At Charles River Pub­lish­ing, they “have a soft spot for cold web off­set litho,” brags a sign in the front entry.

Watch­ing a mas­sive blue Goss Com­mu­nity press roar to life is cool. Watch­ing the grace­ful dance of the fes­toons as one web does a live change-over from a spent roll to a fresh [one-ton] roll of paper is cooler. Watch­ing the press oper­a­tors move their highly trained hands in and out of the constantly-moving machin­ery is cooler still. But watch­ing 8,000 copies of your own color pho­to­graph stream­ing end­lessly over­head from a four-high stack, twist­ing pre­cisely in space as they are met with the other webs from nearby print­ing stacks oper­at­ing in per­fect syn­chro­niza­tion, fly­ing to the trim­mer, drop­ping to the folder and zip­ping down the con­veyor, face-up, past you to the bundler is down­right hypnotic.

Fun Fact #1: The first one to two thou­sand copies of each issue of The Tech are thrown away. Recy­cled, actu­ally. Big presses don’t run prop­erly until they are hot and up to speed.

Fun Fact #2: CRP turned down a con­tract to print The Boston Metro, so the esteemed pub­li­ca­tion is now actu­ally printed in New Hampshire.