Madison Taylor

When the editor gets a call at 5 a.m. and the circulation director is on the other end of the line the news is never, ever good.

And this morning, as I slept after going to bed only two hours before, the word was very bad — very bad indeed.

After I croaked a half-hearted “hello” into the phone, our circulation director Doug Johnson responded. There was a serious press problem — a very serious one. Papers, he said, were not only going to be late but way, way late. Most of our customers got newspapers on time or thereabouts, but 6,000 — mainly in east Burlington and Graham — did not.

He wanted me to get the word out online in case our print customers might see it. I ambled upstairs to my computer and posted a breaking news alert about it. I also wrote that people could check out online replica edition by typing in august 31 in the username and password. For those who haven’t seen it, check it out.

Anyway, now as the clock strikes 11 a.m. and I’ve been in the office a few hours, we still don’t have newspapers to deliver to our good customers still without. The papers are coming. It’s just that we had to go to Greensboro to publish them on a press provided by the News and Record. We appreciate their help.

The press was scheduled to start in Greensboro at 9 a.m. We expect papers around mid-day — should all go according to plan.

But when does that happen?

Meanwhile a repair crew is working on our press to solve the problem before we begin our run for Tuesday’s newspaper. Our production manager Darryl Ayers said it’s at least a six-hour repair job.

Just know that we’ll get papers out as quickly as we can. And thanks for understanding.

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