Video: How newspapers are printed at Newspaper Club

Have you ever wondered what happens after you order your newspaper? The process can seem like magic: press a button and — presto! – a fresh stack of newspapers is dropped on your doorstep. But in reality it takes lots of inky, moving parts to turn the pixels of a PDF into a newspaper you can hold in your hands.

We’re excited to share a peek into that process with a behind-the-press video.

But first a bit of background. At Newspaper Club there are two types of printing: digital and traditional. We use digital printing for small runs, starting from 1 copy. It’s our most popular method, using toner-based laser printing.

The video below shows our traditional printing process, which is how we print bigger runs (over 500 copies). Traditional newspapers are printed on a web offset press, using offset lithography, just like any daily newspaper. It’s huge, and designed to print thousands of newspapers at a time.

Here’s a speedy rundown of how it works: artwork from your PDF is imaged by laser onto aluminium printing plates. There’s one plate for each of the CMYK, or “process”, colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

These plates never touch the paper. Instead, ink from the plates is transferred onto cylindrical rubber blankets. A massive reel, called a “web”, of newsprint zooms through these cylinders and the ink is offset onto the newsprint – that’s where the term “web offset” comes from.

(Fun fact: a web of newsprint is 15km long – around 2.5x the height of Mt. Kilimanjaro!)

Our keen-eyed press team adjusts ink levels along the way, making sure the artwork in your newspapers looks its best. The whole process happens in a flash – it typically takes less than 30 seconds from the ink going onto the paper to the finished newspaper being boxed, or put on a pallet, for delivery.

It’s a thrilling process to see – and now you can watch it!

Traditional print runs start at 300 copies. Order free samples or get in touch to find out more about the different paper types available.