast media empire, would shut down
sometime in 2024.
The decision was set in motion many years earlier when the Chicago-based
Tribune Co., then owner of The Times, sold its historic properties, and
The Times became a tenant.
Now, six years after Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought The Times in 2018, the
lease on the Olympic plant is expiring, and paying rent has become
untenable. The paper will be printed in Riverside by the Southern
California Newspaper Group, with its circulation numbers remaining the
same.
Technology and economics have changed dramatically, and were
transitioning to a new era for our business, Times President and Chief
Operating Officer Chris Argentieri said in a statement, citing both the
daily newspaper and digital platforms.
March 10 will be the last run of The Times at the Olympic plant.
Dressed in blue pants and blue shirts with a Times eagle patch, the
workers find their places throughout the sprawling facility. Each is a
crucial link in a chain of production often called the daily miracle: that
alchemical transformation of words and pictures into a newspaper to be
held, sold, mailed or tossed onto any driveway, any doorstep in the city.
What once was so easy to take for granted has never seemed so remarkable.
They have watched as their crews have been cut, three shifts reduced to
one. They once printed other papers besides The Times, and those have gone
elsewhere. But its hard to be nostalgic over what seems inevitable.
Newspapers have suffered many depredations over the years, from the
internet to cost-cutting shareholders to skepticism and disinterest in the
written word. With print readership declining in most markets, many media
outlets are publishing stories online before printing them. The Times is
following this trend, though it consistently ranks among the six largest
newspapers in the country for print circulation.
But thats another story. On this Friday night, Feb. 23, whats more
important is a Ukrainian womans search for her husband, a jurys verdict
in a hit-and-run, and in sports, a profile of UCLAs mercurial basketball
coach, as well as the obituaries, comics and horoscopes.
Press operators gather to review the run: Tomorrows paper will have color
on all but one of the 22 pages. Theyll start at 8:30, print a little more
than 100,000 copies and be done in less than two hours.
To step inside the Olympic printing plant is to step inside a time capsule
enshrining a 19th century product manufactured with 20th century
technology and poised for 21st century obsolescence.
Within these walls was the future of Los Angeles and Southern California,
as once imagined by the owners of The Times. Fueled by a diverse economy
a dividend of the postwar boom years this building, likened by one
manager to the Taj Mahal, was dedicated on March 6, 1990. (The paper had
been printed on the companys aged presses in the basement of its
headquarters downtown.)
This was to be a model for the world, not just Southern California, said
Tom Johnson, 82, publisher from 1980 to 1989.
For the record:
6:00 p.m. March 11, 2024An earlier version of this report said that
revenue for The Times topped $3.7 billion in 1991. Revenue for the Times
Mirror Corp. topped $3.7 billion that year.
It cost $230 million, the lions share of a nearly half-billion-dollar
expenditure that saw the construction of a printing plant in Chatsworth
and the renovation of an existing production facility in Costa Mesa. Those
were halcyon days for The Times, whose parent corporation, Times Mirror,
posted more than $3.7 billion in revenue in 1991.
Come visit the 21st century, Times readers were encouraged in an
advertisement inviting them to tour the new Olympic plant.
Its story was told by numbers: a 26-acre site; a 684,491-square-foot
building; six presses capable of printing 70,000 96-page papers per hour;
a 400,000-gallon underground water tank for fire suppression; six 6,200-
gallon tanks of color ink; a warehouse capable of holding a 65-day supply
of paper; and a 148-seat cafeteria for nearly 500 employees.
Beyond the numbers was the Jetsons quality of the place.
Robotic vehicles delivered rolls of paper from the warehouse to machines
that fed the presses. Doors opened at the push of a button. Conveyors
whisked printed papers to automated bundlers and then to awaiting pallets,
hands free.
At the center of it all were the six presses, three on one side and three
on the other, running almost two football fields long, connected by a
nearly soundproof room with windows angling overhead, providing press
operators with easy line of sight and silent escape from the incessant
100-decibel thrum.
