A Dummy Helps Us Design Newspaper
After the number of pages are established (see previous post) the next queston is: where does the news go? Again, the answer is determined primarily by advertising.
Late, morning, the day before publication, the process begins.
There are certain pages that are off-limits for ads. Editorial, comic, sports agate, some section fronts, etc. As before, some ads have to appear on certain pages because of color capacity, advertiser request and aesthetics. The person who does the layout tries to leave enough space on the page so that the copy editors can design attractive pages.
If we chose, the paper will be laid out by computer, but we choose to do the procedure manually because in our case it has proven to be more efficient.
The newspaper layout with ad sizes place on the page are printed on a reduced version called a dummy. Each page has its own dummy.
The dummy is then distributed around noon to the production departments and the news departments and the next day’s newspaper begins taking shape. At 11:30, day of publication, the final page moves to the imager and plate-maker and at noon the pressrun begins. (This is our Monday through Friday schedule. Saturday and Sunday are different because we got to press in the late evening for morning delivery.)
So if you happen to be in the office and hear someone refer to the dummy, hopefully they are talking about tomorrow’s newspaper layout.