Destroying Democracy One Newsroom at a Time

Who Still Remembers Real Journalism?

A sign of the Times.

I was 18 when I first walked into a newsroom. There was a gritty smell to a newsroom in those days, and if you didn’t witness it then, you’ve missed it. It’s the scent of vats of ink. Enormous rolls of pulpy paper. Burnt coffee in dirty cups. The ghosts of cigarettes past, and of cigarettes still burning. We’d set them in silvery ashtrays made by bending down the edge of a bulk film canister and forget them. It sounds foul, but I’d be grateful to inhale a big lungful of vintage newsroom atmosphere right now.

Newsrooms had particular sounds, too. When the press started up, the whole building would subtly vibrate. You’d feel the rumble in your organs. If you had a big story in the paper that day, maybe you’d run to the press room and nod to the blue collar guys who were climbing all over the press, making a million complicated adjustments. You’d take care to stay out of their way, because they were not impressed by you and did not trust you in their territory. Yellow tape marked where you could and could not walk in the pressroom. So you’d stand there, just outside the yellow boundary, and you’d wait for the first clean copy to come off the line. The first hundred copies or so were inky, blurry messes, so you’d have to wait until the papers looked good, and then you’d dash in and grab one. It would feel damp in your hands and you’d move out the press operators’ line of sight to spread it flat, and there it would be: your byline, and the story that you couldn’t wait for everyone in town to read. Your scoop.

The Associated Press teletype machine made a racket. It sat in its own little closet, clattering out stories all day. We’d rip off the whole strip every so often and check for breaking news. When we found a story we wanted to print, we’d look off the hard copy and re-type the story into the most primitive quasi-computer you can imagine. We would always be the first people to know when a bomb or celebrity dropped.

When I got started, we printed our stories out on long, glossy strips of photographic paper. The paste-up crew would run the strips of text through a waxer and then they’d use X-ACTO knives to cut the story into blocks and carefully stick it into place on a “flat” made of cardstock. The gridlines were marked in a specific shade of pale blue that didn’t show up on the giant press cameras we’d use to “shoot” the flats.The press crew would produce a giant negative of the page that would next be used to etch the metal plates that were attached to the press. The little blue markers we used to mark the copy were ubiquitous. In those days, every time I needed a pen, I’d rummage through my purse and bring up several blue markers. I haven’t seen one now for at least 20 years.

Getting art onto the page was another production. First, the photographer had to go into the darkroom with a bulk roll of black and white film and transfer it onto multiple small reusable camera rolls. I still have a few of these in my bedside table because I can’t just throw them out. When all the bulk film was loaded onto individual rolls of film, we’d have ourselves a fresh ashtray and could throw away the grungy one full of stinky butts.

Next, an actual photographer, as in someone who had formally studied the art and science of shooting, developing and printing photos, would pop several rolls of film into his or her camera bag and would go capture whatever news might be going on. He or she would then return to the newsroom, develop the film and make what we called a proof sheet. I just threw away the last one I had. It had been in my kitchen junk drawer for years, and my kitchen is in the midst of remodeling, so I talked myself into tossing it. I regret this. It was a proof sheet of pictures a photographer named Stephanie shot of our motley crew as we volunteered together one holiday season, attaching strings of Christmas lights to wire floats for our area’s Festival of Lights parade. We stopped using contact sheets when we stopped using film, so I’m guessing the pictures were taken sometime in the mid-to-late ‘90s.

So the photographer would bring the editor a contact sheet, which would contain up to 36 small images. The editor would use a jeweler’s loupe to take a look, circle the chosen images with a red wax pen and send the photographer back into the dark room to print the chosen images into actual hard copy photographs.

But we still weren’t done. It was still a photograph at that point and we needed it to be a grayscale image made up of bajillions of tiny black dots so it could be printed. We’d decide how we wanted the photo cropped and how many columns we wanted it to be and then we’d do a little math, with the help of a pica pole and a proportion wheel. (I made a point to put a pica pole and proportion wheel aside as they were becoming obsolete, but someone swiped the pole. I still have the wheel.)

We’d have piles of tiny forms stuffed into a drawer that specified what percentage to shoot the photo to, and we’ll fill one out, specifying that we needed it to be shot at 42 or 76 or maybe 108 percent. We’d tape that tiny little form to the edge of the photo and take it to the guys in the back. We’d get back something called a PMT, and we’d give it to the paste-up crew so they could wax the back of it and stick it onto the flat. The scent of that hot wax machine is another thing I haven’t smelled for a long time. But if you blindfolded me and waved it under my nose, I’d immediately know what it was.

The paste-up crew would put a thick black border, probably 1 point, around the PMT, using little rolls of shiny black borders cut to size. You can use thin borders when you’re paginating on the computer, but they’re way too difficult to work with when you have to physically mess with them. You probably don’t know what I mean when I say a 1 point border. Don’t worry about it. It’s obsolete information.

