How times have changed
Vanguard lead editor Tina Comeau reflects on some of the changes she’s experienced since starting out in the newsroom in 1990.
When it comes to photography, starting out we were developing black and white film and photographs in a dark room. I loved the darkroom and could spend hours in there. From there we went to onehour colour processing film before we eventually made the switch to digital cameras. I didn’t care much for those colour film years as you’d waste a lot of film or waste a lot of time waiting to see your pictures. The first digital cameras we got had fixed lenses and a delay of a several seconds when you took a photo, which was challenging and annoying. Now we used digital SLRs, which have interchangeable lenses. The cameras can shoot faster than any film speed of the past. They can also shoot video and mine can connect to Wifi for sharing photos to social media. Not all of our photos are taken with cameras. We also use our iPhones to capture moments.
When I first joined the newsroom my former editor Fred A. Hatfield often still used a typewriter to churn out stories, editorials and columns. He typed so fast and hit the keys so hard I’m sure the speed from his fingers could have been used to generate electricity back in the prerenewable energy days.
In my early years in the newsroom we had laptops, so to speak. All of our work was saved to floppy disks, with the content transferred to two other computers (which rarely worked well) before being grinded through a machine that would spit out copy that could be copy and pasted onto life-size newspaper pages. Yes, we glued the copy on. Eventually we went from laptops to desktop computers, which weren’t
Eric Bourque,
reporter, 902-749-2532, eric.bourque@tricountyvanguard.ca Digby:
Amanda Doucette,
reporter,
902-245-8054, amanda.doucette@tricountyvanguard.ca very practical since you couldn’t take them out in the field, nor could you bring them home at night, which meant you spent a lot of time in the office if you needed to work overtime. When we switched back to laptops, I recall our first Mac Books were these big white computers with blue trim. One person in particular would always liken my laptop to a toilet seat lid when I’d bring it with me to meetings. We currently work on MacBook Pros
Shelburne:
Kathy Johnson,
reporter,
Office: 902-875-3244 kathy.johnson@tricountyvanguard.ca and can plug them into large external monitors at our desks.
Long gone are the days in Yarmouth when cut and paste pages would be made into negatives and plates that would be fed through a printing press in our building, although it was always amazing to watch the newspaper come to life on the press that used to exist here in our building. Due to the press prep process it wasn’t practical – nor usually possible – if you needed to make a last-minute change to a page. I’m pretty sure in my time here when the printed press existed we only yelled “Stop the presses!” once.
Nowadays, everything is done using computers and servers. We can file our copy and the person on the other end can have a page proof back to us in minutes. And when can make any last-minute changes or file copy, if needed, right up until deadline. And when/if things change after we go to press, we just update on the website.