Tag: Newspaper Traditions

REMEMBERING THE ‘BIG TIME’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

Found myself chuckling the other day as I was making photocopies on the computer printer. What came to mind was the memory of my old definition of knowing I’d made the big time as a writer would be when I had my own IBM Selectric typewriter and my own Xerox copier. Gee, it didn’t even have to be Xerox, now that I think of it. (And it wasn’t even something really big like a sailboat or shiny new BMW.)

My, how that dates me! But let me explain.

Not too long ago, writers like me were clunking away on big old manual keyboards, even in newspaper offices. The electric typewriters were more likely to be found in the jewelry store on the corner or at the bank than on the desks of people who had to type constantly as part of their employment. Well, really good secretaries also had them – with a lot of our admiration.

While the news writing could have cross-outs and handwritten insertions, serious literary submissions were expected to be perfect – and each submission to the journals was expected to be clean, meaning a copy seldom lasted long in the face of multiple rejections. (Remember, even top-flight authors can expect to receive an average of 20 rejections for each acceptance – or that was the story back when all this was going on. And simultaneous submissions were absolutely verboten.)

So that’s where the photocopier comes in. The small-press editors eventually began allowing copies rather than originals, which was a big blessing for poets like me. Still, it meant finding a decent place to make copies. When I lived in the desert of Washington state, for example, a trek to Seattle four hours away included several hours making fresh copies.

Once I’d moved up the management ladder a few notches, I did splurge on an electric typewriter, one I loved despite its annoying flying f that nobody could keep repaired. Half of the time it would land several spaces further down the line than where it was needed.

Newsrooms, meanwhile, finally got the Selectrics – not to facilitate reporters’ work but to allow the stories to be scanned directly into type, which raised an entire other nightmare. (Try editing one of those!)

What I really envied with the Selectric was the fact you could choose different fonts and sizes – those magical metal balls that flew around above the page you were typing.

~*~

So here we are, a few decades later. How obsolete all that has become! The computer keyboard allows instant corrections, unlike the bulky typewriter. Even the Selectric. And I have quite the array of fonts and sizes to select from, even before shopping around online for more. So much for the four or five choices in the Selectric, if that many. As for that photocopier, I can simply scan copies from the top of that computer printer for all but the most unusual projects.

As for IBM and Xerox? They’re hardly the monolithic powerhouses they were then.

My, how the field’s changed!

As have my measures of “big time.”

ANTIQUE OR JUST OBSOLETE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Climbing around the barn the other day, I came upon a few items I now realize are ancient history. The T-square, for instance, was used for paste-ups for pages that would be photocopied for publication. But nowadays, that’s all done in the computer. The circular wheels were actually slide rules we used to calculate proportions when cropping photographs, also for publication – and once again, that’s all done in the computer these days. The metal ruler has special calibrations in picas and points, the measurements traditionally used by printers. You run into point measures now in the font section of your word program. And then there’s the mouse pad. You remember those, back before you switched to laptop?

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So I came back into the house and turned on my stereo. You may notice I still play vinyl, which probably deserves a posting of its own. When I was a teen, I dreamed of the day I’d have an entire wall of LPs and the system to play them on. Now I look at this and realize it can essentially fit into my laptop or, uh, an iPod, if I ever go there.

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A FEW QUICK THOUGHTS ON THE LONG AND SHORT OF WRITING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As a writer, I love long pieces that allow a thorough investigation of a topic. Tell me the why and how of a situation, not just the final action.

The Wall Street Journal used to have those front-page, full-column “leaders” that jumped inside, often filling most of the inside page. These pieces actually telescoped a series of mini-stories into a comprehensive whole. How I admired those, even as I was being told to cut stories to much shorter length. (It often felt like reducing prime rib to hamburger.)

The longer stories, if well written and thoroughly researched, provided a sense of feasting, and I could point to research that showed some readers stayed around for those meaty offerings. I knew I had a feeling of getting my money’s worth after I’d savored one of those.

Not that I felt all stories should run long – I was also a big believer in running columns of briefs, in part to make room for the longer reports.

These thoughts return to me as I blog. In fact, I’m having a lot of fun “writing short” here at the Barn. You know, a couple of sentences and that’s it – especially with the photos.

For the longer efforts, though, I’ll point you to As Light Is Sown, Chicken Farmer I Still Love You, or the Orphan George Chronicles. Or to my novels. As I was saying …

PRESIDENTIAL COLORS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Without any sense of being one of them, I’ve known people who claim to see auras around individuals. They have their own vocabulary regarding what each color means. And I’ve listened without agreeing or dissenting. It’s their experience, after all.

Still, I remember in the midst of one of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primaries when one of the hopefuls was moving through the office, along with his entourage. I couldn’t quite identify the face, but it was familiar. What struck me, intensely, though, the way he was surrounded by a black vapor.

