At top, editor Lyonel Doherty explains how the newspaper is laid out, while students show off their individual copies of the Chronicle in front of the office.
Erin Christie photo
Who wants to see our “torture dungeon?”
Everyone’s hands in Karen Sinclair’s Grade 4 class shot up like gophers on alert.
Would they find a rotting corpse down there tied up to an ancient printing machine? Let’s go see.
The wooden steps leading down to the dark, foreboding basement were as old as time, and the dankness seemed to creep into one’s bones.
The giddy students didn’t know what to expect as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, lit only by a couple of uncovered light bulbs.
“Spiders!” one student blurted, pointing to some cobwebs hanging from the old wood beams.
One of the first machines of torture they discovered was something that looked like a guillotine, with a huge wheel that brought down a large blade for cutting paper . . . or something else?
Reporter Erin Christie explained that the big steel pull rod on the side activated a trap door. Immediately some pupils looked at their feet to see if they were standing on such a door.
One student pointed to a hole in the wall, where an ominous crawlspace was located. That’s where all of the past employees are kept – those who didn’t bring in revenue.
Back upstairs, the students got a crash course on how the Chronicle was printed 70 years ago. Printer Rob Somerville explained how the ancient linotype machine worked and showed pupils how painstaking it was to produce the newspaper without computers.
Christie answered many questions from the inquisitive writers, who asked where stories come from and how long it takes to put an entire newspaper together.
The students were told that reporting is not a nine-to-five job because the news can happen anywhere, anytime.
Christie stressed that being a journalist is a lifestyle that demands passion and dedication.
Lyonel Doherty
Oliver Chronicle
