Newspaper presses, as with most everything, have a lifespan, and for the trusty printing press that has served the Arizona Daily Sun well for 26 years./Envvato
By Sam McManis | Sun Staff Reporter
When the press is up and running full bore, really humming, when newsprint meets ink in some wondrous alchemic alliance and speeds through rollers and cylinders in a dizzying blur, it is almost as if the hulking machine becomes a living, breathing organism, its syncopated click-CLACK-click of gears like a heartbeat.
But newspaper presses, as with most everything, have a lifespan, and for the trusty printing press that has served the Arizona Daily Sun well for 26 years at its current Thompson Street location and before that for decades at the paper’s downtown facility, that time is now.
After more than 80 years in operation, the presses in Flagstaff have gone silent. This very newspaper you hold in your hand is the last that will be printed here.
Publisher Colleen Brady announced last month that, starting with the May 11 edition, the newspaper will be printed at Phoenix’s Deer Valley facility and trucked up north. As Brady wrote in a recent letter to readers, “To stay competitive, many newspaper markets have centralized printing to more modern, multi-million-dollar, regional press facilities.”
