It's Friday And Here's Sunday's News

A friend of mine had his picture in the newspaper, so I cut it out for him. He reads the papers rather closely and said, "That’s odd; I didn’t see this today.” It was a Friday and I said, “Oh, that’s in Sunday’s paper.” He gave me what I think one could consider an odd look and I explained that, as I work as a newspaper columnist, I get the Sunday pre-prints on Friday.

Much of what is in the Sunday newspaper is undated: wedding, anniversary and birth announcements; people shown standing left to right; senior citizens news; upcoming events of all kinds; correspondents’ columns from the boonies; editorials, letters and op-ed pieces. The tv section comes in on Friday, as well, from our other newspaper in a nearby city.

The only things that need to be in the "A" and "B" sections are news and sports. At our paper, those are the only sections printed on Saturday night. The color magazine section has been sitting there for two weeks, as have the comics. The whole insert package has been put together early and they are bundled and ready to go for the individual contract drivers, who pick up their news and sports sections as they come off the press and through the bundling machine.

The mailing room garage, which looked like an overstuffed refrigerator on Friday morning, is reduced to piles of bundles on Saturday afternoon. By 4:00am on Sunday morning, there’s hardly anything left except for a half-dozen pallets of pre-prints for the week’s runs and maybe something for next Sunday.