Doug Hartlieb, production manager of the Wheeling Newspapers, checks a copy of the Wheeling News-Register as it comes off the state-of-the-art press at the Ogden Newspapers Printing and Techonology Center in Wheeling. Hartlieb started out as an ad runner at age 18 and has learned the printing trade inside and out over the span of nearly five decades, adapting with the new technologies as they arrive on the industry scene. Photo by Scott McCloskey

When Doug Hartlieb was 18, fresh out of Bellaire St. John High School in 1962, he didn’t know the difference between a Linotype and a typewriter. He took a job running ads “uptown” for the Wheeling newspapers. Astronauts had not yet walked on the moon and computers were mostly seen only in science fiction movies. Jump ahead 46 years and Hartlieb will tell you he learned and continues to learn about printing a daily newspaper every morning he walks into the Ogden Newspapers Printing and Technology Center on 20th Street in Wheeling. He is the production manager for the newspapers and is responsible for overseeing nearly every detail of getting the publications on and off the press. His office has windows all around to view the operations of the mammoth press that produces The Intelligencer, the Wheeling News-Register and The Times Leader daily and a host of other printing jobs almost around the clock. This new center of newspaper technology is a far cry from the former press building on Main Street. “It’s a much cleaner process these days, “ Hartlieb said as he gestured out to the pressroom floor. “The technology has changed, but the pride is the same in getting out the best product we can every day.” “Our industry is all about change. We put out a different product every day,” said Perry Nardo, general manager of The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register. “Doug is a great example of how our employees have adapted to our changing industry through the years.