How was a newspaper in 1938 made?I was reading a copy of a 1938 New York Times (about the Orson Welles War of the Worlds debacle) and noticed...

Newspapers in the United States date back to the 18th
century, when Benjamen Franklin's older brother, James, created what is usually known as
the first proper newspaper. Instead of old and outdated news, James created a private
club to write satire, letters, and opinion essays. The newspapers were laboriously
printed off movable type, each letter moved by hand and locked, inked, rolled, and
re-inked.

Much, much later, in the 1930s, William Randolph
Hearst's newspaper syndicates were the most powerful in America. He used the power of
the press to smear rivals and promote friends, and it is commonly assumed that his
support of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 resulted in the Roosevelt
Presidency.

In 1938, when Orson Welles hoaxed the world
with his adaptation of "War of the Worlds," newspaper presses were massive machines that
operated automatically. Most were probably rotary printing presses, which used metal
reliefs, curved around drums, to print quickly against a continuous roll of paper. The
reliefs were cast from paper-mâché molds, which were in turn made from the original
typeset frame. The number of errors in the paper you describe probably had a number of
origins; the speed of printing, which can make certain letters smudge and seem like
others (compare 'h' and 'n'); the fact that the Orson Welles story was a huge seller and
they wanted to get it off as fast as possible, so errors might have been ignored; the
number of "allowed" errors before the frame would be re-set with type; the age of the
paper; and of course, simple human error. The process was certainly labor-intensive, but
the Hearst syndicates had a lot of employees; still, with a story that big they would
all be working around the clock.

My personal guess is that
they were in such a rush to get the paper out before their rivals that they allowed and
missed a number of errors. Comparison of that paper with others from the same period
might provide more information; if they have comparable numbers of errors, it might be
more than I could find here.