Los Angeles Times Printing Plant Tour

The Times' editorial, business and administrative departments as well as most pre-press operations are located at a six-building complex in downtown Los Angeles encompassing an entire city block. The Times is one of the few U.S. newspapers to be published out of three production facilities. Located strategically throughout the Southland, the facilities include the state-of-the-art Olympic plant in Los Angeles, the Orange County plant in Costa Mesa and the San Fernando Valley plant in Chatsworth. In 1999, the presses at the three facilities were retrofitted to accommodate narrower, 50-inch-wide newsprint. This change reduces the amount of newsprint The Times uses while providing readers with an easy-to-handle page size. The Olympic Plant Named after the nearby Olympic Blvd., the Olympic Plant was built at a cost of $230 million and began operating in June 1990. More than 400 employees work at the 684,491-square-foot facility. Each of the Olympic plant's six 12-unit Goss Colorliner presses is capable of printing a 96-page newspaper - with 24 pages of full color and four pages of spot color - at speeds of up to 70,000 newspapers per hour. The 55,700-square-foot pressroom is 530 feet long - nearly twice the length of a regulation football field. It is three stories high - from the reel room, where newsprint is loaded onto the presses, to the operating and catwalk levels. The plant also includes a newsprint storage area with a 30,000-ton newsprint capacity. Tours are given Monday Through Friday at 9:30am, 11:00am and 1:30pm. Tours are by reservatiuon only in at least a week in advance. All reservations must be confirmed. Call 213-237-5757 for tour details and to make a reservation. The tour takes about 45 minutes.