Company changes with changing world

Today is a historic day at The Enterprise. Our publisher, John E. Newhouse II, announced that The Beaumont Enterprise will no longer be printed in Beaumont. It’s sad because some of our colleagues no longer work here. It’s important because it marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.

It was an economic decision, and a wise one, but the sentimental old-style paper-and-ink journalists among us can’t help but be saddened a bit by the action.

The press at The Enterprise is 34 years old – older than many of our employees, particularly those in the newsroom. It hasn’t run since Hurricane Ike struck. It can’t really be fixed, but it COULD be replaced, at a cost estimated at more than $30 million.

It doesn’t take someone with an MBA to realize the impracticality of that in today’s business climate, with a sister paper in Houston that is perfectly capable of printing anything The Enterprise needs printing. In fact, the Houston plant has published some Enterprise products for about a year. Another positive aspect is that the decision might well mean that readers and advertisers will be able to enjoy a product with more color on its pages.

So, when groups come to tour The Enterprise now, at least for the time being, I might still be able to show them the pressroom and tell them about how newspapers are produced. I just won’t be able to show them where the newspapers are actually produced.

Through the years, I have told many visitors to The Enterprise that the power and the location of the press in our historic building mean that, when the press ran, you could literally feel it in the slightly pulsating vibration of the building.

I have, more than once, described it as being like the heartbeat of our organization. Now that heartbeat might have been stilled, but fortunately the transplant has been successful and the patient expects to continue to thrive.

Big storm results in smaller newspapers

Three years ago next week, members of The Enterprise learned how to make do, as a bare-bones staff weathered Hurricane Rita in the heavily damaged downtown newspaper office, then hit the ground running to get the news to the public.

We’ve learned a lot since then, and we’re still learning.

We now have a closet full of hurricane supplies, some of which (like tarps) we’ve already pulled out a few times at the threat of tropical weather. This time, as Hurricane Ike headed our way, we emptied that closet and made use of most of the stockpile of supplies.

Staff members, in tandem, produced daily print editions as well as continually updating our Web site, BeaumontEnterprise.com

Reporters, editors and an on-line team, for two days after the storm, operated from desks set up in our parking garage and an adjacent office on laptop computers powered by inverters attached to the batteries of running cars. Flashlights and batteries of various types and sizes were abundant. When cell phones weren’t working, we had a mere three land-lines on which we could rely.

Saturday and Sunday nights a slimmer than usual Enterprise was printed at our sister paper, The Houston Chronicle. Several nights, copy editors, those who design and produce the printed pages, worked from the fully-powered office of the Jasper Newsboy, also owned by The Enterprise.

Reporters and other staff members handed out papers when they could. Because only a limited number of carriers had returned to deliver papers, some customers made the trip to our office to pick their papers up themselves. Only about 20 percent of carriers have returned thus far, but some other employees have been delivering routes and efforts are being made to return to normal delivery service as soon as possible. Customers who missed papers and don’t want to pick them up or have them delivered later, may request credit for issues missed.

As a business and a community, we’ve weathered another storm together. Together we now seek a return to “normal” life in the hope that our storms, at least for this season, are over.