VALLEY– Another gallant effort by our staff and others could not restore our ability to print the Valley Courier.

It’s more complicated than most people would understand. There is a piece of equipment between our computers and the press that is the heart of putting the paper in print. It’s called a plate setter or in our industry a CTP (computer to press). Without it, our pages cannot print on photo-sensitized aluminum plates that are placed on the press to print pages.

This is a $50,000 sophisticated piece of equipment that relies on computer software and electronic technology that may require replacement of expensive circuit boards and the need for a trained technician to diagnose and install. We have requested all the above, but parts are not easy to find and only a few qualified repairmen are available in this part of the country.

Thanks to our friends at the Mountain Mail newspaper in Salida, they were able to print some of our weekly publications, but they are not capable of printing the Courier. No one is, within 200 miles of the SLV. Our past back-up printer, Pueblo Chieftain, shut down their presses months ago.

Salida will attempt to “print our plates” on Wednesday, and hopefully we can print both the Tuesday and Wednesday editions tomorrow. If we succeed, both issues will be distributed together to all our loyal subscribers and at our single copy distributers and coin machines on Thursday.

We thank you all for your understanding, and please understand that we’re doing everything in our powers to return your print editions to you.

In the meantime, we are still making www.alamosanews.com access free to everyone. Clicking on the E Edition link at the top right will get you access to our entire print editions for the past two days. Wednesday’s edition should be available by that morning. Please help others that may not understand this technology to access your Valley Courier.

We will update when we know more.

Apologies,

Keith R. Cerny

Publisher