Editor Tamara Sniffin reflects on the last nine years
On March 14, 1991 the first issue of The San Pedro Sun was printed. Founded by Bruce and Victoria Collins, the paper was created on a word processor and pages were cut and pasted together before being sent over to the mainland for printing. In 1996 the paper was purchased by Dan and Eileen Jamison who now own the popular DandE's Frozen Custard Shop on Pescador Drive. Ron and Tamara Sniffin later purchased the paper from the Jamison's in 2004 and according to The San Pedro Sun's editor Tamara Sniffin, the paper has seen many changes over the years.
In celebrating the 22nd birthday of The Sun this week, Sniffin took the time to reflect on the last nine years and the growth the paper has seen. "It's hard to believe that when we first bought the paper we were still using a light-table to cut and paste the page layouts," Sniffin recalls. "We would have to have all the pages ready to go by 7am on Wednesdays, and we would work into the wee hours of the night. We would place the pasted pages into a flat cardboard folder and have our cab driver Mr. Vic pick it up first thing on Wednesday morning. He would put the folder on Tropic Air and then the printers in Belize City would pick it up at the airport and ready them for printing. If we were running late for some reason or missed the plane our whole schedule was off, it was a process that had lots of room for problems to happen. A flat tire could mean the paper was coming out late the next day! Over time we helped our printers set up an email account and taught them how to accept emailed files�there was only one person there who knew how email worked and we sure got to know Julio quite well! We finally got to the point where we could email over PDF pages and the dynamics of our deadlines changed drastically. It also meant we no longer had to cut and paste our pages which we were delighted about, and I think we actually had a burial ritual for the light-table the last day we used it!" (By burial ritual, of course, this meant there were lots of cocktails to celebrate!)
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