When I got my first job as a sportswriter in the mid-1960s, the process of putting the paper out was only slightly less cumbersome than it had been in the nineteenth century. We had practically no color. Type was set from pots of molten lead mounted on fantastic machines called Linotypes. Newspaper production departments were far larger than the news staffs. There are two main reasons for this.
Technology is one, of course.
But the most important factor is people. When I came to the Monitor in 1978, we had a news staff of 18 plus a few correspondents. Today, we have 45 editors, reporters, and photographers. We still hire many young people into their first or second jobs, but the depth and breadth of the talent in our newsroom is something I could not have imagined when I arrived here. Working with so many beginning journalists, I am reminded perhaps more often than most editors of just how difficult our task is.