Time for vacations hard to accommodate at weekly newspapers

Newspapers aren’t allowed vacations, per se.

At least, that’s what we tell friends and family, anyway.

They feign understanding.

People on the street, regular readers, subscribers are a different cat; they expect their weekly paper to be there every week, much like they expect their daily newspaper to be there every day.

So, we oblige.  

Fifty-two times a year, here at the Banner.

Never once, to our knowledge, has the Banner missed a week.

Not even during the Flood of the Century, when staff went without sleep, electricity or outside help for the better part of two weeks, did the paper fail to reach the central printing plant and eventually the hands of its readers.

Even today when computers skyrocket unexpectedly and inexplicably into cyberspace, taking with them all necessary tools, files and pics never to be retrieved, or 50 years ago when press breakdowns spelled disaster on the ever-so-fickle Linotypes, were papers not delivered on schedule. Oh, we may have been a few hours late on occasion, or a half-day late, even, but — by damn — “we got the paper out.”

Thanks to much sweat, blood and tears.

Dedication, commitment and the love of newspapering also factor in the task of getting the paper out when extreme measures are needed.

We’re not suggesting that newspapers are prisons, that vacations are unheard of, that the job is 24-7 year around.

Employees at our daily papers, we understand, are allowed time away from the job. Vacations are encouraged, even. “Take a couple of weeks off, you’ve been working too hard.”

Union contracts, we suspect, allow no less.

Good for them.

It’s a different story at your weekly newspapers. One and two-person newspapers are hard-pressed to take a couple of weeks off, let alone one week. We take a day off and the work is waiting on our return.

Papers with staff enough to fill the vacating positions can survive quite handily when calendars are marked with vacation days.

Again, good for them.

Short-staffed papers don’t have the luxury of simply assigning duties to other employees waiting in the wings, welcoming the additional work, smiling all the while, never questioning why this work, all of a sudden, is in his or her lap.

We take a few days off, we catch up on our return.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in another time, when papers were produced and printed in the same back shop, when routine was ingrained, when deadlines were met come hell or high water, there was the chance of a vacation at the end of the year.

But that was 40 years ago.

Publishers and editors would proclaim, “Hell with it, we’re talking a week off.”

It was usually the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

We would print the Christmas issue, much like the one you’re reading now, pull the pages off the press, kill ‘em, and make room for the next issue, letterpress pages complete with New Year greeting ads and a rundown of all the stories printed in the previous 12 months.

We would print the New Year’s issue and hold it for mailing.

Which meant we had a week off.

Truth be told, some of us didn’t know what to do with the free time.

Often, we ended up back at the paper, in the back shop, cleaning the big press, if nothing else.

Fast-forwarding 40 years, to the year 2007, soon to be 2008, the Banner is taking a week off, next week, to be exact.

It’s the first collective vacation for the current staff in eight years.

We’re due, we figure.

We’re pasting up next week’s issue this weekend, checking for any late-breaking news or death notices on Wednesday. The paper will be in your hands on schedule.

It promises to be an abbreviated issue, we can tell you now.

We trust you understand.