How long did all that take, from deciding to send a fotog (that’s what we called them) to pasting the PMT onto the page? Approximately forever. I will never forget how cool I thought it was the very first time I was able to arrange for someone to email me a digital picture. I didn’t immediately realize that the simplicity of that exchange foretold the virtual end of professional photojournalism.

Maybe the reason so many of us loved journalism is the same reason as why so many people now like playing journalist. Thousands of us were willing to do it for practically nothing and now millions of us are willing to do it for absolutely nothing. Witness all the personal blogs and web pages out there.

When I first walked into a newsroom, I was thrilled to join what felt like a secret society. I knew things nobody else did. Take the word “font.” I first heard this word in 1984. Nobody outside the news and print business knew, or needed to know, what that was. Now everyone does.

We no longer require the skills of those who developed film or perfectly arranged blocks of text onto a flat. We don’t need people who can write a headline that will fit properly without benefit of digital manipulation of the point size. Where have all those people gone? A lot of them are dead. Some found work in public relations or communications. A guy whose byline used to grace Sports Illustrated now delivers packages. Others once lauded for their news skill make pizzas or help care for nursing home residents or have moved in with their children, because they never made enough money to save for their retirement. Most people who worked at small newspapers lived with their parents or a partner or had another job. I knew a fotog who worked full-time for the newspaper, part-time as a paramedic, performed live music on the weekends and sometimes did pyrotechnics. That’s the only way he could afford to live alone.

Meanwhile, the world is full of people who self-identify as writers and photographers. Journalists used to love doing what they did enough that they were willing to work grueling hours for poverty-level wages. Now, people appear to be doing the work of journalists for free, because they can and because the rest of the world has discovered how fun it is.

God, was it ever fun.

Anybody with minimal literacy and a laptop can write and publish now. You don’t need to spend millions buying a press. Everybody’s phone takes high-quality pictures that can be uploaded immediately. Almost no skill is needed. Everybody is a photographer.

I take pretty good pictures, but I always recognized, when I worked with professional fotogs, that my pretty-good pictures were not really good enough. I would take my own photos if I had to, but I much preferred to let the talented photographers do it. You can learn how to shoot, but you might have to be born with the eye.

Also, everybody is a writer now. I wish I had a buck for every terrible writer I’ve met who is confident in his or her writing abilities. A lot of these people fill management positions in advertising, communications and marketing. They are incapable of distinguishing between mediocre and excellent writing. This is the reason for the error-ridden content you read all over the internet. There’s no old-time editor sending a piece back for more work or marking it up with a red pen. Most of the public doesn’t appreciate good writing anyway, so why pay money for excellent copy when you can get lower-quality content for little or nothing?

And let us speak about “content.” I signed up to write stories, columns and editorials. I did not agree to a life of long hours and low pay to produce “content.” When a hedge fund took control of the newspaper chain I worked for, they put people in charge who wanted us to produce lots of content. They didn’t press for good news coverage or quality work. They demanded we churn out impossibly high quotas of content. We did it, but it broke our hearts.

I led the staff editorial meeting every Monday morning. Was there a big criminal trial coming up? A sentencing? Any crime trends to report? Inquests to cover? What was on the agenda for the next city council and school board and county board meeting? Any new businesses coming to town? I’d check on the progress of the special sections we had going on. We’d plan our Saturday feature pages months in advance. Before each election, we’d make detailed plans for coverage. During festival season, we’d make sure we did right by the Turkey Fest, Pumpkin Festival, Marigold Festival, Good Neighbor Days, the Festival of Lights parade and all the rest.

Every so often, the corporation would let me know about some new duties I’d have to force the staff to perform. Every staff member had to tweet a certain number of times per day. We had to update our Facebook page a specified number of times. We had to shoot a certain number of videos and post a certain number of photos every day. Our website was to be updated 24/7, even though we didn’t have enough staff to cover all hours. I had to write detailed reports confirming that every staff member had completed all these requirements.

None of the requirements had to do with investigative reporting or any kind of solid news coverage; that wasn’t tracked at all. They only cared about things like the numbers of photo galleries we had posted online. Some of the requirements were identical for tiny weeklies in blue-collar towns and for large regional dailies in high-income college towns. Forcing my staff to set real work aside to complete the busy work eventually made most of my staff hate me, and I didn’t blame them. I’d have hated me, too.

I pushed back enough that other editors sometimes pulled me aside and thanked me for speaking up and commented on the probable size of my balls, but it did nothing but assuage my conscience (and probably cause them to lay me off a few years earlier than they would have otherwise).

