April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
ANNIVERSARY
The Evangelist marks 85 years
Technology has come a long way
"As we literally watched the buildings collapse, he was walking away with the paper," said James Breig, who was editor of The Evangelist for 25 years.
Today, not only can the staff extend its Tuesday deadline to early afternoon if last-minute news crops up, but improved technology has made it possible to send bids to printers all over the country.
In Mr. Breig's earliest days, members of his staff spent up to 12 hours at a local printer on deadline day each week as elements of a page were pasted onto cardboard, paper was trimmed around stories and photos and copy was typeset. Pages were proofread along the way.
Over the years, the paste-up method evolved. Writers stopped saving stories on floppy discs and instead saved them on a common computer network. Photographers and readers now email most photos instead of waiting to develop film and mailing prints to the paper.
Catholic News Service, from which The Evangelist gathers national and world news, evolved from mailing hard (paper) copies of stories to teletype reports (received through a satellite dish on the roof of the Pastoral Center) and, finally, to posting stories and photos online to be downloaded.
Staff involved in the process of creating The Evangelist today say that the improvements have produced a better-looking product, given staff more time to work on content and saved money.
"Every time you remove a generation in the printing process, your quality improves," said Nelson Bernard, director of commercial printing at Eagle Printing in Pittsfield, Mass., The Evangelist's printer for the past seven years.
In that amount of time, the printing company moved from computer-to-film to computer-to-plate, allowing for crisper photos and graphics.
Since The Evangelist's last major anniversary 10 years ago, media design consultant Jennifer George-Palilonis also redesigned the print product to give it better typefaces and a cleaner structure.
The website, www.evangelist. org, also went through many stages, starting in 1996 with a basic HTML design that featured text, graphics and splashes of color.
"That was all you could do," said Karen Dietlein Osborne, a former staff writer who re-designed the website in 2002.
Her design used Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Photoshop and included searchable archives - a cutting-edge feature in the Catholic press at the time.
"For what we had in 2002, it was a lovely website," Mrs. Osborne said, adding that it was clean and classy and enabled readers to locate items faster. "It brought us into a more modern look, style and feel."
For the past year, The Evangelist has been planning another redesign.
"Twenty years ago, no one would have guessed what would happen in terms of technology," Mr. Breig said. "Catholic newspapers, like every other publication, have to be part of that or they will be left behind."
That's not to say the print product will be any less important.
"There's still value to having the paper go to homes," Mr. Breig noted. "I think of things that go into my home: I don't throw them away."[[In-content Ad]]
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