La Dépêche du Midi - Toulouse (31)

You are certainly familiar with the regional daily “La Dépêche du Midi”.

One of the largest French press groups which owns, among other things, the regional daily "Midi Libre" and the sports biweekly “Midi Olympique”. But have you ever gone behind the scenes of this Toulouse institution?

I book

Visit The Dispatch !

You must have had it in your hands or consulted it on the internet

Want to see behind the scenes? La Dépêche du Midi opens its doors to you. Where does the information come from, how is it processed, formatted and routed to your usual kiosks? You will discover all the stages of the production of the newspaper by crossing the different work rooms.

Welcome to behind the scenes

After an introduction in the lobby, the guide takes you to the newsroom . It introduces you to the different professions of journalism (editors, press photographers, editorial secretary, etc.), the way in which news items are selected, how information is obtained, checked, processed and formatted, whether either on the paper version, but also on the web. A museum space then allows you to retrace the long history of the Dépêche du Midi since its creation in 1870 by Joseph Sirven, a printer from Toulouse. Old photos reveal the evolution of trades and working conditions. A collection of machines or objects, such as linotype or stereotypes, reflects the evolution of techniques: from typography, used until 1979, to offset, the technique currently used.

The DTP room (desktop publishing) accommodates graphic designers. They carry out the advertising, the layout of the group's magazines and the validation of the pages of the Dépêche du Midi which are then sent to the printing press. You will then know how four-color photos are processed and what print format is used. The visit to the printing house begins with the offset plate workshop. Kesaco ??? These are aluminum plates covered with a photosensitive film which will receive the image to be printed on the paper. These "offset" plates are then placed on the rollers of the press to receive ink and deposit it on the paper. This printing technique has been used since 1979 at La Dépêche du Midi. It's time to discover the two Heidelberg presses driven by rotativists who print the pages and assemble them to produce up to 23 newspapers per second at maximum speed.

Then let's go down to discover the “ unwinders ” which unwind the rolls of paper through the impressive rotary presses. You can have the chance to witness the preparation of the rolls by the workers and the movement of the paper from the stock by robots! Open your eyes wide! We now cross the paper stock, nicknamed the "paper cathedral" because of the columns formed by the stacked reels. The reels weigh from 600 to 1,300 kg depending on their size and roll out 23 km of paper each. The stock extends over 2,300 m2 and also contains 5 “inkwells” or ink tanks for supplying the rotary presses.

Let's continue this immersion by the quay of the expeditions where the newspapers arrive which have been packed at the exit of the presses. These packages are automatically guided to the right platform corresponding to their destination. They are then loaded onto trucks to be shipped to the four corners of the region.

The last stage of the visit takes place in the packing room where the newspapers are packed and then sent to subscribers and the 3,700 points of sale.