Just leaving for the office (early for me) so here's a snap of last Friday's "banging out" of our last broadsheet edition, the 49,455th since it started in 1821*.
Banging out ceremonies were performed by the print unions in the BC (before computers) era when hot metal was use to typeset the paper. When printers left employment they would be seen to the cacophonous descant of dozens of printers banging their tools on their metal tables.
The glorious din caused by the last one when the hot metal composing rooms closed still echoes in my ears. But you can see from the bottles that Friday's sound was popping, not banging, and the only hint of heavy metal was in swanky iPod Nanos bought the day before by early second floor adopters.
Most of the journalists are off picture to the left. Reading left-to-right from the three white shirts: Ian Mayes, Readers' editor; Paul Johnson, deputy editor (news) and the editor's main editorial support during the project; Chris Elliott, managing editor (worrying how much the bubbly is costing?), Kay, catering executive, then Georgina Henry, deputy editor, talking to Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and (back to camera) Carolyn McCall, chief executive; Doreen Pallier, editor's PA and Derek Gannon, operations director. It is not impossible that we will be hearing more of some of them later on.
*(Carbon dating techniques have traced my start on the Guardian to issue 36,464)
