Doug Rose retires after a 55-year career at The Daily Star

Jul. 8—Doug Rose has seen a lot of changes in his 55-year career at The Daily Star.

Rose said he started working at the newspaper on "Nov. 14, 1966. My 18th birthday." He retired July 1.

"Doug embodies a lot of history of The Daily Star and he will be missed," Editor Robert Cairns said.

Rose said he graduated from Laurens High School in June 1966 and spend the summer roofing and working on a farm, before applying for a job in the composing room of the paper.

When he started, the composing room had two shifts, morning and night, and between five and 10 employees worked each shift. The composing room created all of the text and advertisements for the paper. When he started, the paper was put together using hot metal type, he said.

"I spent a lot of time cleaning and putting the letters in order," he said.

He said it was easy for some to get some of the letters mixed up because they were so small. "I had good eyesight back then," he said. "We didn't have computers to do the work, we did it all by hand."

He said he had fun creating ads and said artwork for the ads came cast in metal plates that had to be cut out using a table saw or sheet metal router.

From the hot metal typesetting, the company went to use the electronic linotype, where he would type the letters and they would be put in place on the mold.

"I liked the tape punch and running the electronic type machine," he said. "Then we went to paper film to plate, then regular film to plate, then computer to plate."

He said during the paper film stage, the advertising composing department would send out their ads on paper and the newspaper office would send out their stories and where they want them located in the paper and the composing department would lay out the paper on grids using wax before it was photographed and put on plates for the cylinder on the printing press.

As technological advancements were made he noticed the number of people dwindling in the office.

"Less people were doing the same job," he said. "But we didn't need as many people. Now it all goes to the CTP unit."

The computer-to-plate unit is monitored by one person and receives the pages from the newsroom and transfers them to film. If the page is a color page, four plates are printed — one cyan, magenta, yellow and black — and the order the film comes out is important, he said.

He said it takes a lot of concentration to make sure everything is running smoothly and in order. He said he would log every page that came off the machine on a checkoff sheet and would call the newsroom if the page was submitted with a layout error on it for them to fix it.

Rose said he trained on the CTP machine for three hours, then hoped everything worked correctly. He said he trained his replacement over the course of five days.

Rose said in addition to seeing several technological changes at the paper, he has seen several personnel changes and building configuration changes.

"It's amazing the number of people I've seen come and go," he said. "Ten publishers, numerous editors, numerous newsroom staff, numerous advertising staff, mailroom staff. Nobody stays long. I think longevity in the workplace is a thing of the past. Some I wonder where they are and what they're doing. Some weren't here long.

"There have always been a good group of people who have worked here," he continued. "I've made some lifetime friends."

One of those friends is Tracy Bender, who has worked together with Rose for 31 years. "She's had my back," he said. "She's always been good with me." Bender said she considers Rose a "true friend" and said she liked working with him.

"He has always been a supportive and helpful co-worker. I would be amiss if I didn't mention I miss his grumpy face walking through the door every day at 4 p.m. I think his record of 55+ years at The Daily Star won't be broken any time soon."

Rose said he and his wife Carolyn have put their house in Oneonta up for sale and plan to move to Covington, Georgia to be closer to their daughter and away from the cold weather and snow. He said Covington is near Augusta, Georgia, home of the Masters Golf Tournament.

"I used to play a lot of golf, but I have back and shoulder problems," he said. "In one and a half years I haven't even swung a club."

He said he hopes to be a "patio farmer" and grow vegetables and flowers for his wife.

Vicky Klukkert, staff writer, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221.