And a black aura, as they said, was satanic.

Afterward, I realized it was Pat Robertson – the Reverend Pat Robertson.

I still feel a chill, recalling the incident, with no way of confirming how much is true or fallacious. But others have told me the same.

RIGHT-BRAIN ACTION FROM THE LEFT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Back during the presidential election cycle, I remarked on the failure of the left to apply right-brain thinking to the message. Fortunately, as the season unfolded, a few savvy managers got it right.

Now, as things calm down, I should note one fine practitioner of the weaving the emotional and reasoned lines together: Charles P. Pierce, with his daily blog for Esquire. Yes, he’s acerbic, caustic, witty, righteous, and very well informed, driving news home – major stories most newspapers are tiptoeing around, if they mention them at all. The Tea Party seems to think it has a lock on criticizing Washington, without realizing how much of the current mess comes from their side of the aisle. Now for the corrective blast. And how!

In a short space, Pierce delivers all the content of a good lecture with none of the preachy sermon. He’s delightfully entertaining and uplifting, for the good-hearted believers, or highly annoying, for the philistines and heathens.

Now, back to cranking out bumper stickers.

Amen and hallelujah.

REMEMBERING JULIA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The Canterbury Shaker Village is a remarkable place to revisit history. I’ve had a lifelong appreciation of Shaker architecture and furniture. In fact, we used to bicycle out to what had been a Shaker village and catch crawdads in the stream. Our denomination also had its orphanage and retirement center at another former Shaker village not far south of us, and I remember touring its remaining buildings.

But Canterbury was one of the last two villages, and one Friend speaks fondly of his conversations with the sisters. Today it is a well preserved living history museum.

So one weekday, when I was free of the office, my girlfriend and I went up for a tour. As we arrived, I noticed one of my coworkers, Ellie Ferriter, and in greeting, asked what she was doing there. “I’m here to meet Julia Child,” she replied. Yeah, sure. “No really, she’s here to tape an interview with the chef.”

One of the things the museum had done was open a restaurant with a menu drawn from the distinctive Shaker recipes, and there was reason to celebrate the cuisine.

Sure enough, when we came back from our tour, there was Ellie, interviewing Julia. Now Ellie was a large woman, but Julia was larger – in fact, towering above and around the interviewer. I hadn’t expected that, even though one profile had described her as having very long legs when she went to work in military intelligence back during World War II.

Julia had already had a long influence on me. In high school, when we finally got a TV set that included UHF, I could finally watch the “educational station” out of Cincinnati, and there, through the snowy image that barely came through, I was introduced to exotic foods like lobsters, asparagus, artichokes, baguettes and croissants, hollandaise. Well, introduced to their concepts and preparation. The actual introductions would come across the years, and what had been exotic has long since become standard.

We settled into the Creamery, the small restaurant, for lunch – my girlfriend and I along with a couple from England at one table, Julia and Ellie at the next one. We could overhear every word. Our English visitors, meanwhile, had no idea who Julia was.

Later, I noticed Julia sitting alone in a shaded spot. Wondered if she was lonely or just needed a break. I was tempted to approach and introduce myself, but refrained.

*   *   *

About that same time, I was talking with a woman who knew someone whose husband conferred with Julia several times each year, and the wife was expected to serve lunch – a daunting prospect. What do you prepare for one of the world’s most famous cooks and food writers? And then she discovered that a boiled lobster and fresh green salad were always savored.

How I’ve come to love that insight when facing a seemingly impossible assignment – a simple but elegant solution, as the Shakers demonstrated, may be the ideal.

Here’s to Julia’s 101st birthday.

WINDY CITY PERSPECTIVE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

In 1922, the Chicago Tribune conducted an international architectural competition for the design of its new headquarters. The World’s Greatest Newspaper, as it proclaimed itself, could have erected a landmark modernistic tower envisioned by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer or an impractical giant lectern styled by Adolf Loos but instead went with a neo-Gothic bullet by Howells and Hood.

By the mid-‘80s, when I was employed by the paper’s syndication service, the grimy gray building was surrounded by many much newer buildings that resembled the glassy proposal the publisher had rejected. Maybe that says everything, in the end.

By then, though, the newsroom had definitely changed. Gone were the typewriters, long replaced by computer terminals and keyboards. Tours were guided through glass-shrouded catwalks overhead, where they could look down on journalists at work. I remember being fascinated to recognize there were four semi-circular copy-desks below me, each one ringed by copy-editors and a single “slotman” at the center, just as it had been when I started. I’d heard, too, that none of those seats were ever vacant long; this was a paper edited ‘round the clock for its many editions. But then I noticed that the editors on one of the rims were doing nothing except writing and editing photo captions. Nothing else for the entire shift. I’m sorry, but I’m used to far more variety when I’m editing. How did they ever stay awake?

