# What's Black, White & Read All Over? (1 Viewer)



## qwertyportne (Jul 11, 2014)

_If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. 
If you do, you're misinformed.”
~ _Mark Twain​In my teens, I delivered the Valley News to subscribers in a rural area of the San Fernando Valley. Six miles of dirt roads to school in the morning and 10 more after school to get the news into mail boxes and up driveways before the sun went down. It was uphill both ways with dogs biting at my heels and wheels... until I carried a water pistol filled with ammonia!

In high school I learned how to set type, operate a printing press and run a linotype. What an amazing piece of equipment that was! You sat at a typewriter-like keyboard and typed while the machine created an entire line of type from molten lead, hence the name linotype.

We also learned to set type manually, letter by letter, into a composing stick from a compartmentalized wooden box called the California Job Case. The linotype was easier and faster but waves of fear and awe would roll over me every time I sat down at that old linotype--it was as much "alive" as I was. Newspapers used them into the 60's and I delivered newspapers into my 30's.

According to some sources, newspapers are having a difficult time meeting the challenges of the digital age. One of the things you hear most often is that by the time the "news" hits the street it's old. Perhaps, but most newspapers are changing the way they bring the news to the citizens they serve.

Did American farms surrender to factories? No, there are fewer farms, especially smaller ones, but the ones which survived took advantage of new technologies to make farming more efficient and profitable.

Did computers replace typewriters? No, the Qwerty and Dvorak keyboards were adapted to the new technology.

Did radio give up the ghost to television? No, it changed to meet the challenge of the new kid on the block and found a new niche in the process.

Have books, magazines and libraries become extinct since Google invented the search engine and Amazon introduced the Kindle? No, we still print documents we download from the Internet, checkout books at the library and follow our hobbies and interests in magazines.

The horse and buggy pretty much disappeared when Henry Ford brought automobiles to America, but there is still something special about feeling the power and presence of a horse through the reins in your hands. Like operating a linotype: that kind of horsepower is in your hands, not under the hood.

Here in America the press is still free because reporters get out of their chairs before they sit down at their keyboards and because more and more newspapers are making news available at their websites for digital devices of one kind or another.

But hard copy is still king in my house because the feel of print on paper in my own two hands is irreplaceable.


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## escorial (Jul 11, 2014)

it was all good but the first three para's were remarkable...man i enjoyed that


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## Pandora (Jul 13, 2014)

My husband is next to me here doing quotes for our print customers. I read this aloud to him, we both very much enjoyed. I love the feel of paper, the smell of fresh ink, knowing the care, the talent, the group effort  that went into a creation. Printing is boss! Thanks qwerty, you know this was almost like a pep talk for us  just what is needed when working from home on a Sunday morning.

Awesome piece of writing!


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## qwertyportne (Jul 13, 2014)

Thanks Escorial and Pandora. Wasn't sure this would draw any feedback whatsoever. My wife feels the same about books as I do but does have a Kindle she uses when she is away from home. My library recently began using the website Over Drive where you can borrow e-books with your library card, so I might get an e-reader myself someday.


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## David K. Thomasson (Jul 13, 2014)

Your piece brought back fond memories of hot-type days at newspapers. In 1971, a year after finishing college, I took a temporary job as a copy boy at the Miami Herald. They were still hot type then and still using Linotype machines. But instead of having them manned, reporters typed their stories on copy paper, and these were sent to a pool of typists who, very quickly and accurately, punched them into paper tape. The Linotype then read the paper tape and set the type. 

The composing room was like a gigantic factory, with scores of "turtles" -- the wheeled iron tables that held the page forms and type -- scattered throughout the huge room. And it sounded like a factory, with continual metallic clanking and banging.

I worked in the copy room, of course. This was just off the newsroom, about 40 feet long with rows of teletype machines from the various news services (AP, UPI, New York Times, etc.). Copy boys constantly monitored these machines, cutting off stories and sorting them into the appropriate baskets -- national news, state news, financial, sports, etc. When a few stories accumulated in a basket, you hustled that stack out to the appropriate editors' desks and put them on their spikes. They would cut and paste (literally cut with scissors and paste with rubber cement) the stories together, slug them (give them a one-word name), edit them by hand, type headlines on separate pieces of copy paper, and send them down to composing.

One memory that sticks with me is the smell of those old newspaper buildings. Every department had its own unique smell. The press room, of course, smelled heavily of ink and newsprint. The composing room smelled of hot metal. 

Walking into the lofty lobby each day, I would get a potpourri of all these aromas that I came to recognize as a signature. I consider myself fortunate to have had a chance to work in a "real" newspaper. Thanks for the memories.


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## DannyMullen (Jul 14, 2014)

Good post, to which I say "fuck yes"

Just read a book exposing the garbage of the new blog news economy we're working with these days. Keep the papers alive.


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