Are you a newspaperman?

[Holly K.]

This message was forwarded to me by a colleague. It's worth sharing here. Holly


From: OFSTimes@aol.com [mailto:OFSTimes@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 12:04 PM
To: OFSTimes@aol.com
Subject: "Still a Newspaperman"


spokesmanreview.com » blogs
News is a Conversation
« Back to News is a Conversation | Archives: July 2008

Still a newspaperman
Posted by Steven A. Smith | 31 Jul 11:11 PM

I am a newspaperman.
For some unexplainable reason, I am compelled to say that tonight.
Something is coming, some turn in the media universe, a turn in the future of my newspaper. A turn that will mean the end of me, of us. There will be reporters. Editors. Something called online producers and multi-media coordinators. Mojos. Slojos and Nojos. Bloggers, froggers and twitters.
But there won't be newspapermen. At 58, I am among the last of a dying race.
And what a race it was. An American archetype.
A newspaperman was a writer. An author. The true, first voice of history. A newspaperman chronicled the life of his times on old Remingtons with faded ribbons. A newspaperman wrote on copy paper, one story in one take. If he wanted a copy, he used carbon paper. If it didn't sing, it was spiked.
A newspaperman edited with pencils and always had a ready stack, freshly sharpened, at the start of every shift. A newspaperman smoked at his desk. And if the managing editor wasn't paying too much attention, he might steal a drink, too. A newspaperman knew how to eat well and finish off the meal with a stiff drink and a fine cigar -- all on the company dime.
A newspaperman wore black slacks, a bit worn. A short-sleeved white shirt and a thin black necktie. A newspaperman owned one pair of black wingtips for his entire career.
A newspaperman had nicknames, raunchy, rude and unashamedly affectionate nicknames, for all of the linotype operators in the basement. A newspaperman reveled in the composing room heat, the smells of melted lead and oily black ink.
But the newspaperman was most at home in the newsroom. A loud, smoky, smelly place. Wire machines. Real phones with loud rings. The morning news meeting held in the men's room, the last two stalls on the right, each editor doing his business while conducting business.
The newsroom was a place of boisterous rough housing, crude jokes and tough insults, none taken too seriously, unless they were taken seriously, in which case there might be a bit of a ruckus, maybe a swing or two.
And the characters. The copy editor who barked like a dog. The old city editor who ate reheated fish for lunch. The former war correspondent, hobbling around on one leg, the other lost to drink not combat.
The newsroom was no place for the meek. The young newspaperman knew that when the managing editor threw a coffee cup at his head, the proper recourse was to duck. There was no HR department ready to take a complaint.
The older newspapermen had their heroes. Ben Franklin. John Peter Zenger. Horace Greeley. William Randolph Hearst. Joseph Pulitzer, maybe. William Allen White certainly. And because he had the heart of a newspaperman, Edward R. Murrow and, later, maybe Walter Cronkite.
For the aspiring newspaperman, heroes were the veterans who welcomed him into the newsroom, all the while expecting he would stay quiet, pay his dues and eventually prove himself under fire. The brightest, most ambitious, most talented young newspapermen were grateful for every day they were able to work next to these great, principled and talented men.
Of course, they were not all men. And in this politically correct world, there are some who think the term "newspaperman" is inherently sexist. But the greatest newspaperman with whom I ever worked was Deborah Howell. Don't ever tell me Deborah Howell isn't a newspaperman. In our world, it was the newspaper that defined us, not gender.
A newspaperman knew the meaning of a deadline. He felt a chill when the presses rumbled at midnight and would look for a reason to be in the press room, slipping an early run paper from the conveyor to give the front page a quick look and maybe also to see his byline in print.
Newspapermen worked hard and played hard. The bartender at the dive across the street knew how many beers each reporter could consume between editions. And after the last edition went to press, the bar lights would be turned up just enough to let the newspapermen read those papers pulled fresh from the press.
The newspaperman was respected in the community. There was a mystique, a glamour that really didn't exist but which the newspaperman happily cultivated. In the movies, the editors were Cary Grant. Or Clark Gable. Or Jack Webb. Or Humphrey Bogart, the greatest of all.
The young newspaperman wanted to be Bogie, standing in the press room, screaming into the phone, "That's the sound of the press, baby." The young newspaperman aspired to challenge authority, defend the defenseless and right wrongs. If he was a Don Quixote with a pen, his windmills were politicians, bureaucrats, crooks and thugs. He thought of his job as a calling and truth was his holy grail.
The old newspapermen have died or are dying. One of my great mentors, Dan Wyant, passed away just a week or two ago. The younger, my generation, are fading, too, facing a future in which journalists serve products and platforms not communities and their newspapers. The young turks have become the old farts. We pray at the old altars. We worship the old gods. The new media moguls have their shiny new religion. And our passing is seen by them as both timely and just.
But there is more to be lost than warm, rosy recollections. It's not all about nostalgia.
No instrument will ever serve the public interest so relentlessly as the daily newspaper. New media will successfully distribute data and information. "Communities of interest" will develop around niche products. And while print newspapers will survive to serve a small, elite audience, they never again will serve the larger geographic communities that gave them life and purpose. Democracy will have to find a new public square.
Even as I try to articulate a coherent and meaningful future for my newspaper and my craft, even as I struggle to innovate, to experiment, to manage a frightened workforce, I weep for what is lost. Oh, I still hang on to the trappings. The fedora. The rumpled raincoat. I have the aging wingtips and 25-year-old ties. My battered old typewriter can still churn out memos. But the life I aspired to, that has defined me for nearly 40 years, is going, is mostly gone.
It is a sad thing. And tonight, I find myself mourning the fading, disappearing American newspaperman, the bison of the information age. The wooly mammoth and, bless us, the dodo.
Tomorrow I'll try to think again about what happens next.