The lobby, as elegant as an art museum, was finished in marble and
hardwood and featured a glass wall, three stories tall, overlooking the
presses that receded far in the distance. In the floor lay a time capsule,
a measure of the owners faith in the future, to be opened on the papers
bicentennial: Dec. 4, 2081.
Bob Lampher came to work at the Olympic plant in 1989 as the presses were
being installed. He had started at the Times 22 years earlier, a dream
job after working the presses for the Anaheim Bulletin, the Downey
Southeast News and the Costa Mesa Daily Pilot.
Oly as the plant was known was the most modern pressroom around,
said Lampher, 82, a retired superintendent. When I first got here, my jaw
dropped. It was simply beautiful, and I thought it would run forever.
The assumption is forgivable. The Times weekday circulation spread
among the Olympic plant, as well as Orange County and the San Fernando
Valley printing facilities was 1.2 million; 1.5 million on Sundays.
(Today, success is measured by digital subscriptions, currently close to
550,000.)
To meet that printed volume for a newspaper so filled with advertising
that it ranged from 100 to 200 pages daily (on the Sunday after
Thanksgiving 1993, the paper was a whopping 592 pages) managers
choreographed a round-the-clock dance that pushed newsprint through the
presses at nearly 30 mph, resulting in close to 60,000 papers printed in
an hour.
The sound was like a thundering locomotive. Ink mist and paper dust flew
through the air. Margins of error were unforgiving.
When youre doing it, it boggles the mind, said Lampher, who left The
Times in 2002. I would go back tomorrow just to hear those presses
running again.
His buddy and former press room manager, Jack Boethling, 77, understands.
When you get ink in your veins, theres nothing like the roar of the
presses going at full speed.
As the swing shift gets underway, Emmett Jaime pries inked plates off
cylinders. A Dead Kennedys song plays on a radio boom box, as a bell rings
a brief warning each time a cylinder turns.
Jaime, 56, plans to take a little time off before looking for another job.
Hed like to work eight more years, but he followed his father to The
Times when he was 19 and knows only this world.
John Martin, 60, sits at an operators console, studying a copy of a real
estate section, whose advertiser is known to be especially picky. Hes
making sure the columns of type and photographs sit squarely on the page
with equal margins top and bottom.
Its been a great, great, great, great run, he said, describing his 43
years with The Times. When he started, his seniority number was 380. He
had hoped one day to make No. 1 but is satisfied to be No. 22.
In the paper warehouse, Marcus Arnwine, 64, takes a quick inventory of the
newsprint. Once a thick forest with rolls stacked five high to the
ceiling, it is now a small glade as stock runs low.
Im going to miss the wealth of knowledge in this place, said Arnwine,
who started here when he was 20. There was always someone here who knew
something you needed to know.
Neither Martin nor Arnwine is certain what their next step will be,
whether to look for work or retire.
Later that evening, Adam Lee is in the plate room imprinting digital
files, produced by editors and page designers, onto aluminum sheets. The
air, bathed yellow by safe lights, smells of photographic chemicals and is
filled with a rhythmic clicking and a shuttling swoosh.
Lee, 46, is one of the few who has a new job lined up. He started here 18
years ago, joining his stepmother and his uncle, as well his father, who
put in 47 years before retiring.
His story is a familiar one: a pressroom of multigenerational employees
banking on good benefits, good income and challenging work.
When we first started, Hamalainen said, it was common for an old-timer
to take a new hire aside and say, Well, kid, youll have a job for life.
Today in the buildings growing emptiness, they are still a community kept
close by their commitment to that work, proud of their craft and eager to
dazzle visitors with technical explanations of a job that took years to
master: the speed of the paper, the proportions of water and ink, the
ability to make a fix on the fly.
They knew there were risks. Some lost fingers in the presses or wrenched
knees working on the floor. Some lost marriages to the strain of an
unforgiving schedule.
