Opinion
Printing quality terribly low
Pilot Staff
May 11, 2007 - 3:46:02 AM

While it is not commonly known, Pilot has won several (even numerous) prestigious awards for quality of content and design. However, a consistently sighted problem, with the newsmagazine, is in-house printing. Every issue, the Pilot staff must call upon LHS’s Copy Center to produce all copies.

This copy machine process puts a burden on both the very dedicated support staff and the readers’ comprehension, especially regarding the photo reproduction. Pilot believes that LHS deserves better than that.

Of course, the staff would not go so far as to blame the copy center. They do the best they possibly can with toner, and the sensitive copiers. Professional papers use ink, so why shouldn’t the Pilot?

It is also important to note that one copiers used was partially paid for by Pilot. Pilot uses that copier for approximately 13% of the year.

Pilot was also traditionally sent ‘out-of-house’ for printing, but an administrative decision in creating high school copy center around six years ago began the usage of in-house printing.

Spot color and broad sheet (think traditional size newspaper) are the standard for high school publications, and is not befitting for a national award-winning paper to be published by a 8x10 copy machine.

Prestige has been and is now a great concern for the administration, yet they seem to shy away from the small subsidy in funding necessary for Pilot to be printed with spot color. This small change would garner far more (and indeed deserved) recognition, which is now, only held back by the poor print quality.

While the staff would not begin to question the administration’s reasoning, the results are clear and distinctly unfair: lost/lesser awards for an easy remedy-return to professional printers.

Of course, the greatest issue is not prestige but the effect that this poor quality has on our readers. Poor picture quality and difficult to discern text is no way to consume the news. Students should not have a muddy black and white product when the alternative is so easily implemented.

Pilot staff would like to thank the Copy Center for all their hard work, but it’s time to step up the quality. The staff officially, and loudly, calls for the small changes necessary to bring our product into the 21st century. Given all of our hard work, this seems a small request. Talks are underway between Keith Luebbert (10th grade principal) and Pilot Editors in order to find the best possible solution to this dilemma.