The first place I ever rented when I was a green sports reporter was a studio apartment on a ranch. I wasn’t allowed any visitors, curtains or a window unit AC.
I had to accept the terms because there was literally no other place to rent within driving distance of work. Anyway, I liked being in the country.
The apartment was native limestone, built around the cistern that supplied water to the whole ranch. I had to enter a code and drive over a cattle guard through an automatic gate.
The idea when they built the place was that the cistern would cool the apartment. I think it just increased the humidity. I had to keep cleaning mildew off the cistern.
When the water level dropped below a certain level a pump turned on, drawing more water from the well. You never knew when it was coming and it was LOUD.
It woke me up the first night after giving me the dumbest dream. I was Popeye, fighting with Bluto as he often did. I thought up the wittiest cutdown ever and shouted “Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto!”
And woke up to the damn pump going “Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto!” What the hell? It always sounded like that to me from then on.
Guy Clark – Maybe I Can Paint Over That (fan-made video)
What I wouldn’t give for a proofreader some days. I’ve already made a few screw-ups on on this blog, though luckily you can fix those quickly now once you’re wife catches them.
it was hard on the soul when I made a bad one in the paper business. Write enough articles and you’re going to make a tone of mistakes. Especially when you’re chief cook and bottle washer and have to proof my your own copy
Word had a spell checker but there were so many other ways to mess up. Copy/paste mistakes really pissed me off cuz they were hard to explain. Lack of sleep was the best excuse I had.
You had to walk around with your head hanging low for a whole week. It really stung when you messed up a story you were proud of. you were proud of.
There were time4s when I was too exhausted to be embarrassed. I was like, oh well, I need to fill up a news hole on page 3. a correction will fill up this news hole on page 3. They’ll forgive me in a week. Maybe.
The tech we have gtoday would’ve helped if I’d had it back then. But then again I probably would’ve been laid off with the proofreading staff instead of sticking around till I felt like the Omega Man.
I wish somebody would write a song about a news editor that captured the way it felt when that was my vocation.
Closest I could find was “Newspapers” from Stan Ridgway (singer from Wall of Voodoo. Remember “Mexican Radio”?). He at least made an effort to see it the newsman’s way.
It was stressful, always being “on.” You never had enough help, but you got it done anyway. It wasn’t something you did, it was something you were. Until one day, you weren’t…
Stan Ridgway – Newspapers
Most songs about the news business take journalists to task for their bias – as we all should. But there’s another side: Staying till the end of a late night meeting so they wouldn’t slip something past you, driving pages to press yourself after an all-nighter, running racks on country roads late into the night.
I still can’t find a song about newsmen as good as “Wichita Lineman.” It’s not about us, but it captures some of that lonesome yet rewarding feeling. I tear up every time I hear that line, “I need you more than want you and I want you for all time.”
Yep, that was me, for a while. Sadly, “all time” is not something you can have.
I feel like songwriter Jimmy Webb would’ve understood. I like Glen Campbell’s version best, Friends of Dean Martinez’s spacey instrumental is also incredible.
The version of the song I learned was Johnny Verbeck, ot Johnny Rebeck. But I didn’t learn the last verse where the people ate the sausage anyway. That makes it so much funnier!
Just got a text from someone who was freaking out over the kidnapping and murders of Americas that just happened across from Brownsville in Matamoros.
“Don’t go to Mexico anymore! Get your dental work done over here!”
I saw the video she was talking about it and I hated it, just like all the violence I see on my screens these days. But I reminded her: We both used to work in the paper business.
We got to see the sausage being made.
If there was a murder in town, newspapers sold like hotcakes. If you reported on all the murders that didn’t happen, you’d run out of paper.
If you’re doing journalism for the right reasons, you cover what you need to cover, whether it sells or not, but we knew damn well which stories management liked.
To be fair, I got excited about stories like that too, at least at the beginning. But these days too many people are getting their news from sources that scare them all day long. If you’re scared all the time and you don’t get to enjoy life.
I like sausage. Sausage is tasty. But don’t kid yourself that it’s health food. Every place I worked tried to make good sausage. But it was still sausage.
Back in my newspaper days, most places I worked ost of the newspapers I worked at had a policy against anonymous letters to the editor.
If you allowed it, people would get in nastier and nastier fights and pretty soon you didn’t have any place to jump the front page news.
Funny how different things are now. Anonymous people are still stirring up trouble. At the same time we’re not anonymous enough.
Every time I open YouTube, I get an ad for the thing I was just talking about. Creepy.
Back then I just thought anonymous letters were chickenshit. I had to sign what I wrote.
If you got mad at something I wrote, you could call me up and chew me out.
Once a preacher got so mad at me, he preached a whole sermon about me. (He invited me tok the service, but I smelled a rat.)
One day I opened an anonymous letter that really pissed me off. They were mostly mad at us for making them buy political ads a month before the election.
Candidates had been getting their buddies to send letters to the editor so they didn’t have to spend money. They also thought I was slacking on local news and they hated my “worthless” features.
