DH visit

     It's not your grandparents newspaper. The Albany Democrat Herald is much more than the good old newspaper that used to arrive in paper boxes throughout the area every afternoon. In fact, it doesn't even arrive in the afternoon any more.
     The DH, as it is commonly known, has served the area since the mid 1860s, giving people access to news they might otherwise miss. What most people don't know is how the paper is put together and how many people have a finger in the pie. 
     "Six weeks ago we went to a morning paper," said Steve Lundeberg, the paper's Associate Editor. Whether the move has been a good one is hard to say so early in the move. According to Lundeberg, not many readers have weighed in one way or another. 
     Lundeberg gave a tour to a group of journalism students from Linn Benton Community College this week, giving them an inside view of a working newsroom. In addition to learning the paper's new time schedule- the DH now prints at night to meet their early morning deadline- students also learned which stories traditionally help sell newspapers.
     "People and animals, and fire," said Lundeberg.
     Lundeberg shared a variety of facts with the journalism class, including that a roll of the newsprint used to print the DH comes in rolls seven miles long. Between the DH and its sister paper the Corvallis Gazette Times, it takes approximately five rolls to print each day's papers.
     A question and answer session in the paper's meeting room ended the tour. Lundeberg, pointing to the papers pinned on the wall behind him, said the papers are hung so staff can see at a glance what each day's front page looked like. He also explained how, even though the paper is now produced on the computer, the DH archives are still available for use in research.
     While not many people go up into the archive area any longer, Lundeberg said he has spent enough hours to know it's easy to get lost in the paper's past.