|
RELATED RESOURCES
|
Want to know more about this topic? Visit the following links:
| |
We read a lot about the incredible shrinking newspaper, but we see very little about the incredible shrinking newspaper hat.
That's right, the traditional pressman's hat is being downsized right out of existence.
Press operators used to be able to tear a page out of the paper and, with a few folds, turn it into a boxy, disposable cap that would protect them from airborne ink and paper dust that got onto and into everything inside a roaring pressroom. For the
Detroit Free Press' 175 anniversay on Friday, May 5, we made some of the traditional hats to share the craft with our readers. To our dismay, the hats we made in the newsroom looked better suited to children and pets. They didn’t fit human heads anymore. What happened? Did we make them wrong? Had our heads swollen?
No. The problem is that we had reduced the web width of the Free Press last year to 50 inches. Later this year, it will go to 48 inches.
|
Mary Schroeder/Detroit Free Press
|
In truth, though, pressman’s hats have long been passing into antiquity. Press Director Denny Johnson, who turns 60 on May 9, is one of the oldest in the pressroom at the
Detroit Newspaper Partnership and says it has been a long time since he has seen a pressman's hat.
"The original reason for the hat was to keep the oily ink out of our hair," he said. "I never wore one." Printing got cleaner and, by the time he got to Detroit pressrooms in 1977, only a couple men still wore the paper hats. "The real old-timers would wear the hats because they always did and they just felt more comfortable. They'd tear holes in the corners to let the steam out."
Now, Johnson said, press operators wear baseball-style caps. Many of them bear the names of ink companies. Again, it's just for comfort. "Unless they bump their heads, they’re not going to get ink in their hair."
You can still make a pressman's hat. But if you want to make one that you can actually wear, you had better use
The Wall Street Journal before it shrinks from its roomy 60-inch web to 48 inches next year. Or, use your tiny pressman's hat as a CD holder.
When I worked at The Deal a few years ago...
