Richmond Times Dispatch

We had the opportunity to join in with a local homeschool group to tour the building of our local newspaper.

This is were they do all of the printing.  Unfortunately, there were two downsides to this trip.

Number one, no photos were allowed in the building except for the lobby and meeting room.  The second was that it was slow since nothing was in production at the time.

They do give tours in the evening ours when the possibility of seeing the machines in action is greater.

Although, after thinking that one through, I am glad that all was quiet because I am sure that it can get very loud in the factory.

A great group of children.

They sat so quietly and intently listened to the tour guide,
 and watched a 9 minute video before going on the tour.

During the tour, we saw many aspects of the process of printing a newspaper.  I didn't take notes, but now I kind of regret it.  Here is a few facts that I do remember (and hopefully correctly).
They can print out 55000 newspapers in one hour.
The RTD paper is approx. 150 years old.
Each ream of paper weighs 2300 lbs and costs between $400-700 a ream, which they get from a number of distributors. 
The warehouse would be an incredible place to play hide and seek or tag in.  The rows were 5-7 reams high and so deep that I could not count without looking like a weirdo. 
The paper is delivered by train or truck.  They built the building at their current location in 1992 due to it's close proximity of the railroad yet it isn't used as greatly as the trucks are right now.
In the warehouse, they have a train track for the car to ride in, park and the forklifts can drive right up in to unload.  They have a breakaway door just in case the rail car doesn't stop and doesn't cause damage to building.  True story- a delivery man parked his car right behind this door even though it is clearly posted "No Parking".  Wouldn't you know that this would be the one time that the rail car did not stop and ended up going through the break away wall, demolishing that car.  It was a new Lexus but you could not tell after that!
There is only 4 main ink colors and the pipes run through the ceiling into these huge vats.
They still print using plates.  The images/words are embedded on aluminum plates, ink is put on them as the paper runs through the machine at an incredible speed.  The plates are then sent off to be recycled. 
The inserts in the paper is printed off sight, shipped, unloaded by forklift and then hand stuffed in each paper.
They have an original paper from 1863 on display and it cost 1 penny.
The machine in the factory that moves the 2300 lb. paper is pretty neat.  It goes under the ream, lifts it up and takes it to where it is needed.  I forget what it is called but it is controlled by remote.
It was remarkably clean in the factory.