At the closing Inquirer printing plant, a time capsule opened 71 years early

On Friday afternoon, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s vice president of operations, Fred Lehman, reached elbow deep into a rubber barrel and pulled out a piece of all-too-recent newspaper history: a 1992 pamphlet touting the features of the brand new Schuylkill Printing Plant, titled, “Seeing Our Future Now.”

“That was the future,” said John Marigliano, 61, with a sigh. He worked the presses for the company for 26 years, watched as the industry changed and shrank, technology evolved, profit margins collapsed. “The job was very good to me. I’ll be able to retire.”

SPP, as it’s known, fared worse.

The $299.5 million plant, an investment that promised crisp photos and multicolor spreads of news and ads, was sold for $37 million, The Inquirer reported. Some 480 full- and part-time employees will be put out of work, about 30 of whom found jobs at the Gannett-run Cherry Hill plant where The Inquirer will now print.

An expensive looking, bronze-on-stone plaque sat near Lehman’s feet. It read: “TIME CAPSULE implanted Sept. 25, 1992 to dedicate the Schuylkill Printing Plant. To be opened Sept. 25, 2092.” Because of the sale, it had to be cracked open 71 years early, a jarring symbol of the industry’s precipitous decline from its most bullish peak.

So, instead of wondrous antiques, the barrel contained artifacts any Gen Xer with a hoarding tendency might find in the attic.

Nonetheless, few dozen employees filmed with their phones and craned their necks to see inside. Others snacked on soft pretzels, stacks of free Eagles photo books tucked under their arms, and chatted amongst themselves.

The inventory included, of course, newspapers — barely yellowed — many bearing headlines that could easily run today. “America: What went wrong?” a series from Inquirer marquee writers Donald Bartlett and James Steele. From the Daily News, “DEATH DRUG: A grain of fentanyl can kill — instantly.” Still, staff dutifully marveled at the scale of the broadsheet, the long-vanished sections like “Neighbors,” and the price point of 35 cents.

Someone reached into the capsule and pulled out a cassette tape. (There’s still a tape deck in the ladies’ room, one staffer advised.) There was a Dick Clark All-Time Hits CD, a Bush-Quayle button, and a staff roster from 1992 — printed on a dot-matrix printer. Just as Lehman held up a box of Magnum condoms, one of several prophylactic souvenirs apparently meant to represent the AIDS epidemic, a pizza deliveryman walked over, drawn by the crowd. “Whoa!” he said, and swerved away to make his delivery.

Lehman held up a menu from the Inquirer cafeteria. It used to be full-service; more recently, it was just a row of vending machines.

“Let me tell you, Wednesday was the day! You had to get the buffalo wings,” said Brian Thompson, 59, a truck driver who worked for the paper for 31 years. He’ll work in Cherry Hill now, though he doesn’t relish the hour-long commute.

At the bottom of the bin was a flier, promising a chance to win 10 Knight Ridder shares to those who contributed objects for posterity. “That should be worth about $30,” said Lehman. (Knight Ridder, which then owned The Inquirer, was bought by McClatchy, whose shares on Friday were trading at 75 cents.)

By the early 1990s, newspaper circulation had already peaked. Just as The Inquirer looked to the future at SPP, it turned out, readership was hitting a plateau. It would start declining slowly in the 1990s, then ever-faster through the 21st century.

“I don’t think people at the time realized how radically the economics were going to change once you shifted to a digital format,” said Victor Pickard, a professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy. Newspapers lost their local-market advertising monopoly — and digital never made up for it. Investments in the print product, as The Inquirer attempted, were a losing bet. “You were doomed as soon as your readership moved to the web.”

As to where we sit on that arc today?

“I think we’re still plummeting. I think it’s only going to get worse unfortunately,” Pickard said. “We have to stop thinking of it as an industry and a commodity, and we have to think of it more as a public service.”