| Description |
UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION electronically, laying out all the headlines, text, photographs and illustrations on a computer screen. That system began operating in 1986. In 1988 the newspaper's library started saving all Deseret News stories electronically in a computerized storage system, a major advance from the days of cutting and pasting news clippings. Artists also began using computers to produce maps, charts, illustrations and other graphics materials. The newspaper acquired the first electronic darkroom in Utah in 1989. This photographic equipment allows photographers to scan negatives into a digital format and receive color photos at the newspaper's office in less than a minute via a modem through telephone lines. Photographers no longer make prints. All photos are scanned from negatives into electronic images which are ready for newspaper production. Gathering the news was fraught with many physical and other problems in the early days. Publisher Dr. Willard Richards used a variety of ways to gather news, from recounting stories told by traveling agents to interviewing pioneer passers-by. Accounts from LDS missionaries serving throughout the world also filled the pages. Because of the unreliability of the mails, news reports of events in other parts of the country were sporadic. Richards made an effort to publish old and current news events as quickly as possible. Major progress in news gathering occurred in 1861 when the telegraph wire reached Utah, but the service was not without problems. Vandalism and weather problems resulted in lines being dead for days and sometimes weeks. Technological problems were not the only thing plaguing the paper. It also faced other critical challenges. Scarcity of newsprint threatened the existence of the paper in the early days. Sometimes publication was delayed for as long as three months. In an effort to combat the problem, the LDS Church established its own local paper industry. In 1851, Thomas Howard, 140 |
