the local paper was looking for a newsroom clerk, someone to answer the city desk phones, write obituaries, and compile the divorces, bankruptcies, fire runs, and other matters of record.
i was sure i'd be perfect.
the newspaper was housed in a brick building on West First Street, on the edge of downtown. it was conveniently right across the street from the civic center--quick access to the courthouse, the jail, the cop shop, the federal building, the mayor.
the newsroom was on the second floor--a large room crammed with desks, each with an electric typewriter and a red telephone.
there were two papers published each day--the morning news-tribune, and the evening herald. the herald staff came in at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and the paper came up off the press by 1 p.m. each day. it was delivered to homes in time for dinner. the news-tribune was published 12 hours later, at around midnight, and landed on doorsteps in time for breakfast.
the dayside reporters shared desks and phones and typewriters with the nightsiders; during the couple of hours of overlap in the middle of the day, it got very crowded.
from the minute i walked in, i loved the noise and the importance of the place--the clacketing typewriters, the squawking police radio, the constantly ringing telephones, the clickety-clack of the news wire machine. every now and then a copy editor would walk over and rip the latest news right off the wire and take it back to the horseshoe-shaped desk where he worked.
i had lived all my life in duluth and i had no idea there was such a vibrant place as this--the newsroom.
the newsroom clerk would work for both staffs, coming in around 9 a.m. and going home around 6. and the pay! my god! an astounding $120/a week. and if you got sick, they paid you for the day anyway. and if you needed to take a vacation day or two, they still paid you. and twice a day, every day, stacks of newspapers, still warm from the press, the ink smudging off on your hands, every word written just hours before.
man, this was the job for me. i'd interviewed at the TV station, too, but the hell with them. this was my destiny. i was sure of it.
i interviewed with the top editor, i took a typing test and blew everyone away with my 120 wpm score, i shook hands with a whole bunch of quivery old men, some in suspenders, many of them smoking.
and then i didn't get the job.
the editor himself called to tell me. he said all the right things--i was great, they were impressed by me, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. but they had hired someone else who apparently was just a tad more impressive in all regards.
i slunk back to my 75 cent an hour library job, crushed and demoralized. i actually walked out at noon and hid behind the hedge and wept, just a little. shelving books and helping children find stuff to read had never seemed so dull.
and then, a week later, the editor called again. the first clerk had already quit. did i still want the job?
it took me about sixteen seconds to give notice at the library, walk six blocks down the street, and start my new life.
the first thing i noticed was that the newsroom was almost entirely male. there were three young kickass women reporters (one of whom later became rather famous and went on to win the pulitzer prize, though at a different paper). there was one tough old bird who had been the city editor for a stint and was now reporting again. there was the copy girl, who was somewhat crazy and who hadn't qualified as a "girl" for about 10 years. and there were the two women who put out the "women's section"; they were sequestered in a remote office down a hallway. but that was it.
everyone else in the room was male--the editor, the managing editor, all of the copy editors, most of the reporters, the entire sports department, all the photographers, and all of the compositors (except Millie, who was scary and deaf). some wore suspenders. some wore hats at their desk. many of them smoked. one redheaded guy had beefy Popeye arms, with tattoos; his beat was the shipping news and the longshoremen, and every year he took off the entire month of november to go work on the docks himself.
his pica pole was engraved with his name and the slogan, "i cover the waterfront." which of course was a play on words: a reporter is supposed to cover the waterfront--that is, hit all the angles of a story or a beat. but in this case, he really did cover the waterfront. i, of course, didn't get the wisdom of that slogan until much later.
i was 19 years old, painfully shy, i had one year of college under my belt, and i wore my hair in braids pinned on top of my head. i looked at all the wild and tough and swaggering people in the newsroom, and they looked at intimidated me, and i wondered if we would ever figure out how to get along.
TO BE CONTINUED ON TUESDAY, AFTER FUN MONDAY
a pica pole, also called a line gauge (and there were bitter arguments amongst editors as to which name was the correct one), was a long metal ruler used with a cropping wheel (below) for sizing and cropping photos. these were essential tools of copy editors, and i still have mine, though i haven't used them in years. now, of course, the computer does all the resizing--all you have to do is click and drag.
