A 30-ton machine that has been generating indelible facts, lively opinions, milestone announcements and indispensible wisdom to Healdsburg and Sonoma County for almost a half century is being dismantled this week and sold for junk. The void it leaves is like a death in one’s family, the passing of an era or a movie ending where the theater lights never come back up.
Healdsburg has had a newspaper printing press since before it officially became a city in 1867. Healdsburg’s first press was a hand-press, with a single bed of lead type that stamped out one page of news and advertisements at a time. The 75-foot long electric-powered Community Goss-Rockwell press that this week is being dismantled at Healdsburg Printing Company has been printing The Healdsburg Tribune and many other local publications since 1979.
After recent years of declining printing business activity, looming retirement age and, now, the discouraging impacts of the pandemic, the company’s owner, Joe Vetter is closing his doors to his printing plant on Mill Street, near Jon Wright’s Feed Store and Luciani Pump. He is part of a historical trend where newspaper print operations are being shuttered by the hundreds all across America. (The Healdsburg Tribune and its owner Sonoma West Publishers are not going out of business and will now be printing the weekly Tribune at Folger’s Graphics in Hayward in the East Bay.)
The end of Healdsburg Printing is not as abrupt as it now seems. Vetter has seen the downward trend of the printing industry for almost a decade. He started an “exit plan” almost five years ago and plotted a course to save as many local jobs at his plant for as long as he could. With his building’s lease ending this month, Vetter has been working over the recent months to find new printing “homes” for his 15 small newspaper and other publication customers. He tried to find a buyer for his large printing press, but, in the end, he couldn’t even give it away. This past weekend, he held a garage sale for all his old desks, filing cabinets, bookcases and printing accessories.
“I’m actually surprised we held on for as long as we have. I’m extremely proud to have worked with the same dedicated production crew for the last 25 years, printing, packaging and delivering our customer’s print products,” he said.
While some of his newspaper customers have converted their news gathering and delivery to digital and internet-based, that same pivot is not possible for printers whose prime elements are heavy metal machines that are fed ink and paper. This is the “press” that the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Besides The Healdsburg Tribune, Healdsburg Printing Company (HPC) was home to Sonoma West’s others papers in Sebastopol, Windsor and Cloverdale. The HPC presses have also been faithfully rolling every week or monthly to print the Calistoga Tribune, Pt. Reyes Light, Independent Coast Observer (Gualala and The Sea Ranch), Kenwood Press and a dozen other smaller publications.
Journalists that chase down breaking news, sit through late night city council meetings, scour through tax laws and help salute community heroes and celebrations usually get all the credit for keeping local news alive, essential and easily accessible. But, without ink, paper and the specialized skills of offset press operators working on tight deadlines, the words of journalists would never have seen the light of day. Ink and paper newspapers have survived all the modern communication revolutions of the telegraph, radio, TV and other early computer-based communications.
“The printing and publishing industries are in a battle with social media,” confessed Vetter. “Healdsburg Printing had weathered this better than some, but it’s getting harder for local newspapers to remain in print, and this directly impacts their printer; our plights are symbiotic.”
Healdsburg Printing at one time employed over 30 men and women who not only printed newspapers, but also did graphics, marketing and specialty print products, local store banners and pamphlets and had a mail center that almost rivaled the local post office. Vetter started working there in 1972 and was part of a team that installed the current Goss Community press in 1979.
At the time, Healdsburg Printing and The Healdsburg Tribune had just been purchased by Del DeVries and her family from former owner Dean Dunnicliff who was retiring. She had Vetter and the rest of the printing crew promise to stay with her if she bought a new (and much needed) printing press. Her general manager was Jerry Neligh, who retired in 1995 and still lives in Healdsburg — he turns 91 on his birthday this week.
“Back then, for a good period of time, we did really well,” recalled Neligh. “We were making money and a good profit. We had just about all the business we could handle and it was a good run.” In 1995, Lesher Communications of Walnut Creek, publisher of the metro daily Contra Costa Times and dozens of other smaller newspapers, purchased Healdsburg Printing, and a small group of newspapers including The Tribune. Lesher built a new printing plant on Airport Boulevard and expanded its print operations into a regional printing house, adding customers from Marin and Mendocino counties and weeklies in Petaluma and the arts weekly in Santa Rosa, then named The Independent which is today’s North Bay Bohemian.
In 1995, Dean Lesher, founder of Lesher Communications died and the corporation planned to shut down Healdsburg Printing and the small weekly newspapers it owned in Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol and Guerneville. Vetter and three partners — all co-employees at Healdsburg Printing Company — bought the printing operations and moved the big, 30-tom press back to Healdsburg and kept it alive for the next 25 years.
In separate transactions, the Reeves family of Ukiah and New Mexico bought the Tribune and Windsor Times. Former Lesher general manager Rollie Atkinson and his family purchased the Sebastopol and Guerneville weeklies and formed Sonoma West Publishers.
“During that time, we’ve worked with many memorable people and had the pleasure to assist countless members of the community with their printing needs,” Vetter said. “We’ve participated in all of Healdsburg’s pageantry for the last 48 years. Thank you to everyone who printed with us with a special thank you to those of you who understand the importance of the local newspaper and what they stand for. Continue the fight to keep them in print.”
For Neligh, who worked in the printing industry since 1956 in Portland, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; Sacramento and San Francisco before arriving in Healdsburg in 1966, he said his last visit to Vetter’s plant a few weeks ago was a “sad moment.”
“You never thought it would end like this,” he said. “But it’s been a fast-changing world for quite some time. I know it left me behind, but I guess I never really tried to keep up. I just went fishing.”
