East Aurora Advertiser

A Visit with John Spooner: Former Advertiser Typesetter, Pressman, Photographer



As part of our continuing celebration of the East Aurora Advertiser’s 150th anniversary, we are visiting with former Advertiser staffers who contributed to the paper’s success. This week we’re speaking with John P. Spooner, grandson of publisher John Raymond Spooner, who left Larkin Soap in 1914 to buy the paper, (a familiar scenario for East Aurorans) and son of publisher Alfred Spooner, who took over the business in 1935 at age 25 when his father died. Three generations of the Spooner family were involved in 67 of the paper’s 150 years. During his career, John was an Advertiser pressman and typesetter, advertising salesman, photographer and film developer, reporter and general factotum.

John Spooner graduated with the class of 1955 at East Aurora High School, but he began working at the Advertiser several years before, beginning at age 14. Since his father, Al Spooner, owned and published the paper, duties at 710 Main St. were a part of young John’s life. 

“After school and on weekends,” Spooner said during a recent visit to the office, “I was at the paper. I swept the floor, painted the offices, ran errands and learned how to set type and run the presses with notable characters like my uncle, Jack Spooner, and the legendary Ike Hinterberger, who lived out on Pound Road and would bike to the train tracks, throw his bike on the train, ride into the village and bike to the office. Saturday was a big day because we printed the orders of service for local churches. They’d get us the information by Saturday morning and we’d have them printed by Saturday night, ready for distribution on Sunday morning. That was one of my earliest responsibilities.”

East Aurora Advertiser Publisher Grant Hamilton, left, talks with John Spooner about the early printing days at the newspaper. Photo by Tami Fuller

During the 30 years Spooner was at the Advertiser, from 1951-1981, he witnessed one of the great transitions of printing technology, from hot type to cold type. 

“When I started working, we were using linotype, known as hot type. We had two huge Linotype machines, which were basically typewriters hooked up to a molten lead reservoir. When I typed a letter, a brass mold slid into place and was filled with the hot lead, creating a piece of type. Finished letters were formed into words, words into lines, lines into paragraphs and loaded onto a chase, a kind of frame that was the size of the page. We could print four pages at once. Photographs had to be sent to Buffalo where they were made into engravings that were then mounted onto a block of wood and fitted into the chase. For graphics, we had that day’s equivalent of clip art, stock images that might be used for advertisers—a mortar and pestle for Larwood’s, bowling pins flying for Carpenter’s Lanes, and so on. That happened on the main floor of the current Advertiser building. From there the chases went by dumbwaiter to the basement where they were inked and pressed onto newsprint. We started with the inside pages: five and six, seven and eight for a 12-page edition and worked our way out to page one, leaving that last to accommodate the late-breaking news. After we printed the week’s edition, all the lead was melted down for reuse.”

Spooner said that they started printing on Tuesday morning and didn’t finish until Wednesday night, a long process of feeding the press, waiting for ink to dry, folding the paper and getting ready to ship five or six thousand Advertisers. If it sounds like a lot of work, it was, for sure. But Spooner says, “You didn’t think of it that way. It was simply what you did to produce the product.”

But a new technology nicknamed cold type was on the horizon. With cold type, typesetters produced lines of text on photographic paper that were then waxed and set on a light table where they were literally cut and pasted into lines and columns. The pasted-up page was then set into the chases as before and readied to be printed, not on the old hand press, but on an offset lithographic press. 

“In the early 1960s, we began talking with some fellow independent publishers from Clarence, Lancaster-Depew, Amherst and Alden about combining efforts to reach a larger audience with advertising. That initiative never went anywhere, but what we did agree on was starting our own publishing collective and printing our five papers on one press. In 1962, we formed Western New York Offset Press and bought a Goss Suburban offset press. Now instead of taking two days to print our weekly run, we pasted our paper into chases, placed them in film boxes, drove them to Lancaster and in half an hour our five to six thousand Advertisers were ready.”

Numerous printing presses and styles were used over the past 150 years to print the newspaper every week. Photo by Tami Fuller

From the March 16, 1962, Advertiser: “The East Aurora Advertiser last Wednesday night was printed on a four-unit Goss Suburban offset press with a capacity of between 12,000 and 15,000 16-page papers and hour, folded and ready for delivery.” Compare that with the Miehle press it replaced, whose capacity was 1,200 impressions an hour on a four-page frame. 

“Western New York Offset Press started with one press, printing our five papers,” Spooner said. “Over time, we bought two more presses until we were printing 40 weekly papers for the Western New York market.”

“The old guys,” remembered Spooner, “my dad, my Uncle Jack and Ike, struggled mightily when they went from hot type to cold type composition. It took a while to switch over. But to their credit, they came around. Eventually, we sold the big press we printed the Advertiser on and kept a few smaller ones for printing smaller jobs like stationery, handbills or invitations.”(Note: some of the smaller presses are still at the Advertiser office.)

Driving the pasted-up papers to the Lancaster facility added a new factor into things, though: the weather.

 “Going north-south on those roads to Lancaster could be treacherous in the winter. On more than one Wednesday, I spent the night at the printing plant.”

I’ll bet you worked more than a 40-hour week, I commented. 

“Oh yeah,” John said. “I took all the photos for the paper with my 4×5 Speed Graphic camera. When editors were on vacation, I covered the town, village or school board meetings. I sold advertising. Grant Hamilton [current publisher and former editor] and I built the darkroom in the basement where we developed the film. Our social lives revolved around our newspaper schedule. I remember the argument I had with my father when I told him I was taking a whole week off for my honeymoon.”

Spooner left the Advertiser in 1981 to manage the printing plant his father and the other publishers had established in Lancaster. But he still helped out at the family paper when he could, especially as his father’s health began to fail. It was John Spooner who called Grant Hamilton in 1981 to tell him the Advertiser was for sale. Publisher Hamilton celebrates his 41st year at the top of the masthead in 2022.

Spooner managed the plant for three years, then went to M&T Bank as their chief of in-house printing, rising to vice-president before retiring 20 years later.

Of his time at the Advertiser, he’s got nothing but fond memories as his wistfulness during our tour of the building demonstrated. And he’s pleased with the way the current management and staff have carried on. 

Columnist Rick Ohler, Publisher Grant Hamilton and former newspaper employee John Spooner. Photo by Tami Fuller

“When I received my last Advertiser, it was 20 pages long. We never had 20 pages, except maybe at Christmas with extra ads. And, of course, we couldn’t print color, except on rare occasions. Your continued success is a testimony to the quality you’re producing. I love getting the paper, the print version, even though it doesn’t come until Monday. [John and his wife of 59 years, Mary Beth, now live near their daughter in New Hampshire.] I’m a newspaper guy. Cut me and I’ll bleed black.”

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