Dean Coombs is surrounded by letters and words. In fact, publishing the only linotype-set newspaper in the country is all in a day’s work for Coombs. The Saguache (pronounced “swatch”) Crescent office in the Colorado town of the same name is seven-days-a-week, home away from home for the 70-year-old. The linotype machine is as comfortable and familiar to him as a laptop is to most newspaper editors and publishers.
Coombs is the sole employee to perpetuate the age-old process. If he doesn’t set the weekly paper (originally called The Advance and then The Democrat) that his grandfather purchased in 1917, it doesn’t get set. But his commute is short; he lives next door to the newspaper office, which is right in the heart of the tiny town.
