The Waupaca County Post

By Scott Turner, January 16, 2001

 

            Carl Turner ran the business until his death in 1962.  At the time of his death he also owned a weekly newspaper in Inverness, Florida.  Following his death his wife, Frances Turner became publisher and ran the business in Waupaca after selling the Florida property. She later married Arnold Kropf who became co-publisher.  In 1969 Arnold died leaving Frances as sole proprietor of the company.

            Following military service, Mark Turner joined his mother in the business.  In 1974 Scott Turner also joined the business following military service and college.  Frances retired shortly thereafter and the brothers ran the business until 1993 when Scott bought Mark’s interest in the business.

            Until 1966 the company was located on Main Street in Waupaca at the site of the current Chamber of Commerce building (221 S. Main; northeast corner of Main and Badger Streets).  In that year a new building was constructed on (717) 10^th Street in Waupaca where it remains today.  Several additions have been made to the structure over the years. The company currently publishes seven periodicals of its own as well as printing several area newspapers and doing commercial printing.

            When the company moved to the 10^th Street location, a mix of “hot” and “cold” type was still being used.  “Hot” type being the creation of letters, lines and ultimately stories on a Linotype machine which used a process involving melted lead.  The process has evolved to a strictly “cold” type process where type is created on computers.

            The company has been in a constant state of updating equipment.  Film cameras are seldom used, having been replaced with digital cameras.  Pre-press is now down on computers which output directly to page film.  Last year a quad color press unit was purchased which now gives us 12-printing units and 4-color capability on our pages.  The press will print 28-broadsheet pages or 56-tabloid pages in a single run at speeds up to 20,000 papers per hour.

            There have been several editors since the 1953 article.  Those that come to mind are the current editor Robert Cloud, who was preceded by Loren Sperry, Thomas Boario and Rosemary Freiburger.