(Update: I just re-read this piece after getting the first comment on it and decided to move it back to the top for the weekend. This was such a great look back and it prompted such a great comment I want folks to not miss this one. All my former Oakland Press and Flint Journal buddies will love this piece. Feel free to chime in with some of your great memories. There are some new posts below).
This is a great look, and good bye, to the newsrooms of old.
One of my favorite paragraphs in the whole story is this about newsroom bosses:
"Perhaps the prince of pranks was Jim Naughton, who in nearly 50 years moved from the Painesville, Ohio, Telegraph through the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer to the presidency of the Poynter Institute. "People who are always under pressure don't need bosses with whips," says Naughton, who once helped sneak a live camel into the Inquirer building. "They need bosses who understand the value of the collaborative spirit in a newsroom." That spirit drew "people who cared very much about what they did and its influence and impact on the life of the community."
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8 comments:
I was in a newsroom when:
• A stripper was hired to send off a beloved photographer.
• The outdoor editor dropped a shotgun barrel behind an editor.
• Pipe, cigar and cigarette fires were routine in trash cans.
• We drank at lunch.
• We drank after lunch.
• We all went to the Rusty Nail after work.
• We would skip out and go see a matinee, then go back to work.
• We had tile floors and steel desks.
• We had rubber cement and Alfred Hitchcock scissors on every desk. To "cut and paste."
• The copy editors were volunteer firefighters, and part-time funeral parlor operators.
• We used manual typewriters and foolscap just this side of grocery bag paper.
• A publisher and editor wouldn't pay for a phone cradle, because "you didn't need one." (Try that with the ergonomic police today.)
• The scanners and the yelling and racket and the old phones.
"You always had the sense you were six or eight hours ahead of the game," he says. "You knew what had happened. You had the behind-the-scenes storyline. And you got to go to sleep at night just reveling in the fact that you knew more than everybody else, and when they woke up in the morning, they would be reading what you wrote. Now you feel like you're hours, days, years behind the curve."
I was in a newsroom when:
We had a "hat day" just to make fun of a new intern who was full of himself and always wore a snap brim fedora. People wore football and hockey helmets, cowboy hats, etc. just to make a point.
We had a pot luck with only chicken products (eggs, meat, etc.) just to celebrate "Bounce the Chicken Day" after a September article and photo informed readers about a local tradition. People wore chicken hats, pins, etc.
you could always find a little "comfort" to put in your coffee in your own, or a neighbor's desk.
glue pots and copy paper were the norm and copy editing marks would cover your story, but still a good copy editor could figure them out.
Jean S. would type with a cigarette with a dangerously long ash hanging off it on deadling. Jean S. quit the Oakland Press, as she vowed, the day they banned smoking in the newsroom.
More later
I was in a newsroom when no one -- reporters or their editors -- were afraid of the truth. I was in a newsroom when no one cared if the truth pissed off someone at City Hall or, worse yet, the Morning Rotary or the country club.
Toward the end, that was not the case. Toward the end, the entire business became gutless.
I was in a newsroom when:
You could argue loudly and longly and publicly with your editor and then go out for a drink after work together.
More to come
I was in the newsroom when getting the story right was more important than getting your expense form right.
I was in a newsroom when:
-Getting a good story was more important than having a clean desk.
-a good editor told me that if I didn't pad my expense account from a weeklong trip enough to buy a new sport coat I had done something wrong. (I never did that, by the way, I recognized the humor).
More to come
Hmmmm, well we each have our own memories of the good ol' bad ol' days in the newsroom. While loud fights with editors or other reporters no doubt occurred, I also remember that, wander too close to the copy desk and, just like the bear cages at the zoo, you risk one or two of those paid retirees (not all copy desk staff were like this) going postal if the conversation disturbed their sleep or deep mental processes scanning the green screens. They often mistook the newsroom for a library, funeral home or a spa treatment. Often, they woke up swinging. One time a copy editor yelled shut up across the newsroom, and was way louder than the offending conversation, which was none of his concern. Apparently, they believed (again, not all copy editors behaved this badly) the editor part of their copy editor titles empowered them to control the newsroom when the real bosses were in budget meetings or out screwing around. What a fine bunch of true professionals! Shhhhhh, copy editors at work!
I was in a newsroom when reporters knew their beat, and everybody on it, inside and out. From personal peccadilloes to financial fooling-around. You'd go to the editor with everything you knew and together decide on what was the best story. Those who didn't know their beat, didn't last long.
Sadly enough, I was also in the newsroom long enough to hear an editor (one who had spent little to no time as a beat reporter) tell a reporter to "find a story about a family having trouble making their house payment. And make sure it has great art. We need it for Sunday."
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