The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 1, October, 1884 — John Shaqi
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 1, October, 1884Various
History
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 1, October, 1884
Various
Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
editors. On the third floor are the general manager's office and the
rooms of the news and city editors and the reporters. The entire fourth
floor is used as a composing-room, where stand "frames" for ninety-six
compositors; the foreman and his assistants have each a private office,
and a private room is assigned to the proofreaders. All the editors' and
reporters' rooms are spacious, well lighted, and admirably ventilated;
they are finished in native woods, varnished, and are handsomely
furnished. Electric call-bells, speaking-tubes, and pneumatic-tubes
furnish means of communication with all the departments, and no expense
has been spared in supplying every convenience for facilitating work and
the comfort of the employees.
With increased facilities came continued prosperity. The business
depression in 1877 affected the circulation of the Herald, as it did
that of every newspaper in the country, and the circulation that year
was not so large as during the year previous; still, the daily average
was one hundred and three thousand copies.
The array of men employed in the various departments of the Herald at
the present time would astonish the founders of the paper. In 1846 the
editorial and reportorial staff consisted of two men; now it comprises
seventy-seven. Six compositors were employed then; now there are one
hundred and forty-seven. One pressman and an assistant easily printed
the Herald, and another daily paper as well, in those days, upon one
small handpress; now forty men find constant employment in attending the
engines and the six latest improved perfecting-presses required to issue
the editions on time. The business department was then conducted with
ease by one man, who generally found time to attend to the mailing and
sale of papers; now twenty-one persons have plenty to do in the
counting-room, and the delivery-room engages the services of twenty.
Then stereotyping the forms of a daily newspaper was an unheard-of
proceeding; now fourteen men are employed in the Herald's foundery. The
salaries and bills for composition aggregated scarcely one hundred and
fifty dollars a week then; now the weekly composition bill averages over
three thousand dollars, and the payroll of the other departments reaches
three thousand dollars every week, and frequently exceeds that sum. Then
the Herald depended for outside news upon the meagre dispatches of
telegraph agencies in New York (the Associated Press system was not
inaugurated until 1848-49, and New England papers were not admitted to
its privileges until some years later), and such occasional
correspondence as its friends in this and other States sent in free of
charge. Now it not only receives the full dispatches of the Associated
Press, but has news bureaus of its own in London, Paris, New York, and
Washington, and special correspondents in every city of any considerable
size throughout the country. All these are in constant communication
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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