As often as they held history in their hands the Gulf War, 9/11, the
invasion of Iraq, the death of John Wooden, of Kobe and the pandemic the
work never allowed lingering, and they never missed a deadline.
They lived by the clock and by schedules defined by the vastness of
Southern California. They had to know when to finish a run to make a 6
a.m. delivery to Santa Barbara, San Diego, Palm Springs.
Old news doesnt sell, Lampher said.
By 8:44, the presses are rolling at a modest clip. Crews grab from the
conveyor early copies being sidelined as waste. They thumb through pages
to make sure the ink density is proper, that the color is in registration,
the margins are set, pagination perfect, date accurate.
They make refinements and by 9:15 set the throttle to a full gallop,
45,000 papers an hour. Overhead, the newsprint whips by in a blur, running
through a succession of cylinders inked cyan, magenta, yellow and black,
before converging into a central machine that folds and cuts it into
individual papers.
They feel that familiar thrum in their chests. They breathe the moist,
almost humid air, and still marvel that such brutish machinery can produce
such delicate results.
Its like an NFL player who can also be a ballerina, Hamalainen said.
There is so much strength, power, endurance and finesse in this
equipment.
They find it hard to believe that once they are done, the presses will be
dismantled and sold for scrap. The building and the property will be
turned into movie and television production studios, said a spokesperson
for the owner, Atlas Capital Group.
Then at 10:31, the pitch of the whirring presses begins to drop as they
slow, soon coming to a stop with 107,481 copies printed.
A few minutes later, a voice comes over a loudspeaker: No finals.
And they are done. A conveyor clatters as the last papers are carried to
the bundlers. The first delivery truck has already left. The last truck
will leave at 12:45 a.m.
The swing shift now scatters. Some of the crew strip plates off the
presses. Some sit back and read tomorrows news, eschewing The Times
website for the printed paper. A few head to the cafeteria to watch a
movie on their phones or to the fitness room for a few reps before heading
home.
The witching hour has begun, a disquieting moment for them to have nothing
to do. Usually, theyd be cleaning presses and getting ready for another
run, but today such diligence doesnt make much sense.
Hamalainen steps out onto the balcony where some of the crew has gathered.
From this vantage, the Olympic plant has always felt vital to Los Angeles.
Two miles away, the skyscrapers of the financial district light up in the
night sky, windows glowing against the darkness. City Hall glows blue and
yellow in honor of Ukraine on the second anniversary of the war. Distant
sirens and horns and the whoosh of the nearby freeway provide the
accompanying pulse.
They speak easily among themselves, their emotions masked by familiar
banter, old memories and pride.
It used to be that the quietest time was Sunday morning, said
Hamalainen, once the weeks final run completed at 2:30 a.m.
Yeah, and in those days, Macys was the big advertiser, said pressman
Joaquin Velazquez, 65. He started in 1984. Remember that? Now, maybe
there will be one ad.
Used to be a 16-pounder on Black Fridays.
Yep, and more than a million papers every day.
They know theyre running on habit and adrenaline. They know there will be
a bit of a freefall once theyre done.
Theyre hiring at the Arizona Republic and the Bay Area News Group and
the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hamalainen said. Theres work, but you
have to be willing to move away.
Velazquez draws on his cigarette. Soon, he will no longer be commuting
four hours a day from his home in Eastvale.
Its sad to see it come to an end like this, but were blessed to hit the
finish line, Velazquez said.
You know, I think Im going to sneak back in, just to see it all cleared
out, Hamalainen said. This is going to be one big empty building.
--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.
The swing shift is about to start at a plant that is about to close. Late
winter sunlight casts long shadows from workers crossing the parking lot,
where stray cats skulk among the cars.
Only two weeks left, and the routine is unchanged: clocking in at 5 p.m.,
heading to the locker room, trading street clothes for work wear. If
anyone feels sadness or loss, no one shows it. They have a newspaper to
put out.
