A weekly magazine published in issues: a cover, a contents page, and room for the long pieces.https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/bread-before-dawn/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/bread-before-dawn/A neighborhood bakery runs its entire working day between midnight and seven. What it takes to have bread ready before the city wakes up.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturehttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/track-time/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/track-time/The subway closes for four hours a night. In that window, crews have to do a full day's worth of maintenance and be gone before the first train.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTReporthttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/diner-at-3am/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/diner-at-3am/A twenty-four-hour diner never closes its kitchen, which means someone is always cooking for a room that changes entirely every few hours.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTInterviewhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/empty-towers/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/empty-towers/Office cleaning crews get more done in a building with nobody in it than they ever could during the workday. That's the whole point of the shift.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTReporthttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/why-we-cant-sleep/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/why-we-cant-sleep/An essay on shift work, the body's resistance to it, and what it means to spend a career fighting a clock you were born with.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/press-run/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/press-run/At a regional newspaper's printing plant, the entire operation compresses into a five-hour overnight window that cannot slip without consequence.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTDispatchhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/tower-at-midnight/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/4/tower-at-midnight/The city that works while the city sleepsFri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTInterviewhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/keeping-the-lifts-running/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/keeping-the-lifts-running/There is no apprenticeship shortcut to elevator mechanics. It takes four years, and the trade is short on people willing to give them.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturehttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-line-crew/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-line-crew/After a storm knocks out power to forty thousand homes, restoration is a sequencing problem before it's a repair problem.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTReporthttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-clockmaker/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-clockmaker/There are perhaps a dozen people in the country still trained to repair century-old mechanical clocks. We sat with one of them at his bench.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTInterviewhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-last-cobbler/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-last-cobbler/One shoe repair shop remains on a street that once had four. Its owner has resoled the same customers' shoes for over thirty years.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTDispatchhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/right-to-repair/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/right-to-repair/An essay on the difference between a thing that breaks and a thing that has been designed to be unfixable, and why the distinction matters.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/painting-the-bridge/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/painting-the-bridge/A century-old suspension bridge is repainted in a continuous cycle that never actually finishes. That's by design, not by failure.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTReporthttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-turf-keeper/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/3/the-turf-keeper/Who keeps it running, and what happens when it stopsFri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTInterviewhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/leak-detectors/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/leak-detectors/A city loses a fifth of its treated water before it reaches a tap. Two crews spend their nights finding out where.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturehttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/pipe-by-pipe/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/pipe-by-pipe/A ten-year program to replace lead service lines is running two years behind schedule. The delay is mostly about paperwork, not pipe.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTReporthttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/what-the-plant-takes/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/what-the-plant-takes/Inside a wastewater treatment plant, on the day it processes everything a city flushed, drained, and poured down a sink.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTReporthttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/the-barge-captain/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/the-barge-captain/Long before it reaches a landfill or an incinerator, a city's trash travels by water. We talked to the woman who moves it.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTInterviewhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/the-cistern/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/the-cistern/Before the municipal line reached our street, every house on it kept its own water. An essay on what that habit cost, and what it taught.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/hydrant-season/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/hydrant-season/What it takes to keep water moving and waste goneFri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTDispatchhttps://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/sorting-line/https://gazette-free.ondelva.com/issues/2/sorting-line/A single-stream recycling plant runs at the speed of its slowest sorter. We spoke with one about what actually happens to a bin's contents.Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTInterview