The Changing Magnifying Glass: Printing News at 90

“There’s a man with a magnifying glass in every printing plant, every engraving shop, every advertising agency and publishing firm. He’s the man who handles the thousand and two details of production; and that magnifying glass of his is used for checking proofs, engravings, typography, and presswork. More than that, the glass is a symbol of his attitude of mind, his inquiring spirit, his devotion to accuracy, his scientific pursuit of perfection. The man not only knows the importance of details, but searches them out actively, persistently, and with infinite patience.”

Riffing on a Rembrandt painting in a famous introduction to the Ninth Graphic Arts Production Yearbook, Leo Joachim perhaps summed up his own indefatigable work habits, a work ethic that would lay the groundwork for a publication that is now one decade shy of a century old.

It is impossible to talk about Printing News—which celebrates its 90th anniversary in 2018—without discussing its founder, Leo H. Joachim. Born in 1898 in Brooklyn, N.Y., he attended the prestigious Boys High School in Brooklyn (its other famous alumni included Isaac Asimov, Aaron Copland, and Howard Cosell—now, there’s a high school reunion that would be worth attending), and it was as editor-in-chief of the Boys High School Recorder where Leo caught the publishing bug. It wasn’t just publishing, though; in addition to editing the school paper, he headed the school’s honor group and was president of the Dramatic Society. Indeed, his second love after publishing was theater. (At one point in his career, he was involved with the company that published Playbill, perhaps the emblematic convergence of publishing and theater.)

After high school, Leo attended Columbia College and was an alumnus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His first professional venture was as editor and co-publisher of a weekly community newspaper published out of Forest Hills, N.Y., which he co-launched with a scant $200 (even by early 20th-century standards and adjusting for inflation, that was not a lot with which to start a newspaper) and the kindness of a local printer. While still in school, he contributed political and economics articles for public affairs weekly The Public, and was later asked to join the staff—although the publication itself was not long for the world. “Just my luck,” he would later remark. “The magazine had been published weekly since 1898 and six months after I joined it, it went out of business.” He bounced back and landed a job as assistant editor of The American Food Journal, which gave him a taste, so to speak, of trade publishing. He would also dabble in book publishing, including a stint with Thomas Seltzer, a literary book publisher that first published D.H. Lawrence in the U.S.

Leo would head back to trade publishing, which is where he would ultimately make his mark, co-founding Cord Age Magazine in 1922 with his old friend and partner Arthur Freund. It showed him the ropes, as it were, of hands-on publishing, and, in a preview of things to come, he personally edited 312 issues of Cord Age—and was even known to write entire issues himself. (That publication continued until 1948.) Joachim and Freund would found several other publications—The Commissary Manager and the first of four graphic arts books: Bookbinding Magazine, which they launched in 1925. Bookbinding was a unique concept at the time; in the mid-20s, the Big Three trade magazines—Printing Magazine, Inland Printer, and American Printer—were general printing publications, and there had never been a publication devoted to one particular aspect of the industry (in this case, bookbinding). At that time, running a printing industry trade publication was no easy task. It’s hard for us in trade publishing today to imagine it, but there were no such things as industry press releases back then. All industry news had to be actively and doggedly pursued, so Leo would attend every industry event or meeting he could, and there were a lot of them to choose from, as there were myriad clubs, associations, and organizations—The Trade Book Clinic of the AIGA (American Institute of the Graphic Arts) and the Bookbinder’s Guild, to name two at whose events Leo became a permanent fixture.

And thus it was in February 1928 that Leo again launched another landmark in the printing industry trade press: Printing News, the first regional newsmagazine for the industry. (Southern Printer, Western Printer, Chicago’s Printing Views, and—here’s one for the old-timers—Cody’s of Kissimmee, all came later.) In retrospect, it may not seem like the most auspicious time to launch a new publication, but no one knew that the Great Depression was just around the corner. But even during the worst depths of the Depression, Printing News never missed a weekly issue. (Actually, the printing industry itself did very well during the Depression; there was no other mass communication medium at the time—radio was still in its earliest phases—so anyone who needed to get the word out about...well, anything...had no choice but to use print. Those were the days, as the old theme song goes...)

Copies of the earliest issues of Printing News have been lost to the ages—who would have thought to save copies of a regional newsmagazine?—but the first extant issue that could be unearthed is issue number four from March 1928. The top headlines at the time centered on a recent study showing that book publishers still considered New York City to be the center of the publishing universe, and that elsewhere the Gotham printing scene was expanding. Good times.

From the start, the focus of Printing News was local news, and being based in Manhattan—the epicenter of printing and publishing—meant that there was always something going on. And with many clubs and groups, there was no dearth of news, and Leo would tirelessly attend as many of those events as he could—a habit he continued throughout his career. The magazine’s advertising base was also similarly local, and Printing News was for all intents and purposes the industry’s “Yellow Pages” for anyone looking for printing and related services pretty much all along the Atlantic seaboard.

In its first three decades of existence—the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s—Printing News generated 1,756 issues and 30,000+ pages—almost every one of which Leo personally edited or signed off on. He would launch the annual Graphic Arts Production Yearbook in 1934 and the full-color monthly digest-sized Productionwise (famous for its artistic covers) in 1953, but neither of those had the staying power of Printing News. Leo was also very “hands-on”—Printing News never had a very large staff. (Those were the days when virtually all prepress and production were handled by the printer.) One of his stalwart business—and eventually personal—partners was his wife, Florence Joachim, née Shera, who in 1955 had been president of the Club of Printing Women of N.Y.

Leo was working on Printing News right up to the end—in 1985, he had a fatal heart attack while working on Printing News. Florence continued the publication for a short time after his death—but she could never match Leo’s pace, and sold the magazine in the late 1980s.

The ownership and focus of Printing News may have changed in the 33 years since Leo left us—it’s now a monthly, national in scope, and part of the WhatTheyThink family—but its current publishers strive to produce it under the auspices of Leo Joachim’s guiding spirit. And even if that magnifying glass has evolved into more digital and electronic tools, we still endeavor to focus on the importance of details, searching them out actively, persistently, and with infinite patience.

Frank Romano also contributed to this article.