You know you are in a newsroom when you enter the News Herald.

It’s reminiscent of the movies---journalists’ hard at work--notes and papers stacked high. But, one thing is missing...the sound of the press.

"Our old equipment would have been like running a prop plane,” said Ron Smith, News Herald Operations Director. “The new technology is like running a fighter jet."

"The reporters complete their pages, they send them to us as PDF's, we impose those for the press, then they're put on an aluminum plate which is prepared automatically for the press."

“Computer-to-plate is a process that etches the image directly from the computer on to an aluminum plate using a laser. And the end result ends up with the image of the front page on a plate that is ready to go out and be put on the press. It's like a spider web, as it's webbed, through the rollers, it is webbed under the floor, comes up through the units where ink is applied to it, and then it goes through rollers in the top until it comes through the folder, which comes together to form the sections, A, B, C, of the News Herald.”

Smith said after it comes out of the folder, it is stacked off, put on the carts, and rolled over to be prepared for packaging.

"Packaging puts all of the inserts into it then it goes out the door and ends up in your driveway...”

Smith said the press can be run with as few as two people, depending on the job they are producing, and take up to 12-20 people to do the packaging side of it.

“The facility is almost 24/7,” said Smith. “We print an awful lot of competitors and commercial printing from this site, we do the "American Classifieds", "The Advertiser", "Penny Saver", just about everything printed on news print in this area comes out of this production facility. We also print the weekly paper for Enterprise, Alabama, Niceville, and Bay Beacon.”

“The facility is almost 24/7”, said Smith. “Things can happen and your delayed an hour or two getting out on the street and the phone lines just light up, you know for the folks wanting to know where their News Herald is, so it's a little reassuring in that way that the industry is not dead."