Were trying to do this with a little class and dignity, said shift
supervisor Kal Hamalainen.
Sixteen months ago, they were told that the Los Angeles Times, their
employer, would outsource the printing of the paper and that the Olympic
printing plant, once a crown jewel in a vast media empire, would shut down
sometime in 2024.
The decision was set in motion many years earlier when the Chicago-based
Tribune Co., then owner of The Times, sold its historic properties, and
The Times became a tenant.
Now, six years after Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought The Times in 2018, the
lease on the Olympic plant is expiring, and paying rent has become
untenable. The paper will be printed in Riverside by the Southern
California Newspaper Group, with its circulation numbers remaining the
same.
Technology and economics have changed dramatically, and were
transitioning to a new era for our business, Times President and Chief
Operating Officer Chris Argentieri said in a statement, citing both the
daily newspaper and digital platforms.
March 10 will be the last run of The Times at the Olympic plant.
Dressed in blue pants and blue shirts with a Times eagle patch, the
workers find their places throughout the sprawling facility. Each is a
crucial link in a chain of production often called the daily miracle: that
alchemical transformation of words and pictures into a newspaper to be
held, sold, mailed or tossed onto any driveway, any doorstep in the city.
What once was so easy to take for granted has never seemed so remarkable.
They have watched as their crews have been cut, three shifts reduced to
one. They once printed other papers besides The Times, and those have gone
elsewhere. But its hard to be nostalgic over what seems inevitable.
Newspapers have suffered many depredations over the years, from the
internet to cost-cutting shareholders to skepticism and disinterest in the
written word. With print readership declining in most markets, many media
outlets are publishing stories online before printing them. The Times is
following this trend, though it consistently ranks among the six largest
newspapers in the country for print circulation.
But thats another story. On this Friday night, Feb. 23, whats more
important is a Ukrainian womans search for her husband, a jurys verdict
in a hit-and-run, and in sports, a profile of UCLAs mercurial basketball
coach, as well as the obituaries, comics and horoscopes.
Press operators gather to review the run: Tomorrows paper will have color
on all but one of the 22 pages. Theyll start at 8:30, print a little more
than 100,000 copies and be done in less than two hours.
To step inside the Olympic printing plant is to step inside a time capsule
enshrining a 19th century product manufactured with 20th century
technology and poised for 21st century obsolescence.
Within these walls was the future of Los Angeles and Southern California,
as once imagined by the owners of The Times. Fueled by a diverse economy
a dividend of the postwar boom years this building, likened by one
manager to the Taj Mahal, was dedicated on March 6, 1990. (The paper had
been printed on the companys aged presses in the basement of its
headquarters downtown.)
This was to be a model for the world, not just Southern California, said
Tom Johnson, 82, publisher from 1980 to 1989.
For the record:
6:00 p.m. March 11, 2024An earlier version of this report said that
revenue for The Times topped $3.7 billion in 1991. Revenue for the Times
Mirror Corp. topped $3.7 billion that year.
It cost $230 million, the lions share of a nearly half-billion-dollar
expenditure that saw the construction of a printing plant in Chatsworth
and the renovation of an existing production facility in Costa Mesa. Those
were halcyon days for The Times, whose parent corporation, Times Mirror,
posted more than $3.7 billion in revenue in 1991.
Come visit the 21st century, Times readers were encouraged in an
advertisement inviting them to tour the new Olympic plant.
Its story was told by numbers: a 26-acre site; a 684,491-square-foot
building; six presses capable of printing 70,000 96-page papers per hour;
a 400,000-gallon underground water tank for fire suppression; six 6,200-
gallon tanks of color ink; a warehouse capable of holding a 65-day supply
of paper; and a 148-seat cafeteria for nearly 500 employees.
Beyond the numbers was the Jetsons quality of the place.
