On Sept. 1, The Emporia Gazette will begin printing its paper through the presses at the Lawrence Journal World.

Editor and publisher Chris Walker said that the change has been talked about for a couple of years and that the main reason for the switch is a need for more state-of-the-art equipment. The paper’s current presses were installed in 1973.

“(The Journal World) is a bigger operation,” Walker said. “The equipment has gotten expensive over the years and it’s hard for a smaller paper to keep up. We’re ‘mom and pop’ and they’re printing tons of other papers.”

The Gazette normally uses two image setters in production and the current presses have only one. Walker said the reason for the change came down to quality.

“We haven’t missed a day of publishing in 112 years,” Walker said, “and we don’t want to miss one just because we don’t have all the equipment.”

Walker said the Gazette wanted to add more color and graphics to the paper. The staff will be able to print a full-color paper if necessary and every day color will be on the front and back of the news and sports sections.

The newspaper’s width will also be changed from 27.5 inches to 24 and the TV guide will be switched to a smaller tabloid format. It will still be released six times a week.

Karen Weatherholt, campus mail services manager and daily reader of The Gazette, said she didn’t care where the paper was printed as long as she received it at the same time.

Weatherholt said she hopes the change of press will make it so the ink doesn’t come off the page when she reads it.

“It’s very messy to read,” Weatherholt said. “Every time you lean your elbow on it, you get an imprint.”

Staff deadlines will be moved up about an hour to ensure that the electronic version of the paper makes it to Lawrence on time.

“Subscribers will see no change,” said Dallas Sedgwick, the Gazette’s production manager. “We’ll spend the same amount of time up to the output point. We just have to rearrange our time.”

Sedgwick, who began working for The Gazette as a pressman 30 years ago, said the paper’s plate press department will now be eliminated and instead an Adobe PDF of the pages will be sent to Lawrence, which means three employees are losing their jobs.

Right now, the staff is working on sharpening the image quality of the paper and has done some test printing at the Journal World. Walker said the change will allow the staff to spend more time working on all parts of The Gazette, be it in print, online, multimedia, or magazine.

“It lets us focus all our energies on content and production,” Walker said. “We do so many different things… It lets everyone kind of focus on what we should do best.”

The Emporia Gazette was purchased by William Allen White in 1895. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for his editorial, “To an Anxious Friend” and another Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his posthumously published autobiography, “The Autobiography of William Allen White.”

Lauren Walbridge/The Bulletin

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