Oklahoma's newspapers - yesterday, today, tomorrow and the next century

OKLAHOMA'S NEWSPAPERS
THE HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA NEWSPAPERS:  DESKTOP PUBLISHING ARRIVES

Part 5: Desktop publishing arrives

By M. Scott Carter

For about 500 years the world of newspapers and printing was based on hot lead, huge hulking typesetting machines and large presses that hissed, bellowed and screamed. 
First there was Gutenberg, who invented movable type. 
Then came Mergenthaler, who refined Gutenberg's idea, making the creation of movable type easier with his Linotype. 
Into this mix came the manual typewriter. 
And later, offset printing. 
Slowly, like the dinosaurs, the Linotypes faded from history - hot lead was replaced by cold type. 
Letterpress gave way to offset. 
Instead of brass matrices, Oklahoma newspapers turned to photocomposition, replacing their stately, towering Linotypes with blue Compugraphics, or machines made by Mycro-Tek or Alphatype. 
The mechanical clank was silenced, then replaced by the electronic hum. 
Pages were no longer built in large metal frames and placed on the beds of huge, sheet-fed presses. Instead, newspaper type was created using film strips and anchored on a grid sheet with melted bee's wax. 
But like its predecessor, the cold type method would be short-lived; the stage was set, once again, for yet another upheaval in the newspaper world. 
It happened in 1984. 
On Jan. 24th, Apple Computer - a Cupertino, California-based company - released a new, personal computer called the Macintosh. 
About the size of a large breadbox turned on end, the original 
Macintosh used a new, graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse instead of the then-standard command line interface. The Mac also featured a built-in nine-inch monitor.  
With its "desktop," "trash can" and "Apple Menu," the Macintosh would change the newspaper world in a way that neither Gutenberg nor Mergenthaler could ever imagine. 
In just two years - the second part of the upheaval came in 1985 with Apple's development of the 
LaserPrinter and the Adobe Company's creation of the PostScript printing language - Oklahoma newspapers would go from cold type to desktop publishing. 
"It was a huge change," said 
Bennie McElhaney, president of Oklahoma City-based ProMac, a computer company that specializes in providing Macintosh hardware to the graphics and newspaper industries. "The Macintosh changed everything."
McElhaney should know; he was there from the beginning. 
A former graphic artist, 
McElhaney spent the Reagan years helping Oklahoma newspapers embrace the era of desktop publishing. 
It wasn't an easy beginning. 
By the early 1980s, most Oklahoma newspapers had fully adopted the cold type process for creating their publications. 
While some papers used Compugraphic typesetting equipment or other hybrids for their composing rooms, others had made major investments in equipment supplied by Mycro-Tek. 
But those Mycro-Tek machines, McElhaney said, "cost a fortune" to keep running. 
"I remember a five-megabyte Mycro-Tek hard drive sold for $2,000," he said. "When the Macintosh came out that all changed." 
With its simple-to-use interface, and PageMaker software, the Macintosh quickly caught on amongst the state's smaller newspapers. 
"The desktop publishing movement started at the smaller papers," McElhaney said. "The bigger papers had so much invested in their equipment, they weren't in the mood to switch. But the smaller ones made the jump." 
Instead of producing just a stream - or a strip - of type, the Mac allowed entire pages to be designed and created on screen. Everything from graphics, stories, headlines and advertisements could be done through the keyboard. 
While there was little software available for those original 1984 Macintoshes, one program - Aldus's PageMaker - would serve as the core software component for many state publications. 
"At first, there wasn't a whole lot of software available," McElhaney said. "For a while, PageMaker was about it." 
Using the same terms and measurement systems that newspapers had used for decades, PageMaker quickly became a hit among publishers. 
When a client needed something besides PageMaker, it was often McElhaney who developed the custom programs.  
"I wrote some software for classified ads and some that would bring in Associated Press and United Press copy," he said. "It was called Snews and some people still use it."
His customers are scattered across the state. 
From the first Mac installation in Allen, Oklahoma, McElhaney said the Macintosh's popularity grew until the computers were used by more than 100 Oklahoma newspapers.
"I sold Macs all over the country," he said. "The Donrey Company was a huge purchaser of Macs. They were everywhere."  
Gradually, Oklahoma's larger newspapers began to follow the lead of the smaller papers, replacing their bulky, aging equipment with compact desktop publishing units. 
"I think the larger papers began to move toward Macs when they realized they could own their own technology instead of leasing it," McElhaney said. "Once that happened, they came on board. For the cost of a hard drive, they could buy an entire workstation." 
It also helped that the Mac was quickly working its way into the graphic arts industry. 
Once the Oklahoma Press Association converted to Macs, the skeptics were silenced. 
"That was a big bite for the OPA, when they went all Macintosh," McElhaney said. "It convinced many others." 
Requiring little set up time and only a few days worth of training, most newspapers were able to quickly move their publication to an all-electronic platform using the Macintosh. 
"Even though those first Macs had tiny, nine-inch black and white screens, people loved them," McElhaney said. "They produced their newspaper on them. And for many it was a real thrill because they could do it almost immediately."
Of course, with every change came problems and McElhaney solved thousands.
"I spent a lot of late nights on the phone," he said. "When Donrey purchased Macs for its newspapers in Arkansas, I basically lived with them until they transitioned over to the new equipment. You didn't just sell a newspaper a Mac, you actually had to go and help them make that transition." 
As with every technological advancement, the change has come at a price. 
With the adoption of the Macintosh, work that was once done by paste-up artists and composing room employees was now being done by editors. 
Further, mechanics and maintenance professionals who kept everything from the Linotypes to the presses running were no longer needed. Even the original computer technicians saw their numbers decline as more and more publications embraced the desktop publishing method. 
Eventually those skills were phased out and those employees were not replaced. 
"For about $10,000 a newspaper could, at the time, install a desktop Mac system to produce their prepress," McElhaney said. "They would have spent much more than that per year just maintaining their Mycro-Tek equipment."  
The Mac, and its desktop publishing system, were "much, much more efficient," he said. 
"I think that some of the things we did early on with newspapers gave them the real opportunity to change." 
Those changes reduced costs and may have made the difference for some of Oklahoma's smaller, struggling papers. 
"I don't doubt that desktop publishing saved many newspapers a whole lot of money," he said. "It was very cost effective." 
It also was a challenge, a job that McElhaney won't soon forget. 
"It has been quite an experience," he said. "I like to think that I helped many of the newspapers embrace new technology. Of course, there were many others that helped make the change, but I hope I contributed." 
McElhaney need not worry. Those who helped set up Apple computers at Oklahoma newspapers were on the front lines of the revolution. 
Today the industry that claims among its many heroes Gutenberg, Mergenthaler and Harris has added at least two Californians to the list - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak - the founders of Apple Computer.