Off the Editor’s Desk – August 22, 2012

IT’S STATE FAIR TIME!
I will make my annual pilgrimage to the Minnesota State Fair this week and will be there for ten of the 12 days of the event.

The fair starts Thursday, August 23 and runs through Labor Day. The reason that I will be there for ten days is that there is a newspaper printed at the fair called the Maynard News. I have been appointed publisher of the Maynard News for this year’s running of the fair.
The Maynard News is a project of the Minnesota Newspaper Association and is a museum of working printing machinery that displays the office of a small town newspaper as it looked in the 1930’s. The old equipment prints a four-page newspaper every day. The museum shows how the hot metal process was used to create the printed page and offers visitors a glimpse of the history of printing.

Two Linotypes are on display and working, creating type from molten lead. One of the Linotypes on display is from the Tribune Office in Glenwood City. It was used here until 1976 when this newspaper converted to the offset method of printing.

The museum is celebrating its 25th year at the fair. Records show that more than a million and a half people have visited the museum in its 24 years of operation.

I will be working at the museum every afternoon to show how the printing was done in the old days. The newspaper office is located in the Heritage Square Area, which is just to the west of the fair’s grandstand. I invite everyone to stop in a see how we used to do things in the good old days.

— Carlton.