Date: 1946

 

Description: This photo shows the Sioux City Journal printing room in the 1940s, at the southwest corner of 5th and Douglas Street. On the left side foreground are sets of type arranged in rows ready for the press, and behind them are workers arranging more type onto pages. On the right, another worker checks a printed page after it has gone through the press on the table in front of him. As the world industrialized printing and circulating news became a major industry and offered a lot of jobs for people across the nation. Before typesetting became electronic letters had to be arranged by hand like this onto plates, and then a rotary type press would coat the type and ink and press it onto newsprint paper. Today this process is largely digital, and the tedious work of setting type and making individual copies can now be done in a few seconds rather than hours.

 

Sioux City has had a variety of newspapers over the years, but the Journal has been among the most successful. It started in 1864 and over the years has found ways to beat its competition. Some of Sioux City’s greats have worked for the Journal: Jay “Ding” Darling was a cartoonist here from 1900 to 1906 before moving to the Des Moines Register, where he won two Pulitzer Prizes. George Newman was a photographer for the Sioux City Journal and the Sioux City Tribune. Thousands of his photographs have come to the Sioux City Public Museum and have been a great asset to our collection. The Sioux City Journal, the city’s premier modern newspaper, has won numerous state and federal awards and has moved with the city into a new age with better printing technologies and even an online newspaper.

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Donor: Damon and Vickey Lohry