Abdul Jabbar, Abdul Mateen and Ather Ali with a Linotype machine, a relic from the past. (AN photo by Salman Marzouki)

I found myself in a newspaper environment at an early age. My late father was a journalist. He worked for Inquilab, a leading Urdu daily in Bombay. I often went with him to the office.

The newspaper was entirely handwritten in those days. Later when he started his own newspaper, I was barely 10 years old and observed the process from close quarters. I spent a lot of my time after school in the newspaper office and helped out in my own small way: Making the glue paste, cooking the special ink and pasting the yellow chemical on the grid paper for the calligraphers to write on. The newspaper was printed on a litho machine.

The litho printing process was cumbersome. The handwritten articles/stories were pasted on a plastic sheet and the image was then transferred on a gigantic stone by using pressure. To my young mind the dinosaur of a machine still appeared to be a marvel of human ingenuity as it printed two pages of the broadsheet newspaper at a time.

Since those days several decades ago, the advance in science and technology has benefited us in all spheres of life but more so in the communications media — both print and electronic. The computer has revolutionized everything and the information technology superhighway has made dissemination of news and information unbelievably easy and cheap.

But this article is about Arab News and how it has adopted and absorbed newer and newer technology after a modest beginning in a small Jeddah garage.

In 1975 when Arab News was launched, Lino typeset machines had already replaced the tedious and time-consuming slow method of hand-composing. Abdul Mateen Munshi was recruited from Pakistan as a Lino operator. He is one of the longest serving Arab News staffers.

“Arab News started as a tabloid but within four months it switched over to the broadsheet format,” recalls Mateen, now our librarian.

“When the newspaper started doing well, we got more machines and I was sent to Pakistan to recruit more operators,” Mateen said.

One of the operators he chose was Abdul Jabbar Hussain Dawood from the prestigious Dawn newspaper. “When I joined Arab News, there were 12 Lino machines — six for English and six for Arabic. We had a much smaller set-up then but the job was challenging,” reminisced Jabbar who now helps with the stocks and assists in the business section.

The advent of computers led to the newer technology of photo typesetting. Hot metal made way for bromides as Arab News was among the first newspapers to upgrade.

All Lino operators switched over to the computer. “From the hot and humid Lino machine area, we now worked in an air-conditioned computer section. At the Lino machine, we always had to be wary lest a botched line should splash hot lead and burn us. I still have some burn scars on my arm,” said Jabbar.

At the same time, better and faster printing machines were being made. Goss was the market leader and Arab News got the best and fastest one available.

Arab News was also a leader in facsimile transmission.

After initially printing in Jeddah and transporting by planes to other major cities, we started printing in Riyadh and Dhahran. First page negatives were flown by air to these two centers but this put a lot of pressure in terms of time.

Facsimile transmission was the solution to this problem. As a result, in yet another first Arab News could produce identical editions in Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhahran which carried the latest news.

Ather Ali Shah worked as a graphic artist and designer in a Karachi advertising agency before he joined Arab News in 1976. He has since been associated with the newspaper. He has seen the technological progress of the newspaper from close quarters and has played a part in it.

“I began by making ads for Arab News. It was really tough those days compared to what we have today,” Ather remembers.

When there was a shortage of pagemakers in Arab News, he was asked to help out and since then he has stayed on.

Ather designs our logos and mastheads for supplements, in addition to helping in designing and making pages. He is mainly concerned with the cosmetic appearance of the paper.

“I have had a happy tenure at Arab News and have seen many changes in terms of the introduction of new technology and its effect on the look of the newspaper. I am proud to say that Arab News can compare with any international newspaper in all respects,” Ather proudly declares.

Arab News crossed yet another milestone when it introduced color in its pages two years ago. The outer green was embellished with colorful photographs. The look of the newspaper has been enhanced. It also meant getting a much bigger printing machine. We have kept faith with the Goss, a truly reliable name. The new machine in Jeddah has 10 towers. Eight of them can print four color pages each at a time. Two of the towers can print four black and white pages each.

Technical adjustments had to be made for the color photos since they have to appear against the green of the four outside pages.

This is where the genial Hatem Hussain and his group of highly skilled men in the production department came to our help.

Talking about photos, it is pertinent to mention the tremendous progress in the transmission of news pictures. The era of radiophotos now seems like a distant nightmare when one sees the sharp color pictures received within minutes of an event taking place. Here is another example of technology boosting communications. Yet another part of the production that has made tremendous progress is the plate-making section. Today’s zinc plate which replaced the gigantic stone of the litho press, has to be etched with the text and images of the newspaper.

In the olden days, the deep etching process took ages. That was replaced by a quicker process but the plates did not last as long. Now we have direct computer to plate process known as CTP.

It has eliminated one step of making negatives and from the computer the pages are directly exposed on the plates.

The Agfa Galileo digital plate-making system we have is one of the best according to Ansar Hussain Jaral, the manager of the plate-making section at our press in Dahban, on the outskirts of Jeddah.

Thus Arab News has the best and latest technology available. Within 15 minutes of the plates being mounted on the cylinders, the computer works out the registration process and the printing machine is ready to produce clean, sharp copies. And it can print an amazing 45,000 copies per hour!

All editors have Macintosh G4s. The user-friendly machines combine with Adobe’s page-making software InDesign and life is literally a breeze.

The smell of ink in the press is my favorite smell. I like it even better than the smell of petrol. And the joy of seeing newspaper copies rolling out of the printing machine is difficult to describe.

(News Editor Javed Akhtar, a seasoned journalist, brings to the newsroom all his experience.)