Photo Essay | Monday, June 1, 2009

12:30 a.m.: The Dartmouth leases offices on the second floor of Robinson Hall, but printing occurs off-site at the Valley News in West Lebanon, N.H.

Editors put the print edition of the paper to bed around 1:00 a.m., and send the pages to the press  electronically as portable document files.

2:05 a.m.: Malcolm Tibbets downloads the PDFs from Hanover and arranges them on negatives.

2:11 a.m.: Danny Osmer prepares the negatives to be burned on plates. The burning process selectively hardens polymer on the surface of the plates.

The plates are passed through developer and rinsed to remove any polymer that was not hardened. Jason Libbey, the press supervisor, and Osmer finish the prepress process in the plate room.

Jeff Head loads plates onto the press, which uses water-based ink. The ink is collected and recycled at the end of each night.

Eric Wright loads rolls of paper, seven miles long, onto the lower level of the press. On a normal night, it takes less than one quarter of a roll to print The Dartmouth.

Osmer checks the first copies off the press to make sure all the plates are aligned properly and without blemishes. On this night, one of the blue plates was dented and had to be reburned.

2:33 a.m.: As soon as the ink has taken to the plates, Head calls &#8220;all set&#8221; to the circulation floor below, where copies of the paper are bundled for delivery.

Employees at work on the circulation floor.

2:51 a.m.: Osmer begins removing plates from the press as soon as the run finishes, which usually takes less than five minutes.

Peter Osorio &#8216;12 begins his route at 7:15 a.m. every morning.

It usually takes Osorio under an hour to deliver his 190 papers to offices and bins across the west side of campus.

8:03 a.m.: Peter leaves a paper at the front door of the President&#8217;s House at 14 Webster Avenue. He also delivers a copy of The Dartmouth to President Wright&#8217;s office in Parkhurst Hall.