EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

''Pray for our printer and all of his companions."

attributed to Erik Jansson, religious and communitarian leader

Jansson's sentiment comes to mind as we go to press with our final issue in this magazine year.

His gender reference is outdated. The 19th-century technology his printer would have used is outmoded. And the reading list he imposed on the Swedish residents of Illinois' shortlived Bishop Hill community included only one book. Still, it would seem Jansson knew whom to credit with helping to get the word out.

And generations of readers have known whom to blame if they didn't like what was published. When residents of Alton disagreed with Elijah Lovejoy's antislavery editorials, they killed him. But first they destroyed his press — three times.

We don't face obstacles that extreme here at Illinois Issues. Nevertheless, a good printer is still a godsend.

Ours is Multi-Ad, an employee- owned printing company in Peoria. In the past year, they've come through for us — on time against tough odds — on several occasions. Not only did they hold the press run for our June issue to include the last of the legislative news, they reminded us that our readers rely on the magazine for timely information.

Of course, technology speeds production and improves the product.

And that technology has changed — is changing — at a rapid rate.

Over the past few years, we've developed the capability to send the magazine to the printer electronically — or transmit substitute pages, as we did for the June issue. We now receive articles electronically from writers as far away as Washington, D.C, and Oregon, as we did this month.

Illustration courtesy of Steve Helle and Glenn Hanson.

We've received some of our photographs that way, too. Last summer, for instance, we "downloaded" photographs electronically during the national party conventions. We can create illustrations by computer — see this month's cover and the article beginning on page 12. And we can "scan" artwork in, as we did on this page. The illustration at left was done for Steve Helle, who just stepped down as head of the journalism department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was drawn by my former typography instructor, Glenn Hanson. In fact, Hanson was devoted to teaching future journalists about the technological history of their craft. Yes, he taught us how to count characters for headlines, fit body copy and size photos. But he also taught each of us how to set a stick of type and lock up a page on the old printing press he kept in his classroom. It seemed a bit eccentric — even at that time. But I believe I know why he did it, and I've kept his drawing at my desk during my tenure here to remind me. No matter the technology, we aren't that far removed from past generations of journalists who struggled to get information to people.

To get that job done, we must rely on — trust — our printers. We're thankful for ours.

4 / July/August 1997 Illinois Issues