Wednesday Fails to Arrive for Journal Readers
Nearly half of the Wall Street Journal’s 198,000 subscribers in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada missed their Wednesday editions due to problems with the printing presses at the newspaper’s production plant in Riverside.
“It was one of the larger mishaps in recent memory,” said one Journal source. “The phones were ringing off the hook.”
The missing papers will be delivered to about 82,325 subscribers today, along with their regular Thursday edition, according to production manager Gary Ringo.
Ringo said the problem was twofold. First, tension control problems on one printing press caused the newsprint to rip and ultimately put the press out of commission.
“We usually have a backup press,” he said, getting to the second ailment at the plant. “The backup press was not available due to an ink contamination problem.”
Ringo said the contamination problem was caused by experiments with a new type of ink designed not to rub off on readers’ hands.
“The one nice thing about this business is that there is always another day,” Ringo said.
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