The way it was

Stumbled across this on Facebook Saturday. Was it really only 22 years ago this stuff happened?

 

Yep. It almost seems like another lifetime where I had to go proofread the plastic pages one last time to make sure there wasn’t any major fuckups. I also used to like to go the the press area and grab a copy before heading home to bed.

I used to get some amusing calls from my paper’a circulation staff asking if I wanted to subscribe. I told them I already worked there and could get all the free papers I wanted.

 

But...but..lol

“Journalism is broken and maybe we need a solution to it that risks the imagination of a new kind of possibility.”

 

Was that from the video? If not, where is it from?

 

Sounds like it could have been any one of a hundred f0rgotten slogans from Gannett initiatives over the last 20 years.

 

My goodness - that kind of made me think of a WKRP episode.

 

Did someone say, "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg

 

That made me more wistful than I expected.

 

Keep that video around for another 20-25 years. Show it to someone in high school or college, and it will be like watching how the Egyptians created hieroglyphics to them.

 

To think I worked with two paste-up guys at the Rocky Mount Telegram (both deceased, although the Telegram may be as well) who showed me their scars from hot lead spills when they worked as linotype operators.

It's both remarkable and unbelievable that such an institution -- at least in the United States -- could be decimated so quickly by a combination of technology and terrible mismanagement.

 

When I worked at Fairchild at 7 East 12th Street NYC, there were still ink stains on the lobby ceiling even though the basement presses had been removed a decade earlier.

 

The thing that kills me is I thought that was what I was signing up for. So much wasted heartache, frustration and self-doubt. It's heartbreaking.