The above blog plosting was sent to the OFS Times for sharing with his fellow OFS members by Jeff Prugh (jeff.prugh@yahoo.com).

[Jim Thomsen]

What a jackass a person has to be to be nostalgic for a time when things were much worse.

[jljzen]

Although I think that kind of nostalgia is often time clingy, at best, it's interesting to see that perspective.
Jim, care to explain your harsh words?

[Holly K.]

A tad grouchy today, are we, Jim?

[Daniel Hunt]

This is a good opportunity to remind all participants on the ACES discussion boards to keep their comments professional, polite and on topic. If you don't have anything nice to say, go elsewhere or refrain from hitting the reply button.

Remember what our president says?

Please be courteous in your comments or refrain from posting. Keep in mind that many people come to this discussion board with little access to resources or experience as editors. We welcome their questions.

Personal attacks, off-topic postings or other material deemed inappropriate to the long-standing practices of the ACES discussion board will be removed. Repeat violators of common rules of courtesy will be banned.

Thanks for listening.

Dan, the Webmaster

[Paul Ybarrondo]

The good old days usually look better in retrospect than they really were. Hot type and indoor smoking were before my time, and I doubt that I'd be nostalgic for either one if I had been there. I got a late start in the newspaper business because I squandered 10 years of my life between high school and college. So I've only been doing this about 15 years. But in my time in the newspaper business, I can't think of any time that's worse than the time we're in now. The health of the newspaper business has never been worse in my career.

[Holly K.]

I agree, Paul. Looking back makes most of us nostalgic, because we can forget or ignore the less-desirable memories. I caught the tail-end of smoking in the newsroom and, believe me, I was happy when it ended. But I do miss the times when I didn't have to worry about what was going on with the corporate side.

[Jim Thomsen]

I apologize for my incivil tone.

However, nostalgia for a time when alcoholics and burnouts were revered, when women were harshly marginalized, when ideological biases were institutionalized, when technology was poor, when malingerers were politically protected, when the politically disfavored were abused, when front-page stories and headlines were uniformly shrill and sensationalized ... that's just wrong.

Steve Smith reminds me of my mom, who did some terrible head-game stuff to my sister and I as kids. But when we bring that up with her today, she is SHOCKED. And she's not acting. Through her many personality disorders, she's somehow expunged all the bad stuff from her memory banks, leaving nothing but a sentimental, idealized, even Pollyanna-ish view in her life's rearview mirror, in which we had a uniformly shiny-happy existence. I think Steve Smith is much the same.

And it's just sad.

[Holly K.]

Apology accepted, Jim. I can see that this touches a tender spot, so the reaction is understandable. But I think it is possible to be nostalgic about the past without ignoring that the dark side existed (and still exists).

