by Sharon Lovering
If you’ve ever been to a convention, or attended virtually, chances are you’ve received the daily convention newspaper, either in hard-copy braille or large print or via email. You may have found your paper pushed under the door in your hotel room late in the evening, or your guide dog may have alerted you to the delivery (and perhaps surprised the delivery crew). Or maybe you picked up a copy in your favorite format at the information desk. But what goes into producing the convention newspaper? More than you might think – and it starts much sooner.
One of the first things is to find a name for the newspaper. Members of the Board of Publications and I come up with names. I check the Internet for names of newspapers in the area where the convention is being held to be sure that we don’t use their names and risk copyright infringement. Then we vote; the one with the most votes becomes that year’s newspaper name.
Another action that happens fairly early in the year is requesting braille embossers. I try to put in my request to HumanWare for three or four embossers sometime in January. This year, it was a little later due to the snow and ice storm that formed what the weathermen called “snowcrete” toward the end of January. (I’m sure those of you along the East Coast remember that nightmare!)
After the annual D.C. Leadership Conference, the pace picks up a bit. I create what’s known as a dummy copy of the paper, which includes the newspaper name, volume and issue number, and the first date of the year’s paper. This year, it’s Friday, July 24th. It also includes all the headings and subheadings — announcements, changes, room changes, updates, additions, cancellations, sponsors and the various levels, and advertisements. Nancy Christine sends the advertisements and sponsors’ ads, and I add those to the document. If a sponsor or advertiser requests certain days for their ad, I note that next to the headline. Janet Dickelman passes along room changes, cancellations, additions, and other such updates, and I put them into the lineup.
A few weeks before the convention start date, I create the Friday issue of the paper as a separate document. It’s similar to the dummy copy, but includes only the information to be published in the Friday paper. As more items come in, both from individuals and from Janet and/or Nancy Christine, I put them under the appropriate headings. Then, the day before I fly out to convention, I make sure to save the documents both on my computer and onto a thumb drive (in case of computer issues).
When I arrive at the convention hotel, I check in and put my luggage and accoutrements in my room before going down to the communication center to help Nancy Becker with the set-up. Sometimes this requires crawling under tables to connect the power cords to the outlets or power strips, or connecting the proper cable to the computer, etc. Then we connect the embossers to the rental computers, and I install the Duxbury software so that we can create and emboss the braille copies. We also have a multifunction copier-printer to run the large print copies.
Then the fun begins! The Marcia Nigro Dresser Communication Center opens Thursday at 8 a.m. We begin taking ads from people who come by in person, as well as those who send them in via email. The deadline to submit is 2 p.m. I add the ads, announcements, etc., then pull the day’s issue together, pull it into braille, print a large print copy and a braille copy, and with the assistance of an available braille reader, we proofread the test copy. If either of us finds a mistake, I’ll go back into the print and the braille and correct it. Once all the corrections are made, I start the embossers. (Visit https://acbmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Braille-Embosser-Audio… to hear the sound of a running embosser.) HumanWare has loaned us three Juliet 120 embossers, and APH has donated 8 boxes of braille paper for use in producing the paper and other convention documents, such as those you’d find at the information desk.
The noise level rises significantly once the three embossers get going. The temperature also goes up a bit. And the people working in the room communicate by shouting over the noise. Can we hear when people walk in? Sometimes, if there’s a lull in the sound due to an embosser running out of paper, or if somebody with a guide dog comes in. Otherwise, no.
Once each embosser has a decent-sized stack of the day’s papers, either I or a communication center volunteer will pull the pile off the embosser, bring it to the work table, and begin to burst, collate, and staple the copies. The paper we use is continuous feed, so we have to separate the copies, remove the tractor feed edges, and separate the pages, collate them in order, and staple them. On nights when the newspaper is small, we can use regular staplers. When the paper is larger (20 pages or more), we use the heavy-duty staplers. They’re built like small tanks, and painful when they land on your foot. And we burst, collate, and staple for a couple of hours (less if we have more helpers). As we work, we pile the papers in stacks of 25, both for ease of counting and so the stack doesn’t fall over. Sometimes we play “smirgly basketball” with the paper edges, aiming for the large trash can on wheels.
While all of this is going on, I’m getting names, room numbers and format choices from Cecily at the information desk, to prepare the delivery list for the ACB Students’ delivery crew. I put the room number and format into a list, organize it by floor in room order, and make braille and large print copies. Once we have enough for the night’s delivery, I alert the student delivery crew. When they arrive, they divide the deliveries by groups of floors – say, floors 1 through 5, 6 through 10, etc. – and pair off to deliver their sets of floors.
At the same time, I’m also preparing the file that the ACB Media team will need for audio. When I first joined the staff in the 1990s, we used to read it live onto a multi-line answering machine. Now it’s done by an AI reader. I also send it out via the convention email lists. Once the delivery crew returns with their empty bags or boxes, I shut down the computers and embossers, turn off the lights, and head up to my room.
In the morning, I take the remaining stacks of braille and print newspapers down to the information desk. I save a few for registration and a few for the communication center. And the process begins again. The paper runs Friday through Wednesday.
Once the last paper is done and out the door, it’s time to tear down. I uninstall Duxbury from the rental computers, copy any documents onto the thumb drive, then delete them from the computers. I usually leave one embosser running Thursday, because there’s always somebody who needs an item brailled. When that’s done, I take the paper off the embossers, disconnect them from the computers, and pack them in their shipping boxes. After everything is packed up, either Nancy or I print shipping labels, or I move the boxes over to registration to be packed in the truck and shipped later from Minnesota. Then it’s time to enjoy the banquet before flying home the next day, knowing that in a few months, the process starts all over again!
If you have any suggestions for a name for next year’s newspaper in Jacksonville, send them to slovering@acb.org.