The Democrat-Gazette consolidating printing

According to Kate Knable of arkansasbusiness.com, Wehco Newspapers, owner of the statewide daily newspaper the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, recently moved the printing of its smaller daily newspaper in Hot Springs to Little Rock.

According to Paul Smith, president of Wehco Newspapers, The Sentinel-Record eliminated its printing operation in February, as well as the eight pressman jobs and about nine full-time mail room jobs that served it.  The D-G printing plant hired two of the Hot Springs pressmen, Smith said.

The press in Hot Springs is more than 50 years old and needed to be replaced or to have major repairs, and the Little Rock location had a backup press that could handle printing 20,000 daily copies of The Sentinel-Record. The two Little Rock presses can print up to 70,000 newspapers per hour, Smith said.

The state edition of the D-G usually prints at about 10:30 p.m., and the city edition is printed at 1 a.m. The second press often wasn’t used until the 1 a.m. printing, so it was available at 10:30 p.m. to print The Sentinel-Record, Smith said.

Moving the printing has reduced by half the four hours it previously took to print The Sentinel-Record, and provided more color printing capability, he said.

The Little Rock presses print about 140,000 copies of the D-G on weekdays and more than 200,000 copies of the Sunday edition for circulation in 63 counties.

Wehco still has printing operations in northwest Arkansas, El Dorado and Texarkana and does not plan to consolidate them, Smith said.