By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Call it a sign of hope in these troubled times, something akin to Ford building a Chevy or McDonald’s putting beef to griddle for Burger King.
If Buffalo’s longtime morning paper, the Buffalo Courier-Express, could churn tens of thousands of copies of the paper of its crosstown archrival – The Buffalo Evening News – off its presses, can we all get along?
Buffalo Evening News trucks roll up Goodell Street to the Courier-Express building, where papers were printed during a power failure at The News in 1967.
At 9:46 a.m. on May 10, 1967, construction crews on Lower Terrace cut through an underground bundle of eight cables that carried power to 11,000 customers from the waterfront to downtown to Riverside.
The five 2,000-ton presses of The Buffalo Evening News were about to start printing seven editions of the paper for a total of 300,000 papers.
“But suddenly, it fell silent,” wrote News reporter Dick Christian, “and remained silent the rest of the day – unlit and ghostly.”
The day wore on and editions were combined. The promise of power restoration by 3 p.m. came and went with the presses still cold. All seven editions of the day’s News were combined into one city edition.
It didn’t look like power would be restored along the waterfront before 7 p.m., but the lights were bright and the juice was flowing at Main and Goodell, the home of the Courier-Express. Around 3:30 p.m., an offer came into News headquarters – the Courier had offered use of its presses.
A plan sprang into action for a limited combo edition of The News.
News mailroom personnel moved up Main Street to the Courier to help facilitate moving the printed papers first across the city and then to the suburbs.
Buffalo police blocked traffic as trucks moved immense rolls of newsprint from The News press to the Courier-Express press.
The blinking lights of The News switchboard “looked like the fireworks finale at the state fair.” Customers, newsboys, corner stores – thousands of calls flooded The News.
Production started around 5 p.m. and ended by 7:15 p.m., with 130,000 copies of the Courier-Express-printed Buffalo Evening News being distributed around Western New York.
As the papers came flying off the presses, the final step was a big adjustment for the men at the end of the production line.
“The Courier’s sling chute is different than we have at The News – more like a ski slope.”
The News handlers looked like “fledgling Mickey Mantles, catching the bundled papers in midair and getting them into the proper trucks.”
News salesmen were stuffing bundles into their cars, getting them to the “key commercial distribution points” of the suburbs while the familiar blue trucks spread out over the city.
Tens of thousands of Western New Yorkers were relaxing at home reading the paper by the time the power came back on at The News plant, close to 9 p.m. that night.
Kay Derwin, Mary Reilly, Gylda Hart, and Jane Schad answer phones “lit up like a pinball machine” at The News.
