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Producing a newspaper like MN is a wonderfully efficient thing these days. Everything is done on computers. Journalists write their articles on laptops; crisp, clear photographs are taken with digital cameras and then both words and images can be e-mailed from exotic locations such as Malaysia, Catalunya and, er, Sweet Lamb.
In the office, sub-editors trim and polish the stories and come up with headlines, while designers bring everything together on the page. Then the pages are checked and, via computer, sent down to the printers on a Monday night.
Sure, the system doesn't have the romanticism as the old days. Back then sweaty, ink-stained blokes would manually lay out pages on huge boards, their brows furrowed as they used a scalpel to cut stories to fit the spaces on the page as if they were doing a giant jigsaw. Designing a newspaper probably gave those folk an unbeatable sense of achievement...but it was also a huge pain in the arse.
Years ago, rally reports had to be posted down to London on overnight mail trains to get to MN's offices in time for deadline. Now, one click of a button and an e-mail pings through the ether from reporter to editor.
