Don't forget the folks behlnd the bylines.....

I understand as an anniversary piece, there’ll be a story on the folks who worked at the Beacon Journal--back when it was still a force and had a lot of influence in the area.
    And you can just bet the bank on the folks who will be featured--those who had bylines, who put their all into their jobs.
And that’s the way it should be.
    But what about those behind the headlines, those who made the writers look perfect…and who made sure the paper was printed.
    That would be the seat of the pants editors, the rewrite men, the copyeditors--nameless--faceless but putting a finishing polish and a manful headline that should draw a reader into a story.
    And then there were the printers who set the type, put the pages together and if they spotted an error, they’d holler..another safeguard to a better and factual story. And there were the proof readers…sitting at their desk pouring over galley proofs and page proofs…a real backup for today’s spell check.
    The pages then went to the stereotype’s who turned the pages of type into the metal plates that fit on the press.
    Let’s not forget the engravers, who scanned the great photos taken by a dedicated photo crew, and put them on the plates that would wind up in the paper.
    Of course the next step, the pressmen and then the mailroom where the papers were bundled and put aboard the delivery trucks.
And in past days, those trucks dropped the bundles in the neighborhoods where they would be delivered--by youngsters, boys and girls--who made a little spending money or saved up for college.
    Hey, it’s great to give credit for the great days of the paper to Fran Murphy, Ken Nichols, Steve Love, Stu Warner, Ben Maidenberg and the countless other familiar bylines.
    And there’ll probably be others mentioned-particularly some of the higher ups whose only accomplishment was taking credit for what ever went right, but only arm-chairing what went wrong.
Those great by-liners are gone now. But so are their backup crews. Those printers, engravers and pressmen.
    We should give a “well-done” to a great, great crew.