By Judy Krieger, Courier editor
August 07, 2008 10:43 pm
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My, how time flies. Here it is, Aug. 8, 2008, the Courier’s 160th anniversary. I remember our 150th sesquicentennial celebration in 1998. What a fun day in Central Park. We also had a very successful tour of the Courier with visitors lined up down the block.
At Central Park, we had activities all afternoon and evening, with musical entertainment, food, an old-fashioned spelling bee and a basket supper auction. Highlight of the evening was the Ottumwa Municipal Band performing and then a performance by Ottumwa native jazz pianist, Dan Knight.
It was a beautiful day, and we had fun reminiscing with former Courier employees.
Now, it’s 10 years later.
The Courier has been a part of Ottumwa since Aug. 8, 1848, starting in a log cabin and moving several times until our current building was erected in 1921. It’s been our home since, and through the last 90 years or so has seen production evolve from the old Linotypes and letterpress to today’s computer-driven, paginated pages which end up on our stalwart offset press.
Today, as a morning newspaper, we go to press at 12:45 a.m. and aim to have a Courier on your doorstep by 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday.
Our pressroom prints many publications on our press which runs throughout the day and night.
Our Creative Services department designs the advertisements you see in the Courier after our advertising and classified employees do their selling.
Our business department takes care of the business end, customer service employees take care of your delivery concerns and district managers make sure all the carriers are out every morning getting the newspapers delivered.
Upstairs, the mailroom employees bundle the newspapers into the waiting hands of mail drivers who drop off bundles for carriers or put Couriers in newspaper boxes along miles of paper routes.
We are a well-honed team of dedicated newspaper people, each one as important as the other. As our boss likes to say, it doesn’t matter what good ads or news you have in the paper if it doesn’t get delivered on time. We believe that, and we all help each other achieve that goal, every day.
The daily deadline is an adrenaline rush that keeps us going.
We in the newsroom love our jobs, reporting the news, editing the copy and laying out the pages.
A long time ago — before I started working at the Courier — we put out a swell brochure showing each department and inviting one and all to take a tour. A Cordial Welcome, it was called.
You can still take tours and find out how we publish a newspaper. We just had a tour group of summer school students this week. We cordially welcome you.
Starting Aug. 25, we will celebrate our 160th anniversary with a week’s full of activities: Monday-Thursday, a free Courier picnic in a city park; Friday, a free swim at The Beach Ottumwa; and on Saturday, a chance to see the Nadas musical group on the patio of Bridge View Center. You’ll find more details in upcoming issues. We want to share our anniversary with you, our loyal readers.
Happy birthday to all those past and present who have helped produce the Ottumwa Courier. And, thank you businesses and subscribers who have kept our newspaper going for 160 years.
— Judy Krieger
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