Robotic vehicles delivered rolls of paper from the warehouse to machines
that fed the presses. Doors opened at the push of a button. Conveyors
whisked printed papers to automated bundlers and then to awaiting pallets,
hands free.
At the center of it all were the six presses, three on one side and three
on the other, running almost two football fields long, connected by a
nearly soundproof room with windows angling overhead, providing press
operators with easy line of sight and silent escape from the incessant
100-decibel thrum.
The lobby, as elegant as an art museum, was finished in marble and
hardwood and featured a glass wall, three stories tall, overlooking the
presses that receded far in the distance. In the floor lay a time capsule,
a measure of the owners faith in the future, to be opened on the papers
bicentennial: Dec. 4, 2081.
Bob Lampher came to work at the Olympic plant in 1989 as the presses were
being installed. He had started at the Times 22 years earlier, a dream
job after working the presses for the Anaheim Bulletin, the Downey
Southeast News and the Costa Mesa Daily Pilot.
Oly as the plant was known was the most modern pressroom around,
said Lampher, 82, a retired superintendent. When I first got here, my jaw
dropped. It was simply beautiful, and I thought it would run forever.
The assumption is forgivable. The Times weekday circulation spread
among the Olympic plant, as well as Orange County and the San Fernando
Valley printing facilities was 1.2 million; 1.5 million on Sundays.
(Today, success is measured by digital subscriptions, currently close to
550,000.)
To meet that printed volume for a newspaper so filled with advertising
that it ranged from 100 to 200 pages daily (on the Sunday after
Thanksgiving 1993, the paper was a whopping 592 pages) managers
choreographed a round-the-clock dance that pushed newsprint through the
presses at nearly 30 mph, resulting in close to 60,000 papers printed in
an hour.
The sound was like a thundering locomotive. Ink mist and paper dust flew
through the air. Margins of error were unforgiving.
When youre doing it, it boggles the mind, said Lampher, who left The
Times in 2002. I would go back tomorrow just to hear those presses
running again.
His buddy and former press room manager, Jack Boethling, 77, understands.
When you get ink in your veins, theres nothing like the roar of the
presses going at full speed.
As the swing shift gets underway, Emmett Jaime pries inked plates off
cylinders. A Dead Kennedys song plays on a radio boom box, as a bell rings
a brief warning each time a cylinder turns.
Jaime, 56, plans to take a little time off before looking for another job.
Hed like to work eight more years, but he followed his father to The
Times when he was 19 and knows only this world.
John Martin, 60, sits at an operators console, studying a copy of a real
estate section, whose advertiser is known to be especially picky. Hes
making sure the columns of type and photographs sit squarely on the page
with equal margins top and bottom.
Its been a great, great, great, great run, he said, describing his 43
years with The Times. When he started, his seniority number was 380. He
had hoped one day to make No. 1 but is satisfied to be No. 22.
In the paper warehouse, Marcus Arnwine, 64, takes a quick inventory of the
newsprint. Once a thick forest with rolls stacked five high to the
ceiling, it is now a small glade as stock runs low.
Im going to miss the wealth of knowledge in this place, said Arnwine,
who started here when he was 20. There was always someone here who knew
something you needed to know.
Neither Martin nor Arnwine is certain what their next step will be,
whether to look for work or retire.
Later that evening, Adam Lee is in the plate room imprinting digital
files, produced by editors and page designers, onto aluminum sheets. The
air, bathed yellow by safe lights, smells of photographic chemicals and is
filled with a rhythmic clicking and a shuttling swoosh.
Lee, 46, is one of the few who has a new job lined up. He started here 18
years ago, joining his stepmother and his uncle, as well his father, who
put in 47 years before retiring.
His story is a familiar one: a pressroom of multigenerational employees
banking on good benefits, good income and challenging work.
When we first started, Hamalainen said, it was common for an old-timer
to take a new hire aside and say, Well, kid, youll have a job for life.
