Lot’s Wife has taken many forms over the years, ranging from a broadsheet in 2011, to the magazine format of today, to the classic tabloid that dominated most of Lot’s Wife’s first three decades of publication. The rationale for these changes came out of a mix of editors experimenting and technologically-motivated paradigm shifts in the printing process, particularly in its early days when Chaos – the predecessor to Lot’s Wife – was getting its act together.
The first edition of the nameless publication, which would become Chaos, appeared around the Cafeteria and notice boards of Monash in early 1961, as a newspaper for the student body that would “appear every week during term.” The first two editions of Chaos were short, comprising four and eight pages respectively. These very basic editions were typewritten and then duplicated, with headings and page dividers handwritten, and would set the groundwork for Lot’s Wife going forward.
The third edition of Chaos would mark the first in a series of technological printing innovations, with the adoption of a multilith duplicating machine for printing then described as “a recent revolutionary process introduced into Australia.” This new technology would allow for the printing of pictures and cartoons, and – to the great relief of the paper’s cophers – was 60% to 70% cheaper than existing methods. By the start of 1962, this innovation led to the adoption of the tabloid format that would become the standard format of Lot’s Wife for the next twenty-five years.
The next major innovation to the formatting would come with another “genuine breakthrough”, the adoption of Web Offset printing alongside a slew of changes that saw Chaos become Lot’s Wife, and is generally credited to being the brainchild of Tony Schauble, founding editor of Lot’s Wife. The change was largely due to a decision by The Age, who printed Chaos and later Lot’s Wife, to censor a series of articles in early 1964. Seeking greater freedoms they sought out a small printer in Waverley, who were one of the first printing services to use offset printing – “whereby inked images were transferred (or ‘offset’) from a metal plate to a rubber blanket and pressed onto the printing surface.” A breakthrough that led to Lot’s Wife becoming “the first colour student newspaper in Australia.” All of this on a budget of $5,400 (about $84,000 when adjusted for inflation).
For the next thirty years, the format and process for designing Lot’s Wife would remain relatively unchanged. And while the printers changed numerous times, sending editors to many exotic corners of the state from Shepparton to Koo Wee Rup to Waverley, the process remained the same. We are fortunate that this process has been preserved in articles mainly due to the fact that from 1988 right through until the late 2000s Lot’s Wife was graced with an array of work experience students, most of whom wrote of the traumatic experiences their week with the paper entailed.
In the course of a single week, the following would occur – the articles would be read through and edited “to correct careless mistakes” before being fed into a word processor, historically this would have been a typewriter – a new I.B.M. typewriter held up the production of a 1970 issue for two weeks while the staff got their heads around it – but by the late 1980s Lot’s Wife had acquired a new-fandangled computer for this purpose, by the Secretary – and yes Lot’s Wife did have a Secretary and an Advertising Manager both paid positions back in the day. From there they are set out onto photographic paper, which effectively prints pieces in one single column which is then sliced up and arranged on the page to produce the layout we see in the finished product.This process usually “entails staying up all night during layout nights (with rare naps on a very smelly foam mattress), amazing arguments with fellow editors, food from Foodplus (there are only so many microwaved chicken rolls one can handle)…”
Usually this eye-watering process had to be completed by 4:00am in the morning, so the completed drafts could be delivered to the printers. For a period between 1977 right through until the early 1990s, this meant a three hour drive to Shepparton and back by midday – which considering most editors didn’t sleep on layout nights can’t have been terribly occupational health and safety compliant. O.H.&.S. concerns aside, the Monash Association of Students – predecessor to the M.S.A. – debated when the practice began in 1977, about whether fuel costs and some level of comprehensive insurance ought to be covered.
These layout nights continued throughout the 1990s until the adoption of computer-based layout software such as Indesign – which is still used today, and alongside the adoption of colour printing and the choice of glossy covers allowed the paper to morph into the magazine-like format that we see today. Yet some things haven’t changed. The editors still pull their hair out over careless mistakes – usually minor inconsistencies in certain spelling choices – and are usually still up in the wee hours of the morning, albeit staring at a computer screen rather than covered in bromide – a range of chemicals used with melted wax in the printing process – all for your literary pleasure.
