Press Democrat enters new era as Sonoma County printing press closes, production moves to new site
Sometime a little before midnight changes Sunday into Monday, The Press Democrat’s printing press in Rohnert Park will go quiet for the last time. The final sheets will zip along a thrumming, Rube Goldberg-style, mile-and-a-quarter-long conveyor belt, then get sorted and batched and bundled and carried to the trucks that wait dutifully at the loading dock.
There’s a newspaper to get out, just as there has been every night in Rohnert Park for 35 years, 10 months and 9 days.
There will be many more papers. But Monday’s edition will be the last one brought to life in the three-story building off Highway 101. Beginning Monday night, The Press Democrat will be printed at the San Francisco Chronicle’s production site in Fremont.
It’s the end of an era for this newspaper, which has printed in Sonoma County since 1857. And it’s a life transition for the workers who have toiled behind the scenes to bring you birth notices and obituaries, scandals and tearjerkers, breaking news and comic strips.
“It’s sad and exciting at the same time,” said Bill Fuiten, a press supervisor with just shy of 30 years’ experience in Rohnert Park. “Sad because I still love my job. Working here, especially in the last 10 years, is like watching a really good friend die super slowly. Now maybe I can equate it to finally putting them in the ground.”
The PD printing press was “a state of the art facility, the best in its class” when it opened, said Troy Niday, who oversees the plant as Sonoma Media Investments’ chief operating officer. It’s no longer that. The Chronicle’s presses are much newer. But aging machinery isn’t the problem. This press could operate another 10-15 years, according to Niday.
The move to the East Bay has much more to do with the economic reality of the news business, where readership has been gravitating from print to digital spaces for years.
When the Rohnert Park plant opened in 1986, Niday said, The Press Democrat had 100,000 print subscribers. The paper has about 30,000 now; another 17,000 or so own digital-only subscriptions.
“We’re basically using the facility at about 30% of capacity, with a lot of overhead costs that don’t make sense,” Niday said. “We have a cold press 70% of the time. You can’t make money that way.”
In taking its print operation to a shared regional site, The Press Democrat is joining a wave of other daily newspapers. When the Poynter Institute of Media Studies wrote about the trend in March 2021, the previous three months alone had seen the outsourcing of print operations at the San Antonio Express-News, Tampa Bay Times, (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, (Louisville) Courier Journal, (Eugene, Oregon) Register-Guard and (Raleigh, North Carolina) News & Observer, among other outlets.
The migration was accelerated after the 2008 recession, and again in the past three years, driven this time by the COVID pandemic and consolidation within the industry.
“We’re actually kind of late to this game,” Niday said.
If the closing of the Rohnert Park plant is rational, or even inevitable, it’s still a bittersweet move. The facility employs 22 full-time employees and 20 part-timers. The combined experience of the 42 workers is about 675 years, Niday said.
“I’ve grown old with these guys,” said Fuiten, who at 57 may be exaggerating his decrepitude. “Everyone on day (shifts) here has been here at least 30 years. When we started, we were young kids. It’s amazing when I look around how many houses this job has bought. And cars. And diapers.”
Wednesday, Fuiten brought his 4-year-old grandson Jace to the plant and let him literally stop the presses with the push of a button. He didn’t want the place to close without the boy knowing what grandpa’s job looked like.
Sharon Ausiello, who just turned 65, has been part of the press team for 31 years. Ausiello is one of four packaging supervisors at the plant. They stuff inserts into paper wrappers called jackets, bundle papers and send them out for distribution. All four of those supervisors are 30-plus-year veterans.
When Niday took over the operation in 2014, Ausiello said, he asked her what she liked about her job. She said no two days were alike. Each brought a new challenge and a new source of stress.
“It’s a deadline department, so there’s pressure to get it done on time,” Ausiello said. “And we’ve always done it. You’d never know the nightmare that went on in that building, but we got it done. And it was on clean, and it was on time.”
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