Tonight is the big night for the Chronicle — the first edition to be printed by a contractor in a state-of-the-art pressroom in Fremont. Here’s a link to the story. We hear that the contractor, Transcontinental, has been running test editions all week — and not just a few papers to prove that the presses work, but an entire press run of 354,752 papers.

The Chronicle has a 15-year contract with Transcon to print the paper. The value of the contract is said to be $1 billion.

As the Chronicle story noted, about 230 Teamster printers will be losing their jobs. The union was picketing the Transcontinental plant earlier but dropped the picket lines last week to allow union drivers could be trained on the pickup procedures at the plant.

Above, Carl Gisen, a pressman for 24 years, monitors sections of the Chron rolling off the presses at the paper’s Union City printing plant, which is closing. (Photo credit: Michael Macor, The Chronicle.)