I was mainly pissed because they were right. I did write a lot of features. I liked ‘em and they helped fill up the paper.
Truth be told I liked covering the news, but I liked features more. If someone raised llamas or raced pigeons or flew a bomber during WWII, I could nerd out and produce a lot of copy. Plus pictures take up a lot of column inches.
At least I never did like an old editor of mine, who wrote features so long they had to be continued, sometimes over six editions.
One day a lady from the Republican Women came in and chewed me out over our letter policy.
She had an expensive cane she probably wanted to hit me with. She said something that sounded a little too familiar and suddenly I was hopping mad.
I heard my mouth say, “So you’re the one who sent me that anonymous letter!” I thought, Oh shit, I said that out loud. I am so fired.
But she grinned real big and said, “If I have something to say to you, I’ll sign my name to it, don’t you worry about that!” I think she liked my gumption. Ended up kinda sorta friends.
I once used “Second Skin” as a user name on a dating site. The Chameleons are criminally unknown, so anyone else who loves them was bound to get me.
I never got any hits.
I finally realized how it looked if you didn’t know the song. Girls probably thought I wanted to wear their skin like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
I didn’t realize till later, but I kind of tested my wife before we got serious. I had shared “As High As You Can Go” with a girl I was crushing on and she texted back, “IDK if I like that.”
I lied to myself for a while cuz she was cute, but I knew it was never gonna work.
My compromise position was my future soulmate had to at least like the Chameleons. I played “As High As You Can Go” for my future wife and she loved it. Score!
Why such a big deal?
I discovered them during a rough time in my life. Editing a newspaper is hard anywhere, but I was a real fish out of water. I wasn’t used to East Texas and had few friends. Dating was out of the question. I didn’t belong, but I didn’t know how to leave.
Luckily my boss introduced me to postpunk (think punk, but more artful). He had been a college DJ. I was mostly a hard rock guy, so this was strange stuff to me.
Until it completely transformed my taste in music.
When I heard The Chameleons I was sold. Lush, beautiful, passionate, intricate, hard-hitting, entrancing, thought-provoking… I played them non-stop as I drove to interviews and delivered papers.
That was a short period in my life, but postpunk became my new musical home base.
I still have times like today, where I need my Chameleons fix. And my wife loves them too, so I don’t have to use earbuds. Score again!
Me, in the back of a friendly citizen’s pickup truck, about to cover a small town parade. I think growing a beard was a good move. Look at those chins…
I was so relieved to get out of print journalism, I burned my press card. The career of a lifetime, up in flames. (Actually just burned one corner. That shit stinks.)
All my friends had bailed. Corporate was making changes I just couldn’t stomach. I’d have less editorial control and I knew more layoffs were coming. I don’t know how I hung on so long.
But I do know why.
When it was good, it was so good — if you were cut out for it. We had a running joke in one place I worked, “I’m gonna move my car.” A cub reporter once went out to move her car on press day and never came back. Journalist isn’t just a job title. It’s an identity. One I tried hard to live up to for over 20 years.
Did I live up to it? Not always. But I tried.
I made a lot of friends and a lot of memories, but I also worked hard for not very much money, had to work weekends, nights and some holidays, had periods of great stress and loneliness. But I was hooked. You had to be.
At one newspaper we had a running joke. When things got rough in the newsroom somebody would say, “I’m gonna move my car!” A young reporter once went out to move her car and never came back. I admit I considered it a time or two.
Stressful as it was, there was nothing like the thrill of knowing you were the first to know. Even at a weekly or semi-weekly, you could scoop the dailies if you were good enough. At the very least you could have the best version.
Or the camaraderie you felt, all of us editorial folks working late so we could get a hot scoop into the next edition. We argued, told jokes in bad taste, had rubber band fights, threw paper wads at the ceiling fan. And we put out newspapers we were proud of. Then we’d race to the local bar and get trashed.
I wish I had appreciated it more. Eventually big box stores and the internet killed so many of our mom and pop advertisers, it was only a matter of time. I knew we were in trouble when the speaker at a convention tried to tell us our biggest competitor was the Yellow Pages.
They all found other jobs, one by one. Some saw the writing on the wall and found a job outside journalism. PR jobs, non-profits, state government. Others got laid off and their workloads fell on my shoulders. Press days got later and later. It sucked, but I kept convincing myself it would get better.
It was like trying to talk yourself out of a divorce you know is coming. I loved it once, maybe the magic would return. But deep down I knew better. I was getting too old for it and the outlook for journalism was grim.
I literally thought I was going to wind up homeless. I had a special backpack I planned to take on the road with me. Ultimately just would up using it as carry-on luggage.
I really miss the folks I worked with over the years. A bunch of crazy characters, yet creative and professional (most of ’em). None of the newspapers I worked for were big dailies, but I was proud of the issues we put out (most of ’em). Sometimes we even scooped the big city paper next door.
Late Boomer's Den 
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