At left is the first issue of a weekly owned by Jerry Robinson, and at right is his four sons’ last issue.
Alas, the Robinson brothers were unable to save Westside Seattle! They published the last issue April 30, “temporarily suspending the printing and distribution of the newspaper while we reconfigure the model.” Patrick Robinson shared his remembrances in this article from the final issue.
Ink Stains
By Patrick Robinson
Some of my earliest memories are of the smell of ink.
My father, Jerry Robinson, worked for a newspaper, and when I was just six months old he bought one.
Not because he was rich. He wasn’t. He had four boys, and we lived in a modest home up by Top Hat, east of White Center. He was smart, though, and incredibly hard working. He convinced the owner of the paper that he was trustworthy, and John Muller made him an offer. He’d sell him the White Center News by letting him pay it off over time.
Thus, the course of my life was set. Certainly it has been shaped by many things, but the core themes of words, images, stories, the relationships found only in communities and, yes, the smell of ink are echoing for me now.
All my brothers worked at the paper, learning every aspect of the business. We took pictures, wrote stories, sold ads, did interviews, went to meetings, dreamt up promotions and served as junior ambassadors for our father.
Everybody knew Jerry. Everyone loved Jerry. He was a nearly perfect newsman. Friendly, inquisitive, easy going, an excellent writer, a convincing salesman and a wonderful photographer. He gave all his boys parts of those talents and expected us to develop them pretty much on our own after he set us on course.
He built the business from a small community newspaper into a regional powerhouse. He co-founded the Federal Way News and it was publishing three times a week in its heyday. He bought the West Seattle Herald in 1974 and the Highline Times a few years later. With hundreds of employees and wide respect, he was named president of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.
Jerry brought the first web offset press to the West Coast in 1957. He brought in FAX machines (believe it or not, from Exxon) to speed up ad production. He invested in what was called cold type, instead of hot-lead typesetting. He introduced optical-character- recognition machines to newspaper production in Seattle. And in 1986, in an offshoot of the company called Digital Post and Graphics, we had the very first all-digital video- and audio- production facility on earth in downtown Seattle. I know, because I worked there. That company went on to win several Emmy awards and worked with many national television companies.
Through all this change though, he never forgot the importance of the newspapers. What it meant to so many to be “in the paper,” what it still means to see your name in print, even though many will never know that feeling.
He was an eternal optimist and always said, “A community needs a paper,” since he knew the identity people shared through the existence of a physical object that represented the community.
So, I must say. It’s among the most heartbreaking experiences of my life to see the newspaper come to an end. The final printed issue is April 30.
It’s more than the end of an era. It’s a bit like saying goodbye to my father all over again.
Westside Seattle is a victim of changing technology, the arrival of many forms of competition for advertising dollars, some very hard-working competitors, not to mention changing tastes, attention spans and simply the pace of society—it was inevitable for it to go.
But when you have the smell of ink so deeply imprinted in your memory that it’d like an extra letter in your DNA, it’s extremely hard to face.
P.S. Also be sure to read Danny Westneat’s April 25 column in The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/stopping-the-presses-again-the-story-ends-for-two-more-century-old-seattle-newspapers/