Seattle had more than its fair share of wacky weather in 2006. First, in July, almost a week of near 100-degree days, followed in November by a monsoon that set new records for rainfall.

Then, last month, hurricane-force winds and more rain shellacked the city and knocked power out for tens of thousands. Among those left in the dark was The Seattle Times. Despite the best efforts of its production staff, the paper was unable to print either The Times or its JOA partner, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was the first time The Times missed producing a print edition since 1956. The P-I, meantime, hadn’t missed printing a paper since FDR was finishing up his first term as president.

As Vice President of Operations Frank Paiva said in a story printed in the Sunday, Dec. 17, edition of The Times, “People were just depressed. We were in shock that we weren’t going to print a newspaper.

“It was the first time in my career [33 years] I failed to publish. We all felt so helpless. Because of the timing of the power outage, we had no options.”

Seattle’s electric utility restored power, and The Times and the P-I ultimately missed only one printed edition each. Compared with weather-related disasters faced by other papers (such as The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, the Lake Charles (La.) American Press and The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss.), what Paiva and his crew faced was relatively minor.

But what is nearly identical is the reaction Paiva shared with his Louisiana and Mississippi production counterparts. Without exception, these managers were upset because their newspapers’ presses couldn’t run, and their papers wouldn’t appear on readers’ doorsteps or in retailers’ racks.

As Times-Pic production VP Ray Maly told Newspapers & Technology in 2005, after the paper had to abandon its production plant, “It’s the first time we ever had to do this. There was a lot of emotion leaving this building.”

Newspaper production crews, not to mention Newspapers & Technology and its readers - understand their jobs are a lot more than just putting ink on paper and stuffing the subsequent package full of ads.

Production, after all, is the heart of a newspaper’s operation - hot type, cold type or no type at all.

Whenever events conspire to prevent a newspaper from publishing, it hurts - not only those who can’t get their daily fix of newsprint, but those who produce those papers as well.

Everyone from Wall Street suits to California slackers like to say newspapers don’t matter any longer. They need only talk to Paiva and Maly and the industry’s thousands of other production professionals to find out that newspapers do matter - a lot.