Today in the buildings growing emptiness, they are still a community kept
close by their commitment to that work, proud of their craft and eager to
dazzle visitors with technical explanations of a job that took years to
master: the speed of the paper, the proportions of water and ink, the
ability to make a fix on the fly.
They knew there were risks. Some lost fingers in the presses or wrenched
knees working on the floor. Some lost marriages to the strain of an
unforgiving schedule.
As often as they held history in their hands the Gulf War, 9/11, the
invasion of Iraq, the death of John Wooden, of Kobe and the pandemic the
work never allowed lingering, and they never missed a deadline.
They lived by the clock and by schedules defined by the vastness of
Southern California. They had to know when to finish a run to make a 6
a.m. delivery to Santa Barbara, San Diego, Palm Springs.
Old news doesnt sell, Lampher said.
By 8:44, the presses are rolling at a modest clip. Crews grab from the
conveyor early copies being sidelined as waste. They thumb through pages
to make sure the ink density is proper, that the color is in registration,
the margins are set, pagination perfect, date accurate.
They make refinements and by 9:15 set the throttle to a full gallop,
45,000 papers an hour. Overhead, the newsprint whips by in a blur, running
through a succession of cylinders inked cyan, magenta, yellow and black,
before converging into a central machine that folds and cuts it into
individual papers.
They feel that familiar thrum in their chests. They breathe the moist,
almost humid air, and still marvel that such brutish machinery can produce
such delicate results.
Its like an NFL player who can also be a ballerina, Hamalainen said.
There is so much strength, power, endurance and finesse in this
equipment.
They find it hard to believe that once they are done, the presses will be
dismantled and sold for scrap. The building and the property will be
turned into movie and television production studios, said a spokesperson
for the owner, Atlas Capital Group.
Then at 10:31, the pitch of the whirring presses begins to drop as they
slow, soon coming to a stop with 107,481 copies printed.
A few minutes later, a voice comes over a loudspeaker: No finals.
And they are done. A conveyor clatters as the last papers are carried to
the bundlers. The first delivery truck has already left. The last truck
will leave at 12:45 a.m.
The swing shift now scatters. Some of the crew strip plates off the
presses. Some sit back and read tomorrows news, eschewing The Times
website for the printed paper. A few head to the cafeteria to watch a
movie on their phones or to the fitness room for a few reps before heading
home.
The witching hour has begun, a disquieting moment for them to have nothing
to do. Usually, theyd be cleaning presses and getting ready for another
run, but today such diligence doesnt make much sense.
Hamalainen steps out onto the balcony where some of the crew has gathered.
From this vantage, the Olympic plant has always felt vital to Los Angeles.
Two miles away, the skyscrapers of the financial district light up in the
night sky, windows glowing against the darkness. City Hall glows blue and
yellow in honor of Ukraine on the second anniversary of the war. Distant
sirens and horns and the whoosh of the nearby freeway provide the
accompanying pulse.
They speak easily among themselves, their emotions masked by familiar
banter, old memories and pride.
It used to be that the quietest time was Sunday morning, said
Hamalainen, once the weeks final run completed at 2:30 a.m.
Yeah, and in those days, Macys was the big advertiser, said pressman
Joaquin Velazquez, 65. He started in 1984. Remember that? Now, maybe
there will be one ad.
Used to be a 16-pounder on Black Fridays.
Yep, and more than a million papers every day.
They know theyre running on habit and adrenaline. They know there will be
a bit of a freefall once theyre done.
Theyre hiring at the Arizona Republic and the Bay Area News Group and
the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hamalainen said. Theres work, but you
have to be willing to move away.
Velazquez draws on his cigarette. Soon, he will no longer be commuting
four hours a day from his home in Eastvale.
Its sad to see it come to an end like this, but were blessed to hit the
finish line, Velazquez said.
You know, I think Im going to sneak back in, just to see it all cleared
out, Hamalainen said. This is going to be one big empty building.
--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.