Since we were really there to see two of our cartoonists, we headed for a set of elevators serving floors six through 32. And we were headed to the top, Jeff MacNelly’s suite, which sat just under the floor of microwave gear.

With his panoramic windows between flying buttresses looking out over Lake Michigan (you couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began that day), I wondered how he ever got any work done on his editorial cartoons or his Shoe comic strip.

One floor down, which Dick Locher commanded, was quite different. With its tiny diamond-shaped windows, the suite wrapped around the elevator and service shafts felt more like sitting inside a gargoyle.

At that point, one of my colleagues noticed a framed Pulitzer Prize on the wall. “That’s all it is? A piece of paper?”

Locher, who drew the Dick Tracy strip in addition to his editorial cartoons, had won two.

On the couch, MacNelly, who’d just won his third Pulitzer, grinned. “Yup, that’s about it. A piece of paper.”

THE DYING ART OF CARTOONING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Flipping through the latest New Yorker and admiring the cartoons brought a sense of loss, too. While the New Yorker and Playboy had long been the epitome of the art, paying the premium rates for work that matched the highest standards, almost every magazine ran cartoons, at least as fillers in the back sections. These days, though, hardly any of them do.

When I was in high school, the wit of fellow Buckeye James Thurber became a model, along with the Addams Family even before the TV series. And then there was Gahan Wilson’s mordant pen. But who’s come along, say, in the past decade to fill the ranks? Not in magazines, as far as I see.

Or in newspapers, where having an editorial page cartoonist was seen as a badge of distinction. (Except at the New York Times, of course, which abstained.) In the collapse of the second newspaper in most markets – and the elimination of afternoon editions – the ranks of those cartoonists have also been evaporating. Even before we get to the recent rounds of attrition.

It’s not a laughing matter.

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~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much has changed since I entered the field of journalism four-and-a-half decades ago. Even as a high school student editor, I was engaged in a craft that was pretty much as it had been for the previous eight decades, in the long shadow of the introduction of the Linotype machine. We could see ourselves rooted in an even longer tradition of newspapering arising in the handset type era before that. Think of the New York Times dispatches during the Civil War. Printing was still mostly by letterpress, even though the newer offset method with its superior reproduction of photographs was making inroads. Every other week, I would trot down to our printer’s with our latest round of stories and pictures, get correction proofs a few days later, and then release the edition for publication.

We were quite limited in the typefaces available to us. I wanted what was then an elegant new typeface that our shop didn’t own — Times New Roman. Hard to believe how ubiquitous it’s become, or how much further we’ve come as well. But he did have Caslon, which became one of my favorites — in part because of its use in the Sunday editions of the New York Herald Tribune. And Bodoni, in part because of its indestructible nature, was the standard headline choice; try finding it on your computer selections these days. Photos were another matter altogether, as were student photographers. Polaroid shots were a radical leap into the future, and usually far more reliable. Polaroid?

Writers, of course, used typewriters. Not just reporters, but almost everyone except for the select few writers who could still write in longhand and have a secretary or typist service transcribe the results. Secretaries? Typewriters? Typists? And what often astonished me was how antiquated the typewriters in most newsrooms were — clunky old uprights, unlike the elegant (and electric) IBM Selectrics I’d see while passing the local jeweler’s, where they were rarely used. (Unlike those of us who were writing for a living.) The Selectrics, I might add, came into newsrooms later, only with the advent of text scanners, which was a huge setback for the written word. But that’s another rant.

Typewriters introduced their own traditions, especially on deadline. Reporters would finish the first page of a story with the line, MORE, and then begin their next page with a slug line for the story, say CITY HALL, followed by the notation, TAKE ONE or ADD ONE, and then continue. This would go on for however many sheets of paper were needed until the story was finished. And then the reporter would add the line: 30. Perhaps as — 30 — or #30#. But always thirty.

And that’s even without mentioning the carbon copies. (The what?)

We can argue where that tradition began, but it was universal in the trade. If the reporter was working on a breaking story, the first page could be sent to the copy desk, be edited, and even sent to the composing room while the rest of the story was being drafted. A headline could be written and set in type, for that matter. Minutes counted. The first part of story could even be set in hot lead type while the reporter was working toward the ending.

Editors, meanwhile, would be writing headlines using an elaborate tradition of their own. These were all valued skills. And the result mattered.

Sometimes, I can almost smell the newsroom where I became a professional, thanks to Glenn Thompson. Or his advice about keeping a journal. Or some of the others since. Still, it’s hard to believe how far I’ve come over the years.

These days, a news story comes as a single take. A computer file you scroll through. We paginate on a large computer screen, designing a page for publication. All of the highly skilled typesetters, compositors, engravers, proofreaders, and more I admired — and who provided me a safety net — are long gone. Am I getting misty?

There’s an additional reason. When it’s come to my professional career in journalism, the time has come to write:

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