A trusty C58 Community from the 1960s continues to churn out local news in Petersburg, in the northernmost US state of Alaska.
These pictures are from ImPressions Worldwide’s Jimmy Easterly, who called in on the Petersburg Pilot during a “team-building trip” with service technician Mike Stallings, and found some annual maintenance waiting.
The six-unit Goss press is of the original orange-painted vintage, and is operated by Ola Richards, who answered an ad for a layout and graphic design job, stepped in to help in the pressroom and ended up as lead press operator. Arriving from Poland in 2007 on a student visa, she had worked for local fish processor Icicle Seafoods, a process she repeated in 2008 and 2009 before getting married on her 2010 trip.
Now working for current owner of the Pilot, Orin Pierson, she runs the press at a modest 10,000 cph to produce three weekly newspapers that average about 1000 copies each, “so short that I am almost done printing by the time I make my adjustments,” she says.
And when runs for the Pilot and Alaskan weeklies the Wrangell Sentinel and the Chilkat Valley News each week, were done, Easterly says they found some maintenance jobs waiting. “Ola welcomes our employee retreat each year as our guys often jump in to help her with some annual maintenance during our visit,” he says.
With thanks to ImPressions Worldwide
Pictured (from top, clockwise top centre) Mike Stallings, Orin Pierson. Ola Richards and Jimmy Easterly): Classic Petersburg – the waterfront Icicle Seafood processing plant; Stallings and Ola Richards setting rubber rollers on the Goss Community; Ola Richards with a great catch