Like downtown, SBJ continues evolution

But I’ve been with the Business Journal long enough that I figure I can give some historical perspective, even though I’m a current employee.

When I joined the Business Journal as an editorial assistant in August 1993, our office was at 209 E. Walnut, which is now Bijan’s. To this day, I cannot go into Bijan’s without a wave of deja vu.

The garage-door at the front of the building used to be a picture window, and my desk was smack on the other side of it.

In those days, the Walnut Street building was cut up into odd little nooks and crannies, lit with fluorescent lights and stunted with drop ceilings – far from the open, high-ceilinged, exposed-brick venue it is now.

The pinnacle of the building’s oddities then was the first-floor bathroom, which was split-level. The sink was opposite the door, but you turned left and went up three steps to reach the toilet, which was apparently set on an old stair landing.

Yes, our throne was on a dais.

In 1993, we were still cutting and pasting copy. The stories came out of the printer, we waxed the backs of them to make them sticky, then pasted the pages to a layout board, leaving room for the production staff to do the same with the advertisements.

Only one person and one computer system were capable of editorial layout, and we spent many late nights waiting for the pages to print so we could paste and proofread them.

We couldn’t place photos on the pages electronically because we didn’t have the computer memory or photo scanning equipment. The pages came out with empty squares and rectangles where the photos went.

We cut out the blanks with X-acto knives, being sure to leave the lines around the boxes intact, then placed the photos behind the pages, lining up the photos and the cut-out boxes.

In those days, we developed our own film and printed our own pictures, and that was part of my job.

I remember standing in the darkroom, shaking a metal cannister full of film, singing “American Pie” to entertain myself while the timer ran. It was literally years later that I was informed that everyone on the first floor could hear me.

Yikes!

The first computer I worked on at SBJ was a Classic Macintosh, a small rectangular desktop unit with a built-in screen about six inches across.

How far we have come!

Now I’m on an iMac, as is most of my staff, and the only Mac Classics I’ve seen lately have been turned into aquariums or planters.

Now our newspaper is 100 percent electronic. While we print out pages for proofreading, our finished layout, complete with pictures, is beamed to our printer via satellite.

We’ve also added special events and publications, and another person to help design and produce them.

We stopped developing our own film when we moved to our own building, 313 Park Central West, in 1996, and now virtually all of our photos are digital.

In 1993, we had no Web presence. This July, we will unveil a brand new www.sbj.net that is going to knock our readers’ socks off.

If I have learned one thing over the last 12 years it is this: Like downtown itself, SBJ just gets better and better.

Clarissa French is editor of Springfield Business Journal. Starting as editorial assistant in 1993, she has served as reporter, copy editor, special sections editor and managing editor.

[[In-content Ad]]