San Jose Mercury News Tour

A special thank you to Cheryl who is an IISME fellow in the Circulation Department of the San Jose Mercury News. She organized our 10:30 AM tour through the building.. An employee, Pam, led the 10 of us on the 90 minute walk. I will give you a few of the highlights. First, as we stopped in the newsroom, Pam showed us a paper and mentioned the press editions markings located in the upper left corner. FFC, FC, or FCC usually means that the presses have been stopped for additional information – a rare occurrence.

345 people work in the newsroom. 1200 people work in the building located off of Highway 880.

A newspaper artist, Doug, from the graphic department showed his illustrations and explained the need for hand-drawn art. The Mercury uses real photos, computer photo graphics, and traditional board art. An artist must be versed in all aspects of the arts these days. A portrait takes him about 8 hours to complete. A concept photo that might go on the Science/Technology front page takes 2-3 days. A staff of 7 do all the graphics each day.

We saw the film that is used to make plates. It is still used today although computer pagination has replaced much of the plate work. The Mercury still uses and recycles 200 plates a day.

The presses were not running during our visit, but we learned some facts. The Mercury prints 16,000 copies an hour. There are 4 presses and 10 units to each press. A roll of paper weighs 1 ton and is one mile long. One roll lasts for 25 minutes when running on each station. Knight/Rider owns a paper company to defray some of the cost. The paper used every year by the Mercury News could go around the world 28 times.

Robots were at work in the warehouse. They stock the rolls and put them in the correct bins. After awhile, they park themselves and get recharged.

13,000,000 pages are printed on the outside for the weekend supplements. They are brought in for organizing and collating. Ten men feed the automatic loaders.

There are fun jobs at the Mercury also. The restaurant critic can go to any restaurant he wants and charge his bill to the company. Same with the theater critic, and sports reporters who go to every 49er, Giants, A’s, and Sharks game.

The San Jose Mercury has a distribution of 286,000 papers every weekday and 340,000 every Sunday.

Kids, tours are available. Call well in advance although they give several every month. They are limited to 30 people, and you will need chaperones.