Latest news with #NewspaperHouse
The Herald
11-05-2025
- General
- The Herald
Printing the paper could be a dangerous job
Working for newspapers can be a dangerous job if you're in one of the conflict hotspots of the world. But you don't expect to lose a limb when you're actually printing one. Technology may have largely changed all that and made it a lot safer, but when long-time Newspaper House staffer Pieter van Wyk started out as an apprentice in the printing press section, he had lost the top of two fingers not much longer than a year into the job. Van Wyk was one of 14 apprentices who started in the works department at the same time, printing The Herald, Evening Post, Weekend Post and later Sunday Times, in the works in the year that he turned 18. These 'appies' included compositors and photo mechanics. Long night shifts for many months at a time were part and parcel of the job — 9pm until 4am. And often, double shifts. But then, frighteningly, there was also the risk of losing a body part. One employee lost an arm after it was ripped from its shoulder socket, another had two thumbs crushed, and Van Wyk, now 72 and long retired since 2007, had the tops of a ring finger and a pinky chopped off when he was just 19. 'You had to rig the paper through this 'old school' press. And I thought another guy was taking the paper through these two rolling cylinders,' Van Wyk said. But then his fingers got caught in the gap as he fed the paper through. He was rushed to hospital for treatment, and when it came to his compensation claim, unfortunately for Van Wyk the workers' compensation laws didn't allow for much. 'The doctor said this was because no digits [fingers] were involved. 'You're going to find this a joke now but I got paid out the equivalent of the value of a fishing reel and a fishing rod — about R160,' Van Wyk said with a broad grin. In early 1981, the team had their work cut out for them when the printing press section was totally flooded. 'The [then Afrikaans newspaper] Oosterlig printed The Herald for us which was about 30,000 to 32,000 copies. It took us about three months working non-stop to get our press up and running again.' The Herald
The Herald
08-05-2025
- The Herald
A ghostly encounter at Newspaper House
There are many stories to be told about Newspaper House in Baakens Street, but perhaps one of the most enduring is the mysterious 'ghost' with which one former employee had a more-than-close brush and which left her more than a little rattled. Former The Herald photographer and chief librarian Judy de Vega remembers only too well her encounter with the 'fleeting, shadowy' form which paid her a visit when she was all alone in the building. She was processing photographs on a Saturday night in 2009 when, out of the blue, the light suddenly went off. De Vega said the light had in fact been switched off. 'I thought: 'What the hell is going on?'. 'And then I heard what sounded like someone coming into the office at the goods lift at the back of the building, but I was alone. 'The air was ice cold and it sounded like a lady walking in heels. There was this fleeting shadow.' De Vega said she had seen the shadow walking behind her — the reflection was on her cellphone screen. When she turned to look, there was no-one. But as she left, De Vega witnessed through a glass panel of a door a figure sitting at a desk staring at the lift. De Vega said the amusing part was that a colleague, a Mrs Planter, had told her about a ghostly woman visitor and had said De Vega should 'just talk to her'. 'But I initially just laughed it off.' De Vega started a job as a casual worker for just two weeks involved in the circulation department and as a library assistant — but she would ultimately spend 28 years working for The Herald and its sister publications. One of her crowning achievements came when she won a national photographic award for one of her pictures — and it was all because of a visit to the doctor. 'I had to go to the doctor at lunchtime and around the corner in Military Road there was absolute chaos. 'There were these ladies — huddled on the pavement — who had got caught up in a protest where police were firing stun grenades.' So in the spur of the moment, De Vega did her journalistic duty and snapped the award-winning shot of several women cowering on the pavement as other people fled in different directions during a protest by contractors during which police fired stun grenades. De Vega said her job as a photographer had always been a fascinating one and she had managed to avoid any threats or confrontations apart from one occasion when a man tried to snatch her camera while she was covering a protest story. But she wasn't having any of it. 'I got hold of him and pulled him towards me in order to save my camera equipment and I ended up elbowing him in the mouth, which started bleeding — I was determined to protect myself and my camera.' The Herald
