From wax to web: How decades of tech evolution transformed production at the St. Albert Gazette
This feature explores the evolution of newspaper production at the St. Albert Gazette, tracing the transition from manual wax-and-paste methods to modern digital workflows. It highlights how the introduction of the Macintosh in the 1980s fundamentally changed the industry.
Why it matters
It provides a historical perspective on the digital transformation of local journalism, illustrating the shift from physical labor to software-driven efficiency.
Before computers transformed newspaper production, putting out the St. Albert Gazette meant cutting, pasting, developing photographs and hoping the equipment worked.
For Sandy Jamison, who spent decades as a production manager at the Gazette , producing a newspaper was once a hands-on process that could take hours, and sometimes much longer.
"You used to stand at a slanted table with galleys, so long strips of copy, run those through a waxer, chop the story up, and place it on the page," Jamison recalled.
Stories arrived as long strips of typeset copy. Jamison and other production staff would cut them apart and arrange them on a page, using wax to hold the pieces in place. Headlines were created separately and pasted onto the layout.
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