I guess this piece spoke to me because Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite were -- and are -- among my heroes and role models. Were they perfect human beings? Of course not. But they strived to be the best journalists they could be, despite corporate and political pressure, and served their publics well.

Oh, and, by the way, I am proud to stand up and say that I am a Pollyanna. I look for the good in people, because I've found if you expect the worst you're more likely to get it. (Any other Pollyannas care to join me?)

[Jim Thomsen]

Can my mother come live with you, then? :)

[Holly K.]

Sure, if she likes dogs and people who stay up until the wee hours watching old movies and surfing the net.

[Jim Thomsen]

I'll send her via FedEx in the morning.

[Holly K.]

Will she mind helping with the housework? (OK, I'll stop now because we're getting off-topic.)

[csmount]

Back on topic: Regardless of what you think about this piece, it really seems to have hit a nerve in the journalism world. Here's some of the follow — or perhaps it's fallout: Mr Smith has put his Spokane Review blog, where this was originally posted, on hiatus, and started an independent blog. For the updates:

Look here first
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/conversation/

And then check here:
http://www.stillanewspaperman.com/
(you can see all 69 comments to the original posting here)

For what it's worth, the posting spoke to me, too. I recognized and recalled some of the characters he described in my own newsrooms. And yes, perhaps his generation (and I'm one of ’em) were Don Quixotes with a pen, and we did see what we did as a calling. I offer no apologies for that. When we are at our best, and when we make a difference, I still see it that way.

I'll join Holly as a Pollyanna, too. I don't think those of us who still believe in the ideal are extinct. Go to an ACES conference and look around..... The business may change, but there still are people who care about making a difference. And they aren't part of the old-fart crowd.

[Jim Thomsen]

But that's not what Steve's post is about. He's arguing that newspapering of 30 or 40 or 50 years ago was somehow organically superior to how it's done now. That older newspaper people were better and/or more interesting people. And all that's just false on its face, and it takes a very selectively edited memory to argue otherwise.

[Dan Puckett]

There's nostalgia there — those were different times — but I think what he's arguing is encapsulated in this graf near the end:

No instrument will ever serve the public interest so relentlessly as the daily newspaper. New media will successfully distribute data and information. “Communities of interest” will develop around niche products. And while print newspapers will survive to serve a small, elite audience, they never again will serve the larger geographic communities that gave them life and purpose. Democracy will have to find a new public square.

That can be argued, certainly, and it has been for years; he just framed it more poignantly than most. But it's not false on its face, and as someone who thinks the Digital Era is God's (or Gore's) gift to all of us, someone who's excited and grateful to be alive at this moment in the news business, someone who thinks the new public square will be qualitatively better than that provided by the 20th century newspaper, I don't understand why or how the piece as a whole could offend anyone.

I think he's wrong to be so fearful, but I sure understand why he is. And it's really well-written!

[rich]

Apparently, for some, nostalgia always accompanies reflections of past achievement or remembered pleasure. But, believe me, it is possible to remember with interest and even enthusiasm without longing for yesterday to repeat itself.

I, for one, read many histories with intense interest, although without feeling any nostalgia at all. In this sense, the volumes within the archives of my mind are not exceptional. They detail records I still find interesting, although I do not necessarily long to undergo them again.

Today, I may write about printers, writers and editors I knew during the days of hot type, but that does not mean I necessarily think that making lines of type from molten lead was a healthy exercise. If I speak highly of their devotion to certain standards, or if I praise the consequences of that dedication, that is not necessarily an affirmation of a longing for things past.

Many of us are like Shakespeare, in his sonnet “when to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past, I suffer the lack of many a thing I sought and with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste. …”

But that is about what was not done or achieved or acquired. Our nostalgia — or at least that of which you convict us — may be for what lay beyond our reaches.

I wonder at the courage of Hector, but that does not mean I long to pit myself against Achilles in a battle with spears and swords.

So, I am afraid I do not understand your criticism, Jim.

But, ah well, I'll never be young again, alas. What is yet to be is up to you.

[Jim Thomsen]

And it's really well-written!

OK, if your definition is "treacly, trite, free of fresh observations and slathered in saccharine sentiment."

I think it's astoundingly bad writing.

[rich]

OK, if your definition is "treacly, trite, free of fresh observations and slathered in saccharine sentiment."

I think it's astoundingly bad writing.

Well, that's another issue.