The increased busy work pushed out more and more reporting time. At first, those of us on salary just worked longer hours. I knew that some hourly workers must be putting in several hours off the clock each week to provide the level of coverage we had always been proud of. I told them not to, but I was grateful to have a staff that cared so much.

But the staff kept getting smaller, and the requirements kept growing. Corporate leadership suggested at one point we find a boutique owner and shoot a video of her demonstrating several unique ways to tie a scarf. I asked if perhaps our time might not be better spent interviewing the mayor or taking pictures at a new local business. You can guess how that went.

The longest day I ever worked started at 5 a.m. and ended at 3 a.m., but there were also times, usually on election nights, when I worked around the clock and caught a catnap on the newsroom sofa for a couple hours in the middle of the night.

Another night, we raced to beat a blizzard, half-assing production more than I ever had before. I managed to send everyone but one paginator home before the worst of it hit. We were required to publish the paper even though we knew practically nobody would ever see a copy; the circulation staff wouldn’t be able to make deliveries in the morning. Still, it had to be done or else we would have to refund all the money advertisers had paid for the ads in that issue. That was unthinkable to members of management, none of whom were actually working in the building that night.

When the paginator and I were finished, her four-wheel drive truck was locked into the snow. She would have to stay the night at my house. We walked through the dark right in the middle of the uncleared streets. In places, it was up to the tops of my thighs, and I’m a tall woman. My house was so close to the newspaper (one of the reasons I bought it) that I could normally walk to work in three or four minutes. I’m not sure how long it took us that night, but when we finally fought through all the drifts to reach my house, we were panting and exhausted.

What I’m trying to say is, we newspaper people were a dedicated bunch of people. A former editor of mine once compared journalists to the characters on the Island of Misfit Toys in the old Rudolph movie. And there was a lot of truth to that. You had your fair share of odd ducks in any newsroom. I’ve never met more interesting or dedicated people than those who populated the old newsrooms. It was a calling, not a job. And we loved doing it.

We did some good work on my watch. We wrote about an innocent family that nearly lost custody of their children, and we were able to shed light on the flawed investigation. We broke a story about a cancer patient who died in agony in prison with only a bit of acetaminophen in his system. A prison official forced the paramedics to start an IV before removing his body, even though rigor mortis had set in, so he wouldn’t be declared dead until his body arrived at the hospital. We got a tip that our mayor at the time had been using the city credit cards to gamble on the riverboat. He was eventually found guilty and removed from office, but not before causing a lot of mayhem. Those are the ones that stand out, but I could list hundreds more.

Lots of times, I feared someone (or their family member) who had appeared in our police reports was going to get violent. I was never punched, but there were several tense confrontations. One local crazy guy, who the police warned me I was right to fear, had me concerned enough that I carried a knife and watched my back for a while.

Once, while we were still in the historic building, a drunk walked up the fire escape stairs and into the unlocked door, most likely left unlocked by someone who wanted to sneak a smoke without walking down our ridiculous staircase, which was one of the longest I’ve ever seen and down which more than one staff member fell at various times. The drunk was sleeping it off in an old balcony that used to overlook the newsroom when it was a dance hall way back when. After the staff arrived at 5 a.m., the drunk heard noises, stood up to investigate, and fell right through the drop ceiling, just missing a colleague’s desk. I was on vacation and missed the whole thing, unfortunately. Pity, as it was the only time my newspaper was mentioned in one of the industry journals.

I watched subscriptions decline every year, and there was nothing I could do about it. The problems were industry-wide and probably unavoidable; it wasn’t just my paper or the chain that owned us that was affected. It didn’t help that angry people would call daily because they hadn’t received the paper they’d paid for, or that our deadline was so early that we couldn’t get final sports scores into the next day’s paper. Why was our deadline so early? Our press was sold for scrap. Somebody decided it would save a lot of money to print multiple papers at one plant, one right after another, so the press run for some papers had to be scheduled quite early.

We’d already moved out of the historic downtown building where we’d been for more than a hundred years and into a cinder block former appliance store built on such poorly filled ground that a wide crack opened in the newsroom floor near my desk, and I was always getting my high heels stuck in it. I don’t know how I avoided breaking my ankle. There’s now a useless parking lot where that beautiful building used to be. I took home part of the tin ceiling from the newsroom for my Victorian parlor, and some of the old red brick to edge my garden.

So I wasn’t surprised when the ax fell. I’d already discreetly taken home most of my personal items, a few items each night for a couple of weeks. One of the last things I carried out was a giant stuffed Easter duck named Cluster Duck, the newsroom mascot perched behind my desk.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was worried. Not just for myself, but for the news business and ultimately for society. It’ll be fine, everybody said. Even if all the newspapers die, something will move in to take their place. The internet is still there. We’ll just get our news online.

I knew that wasn’t true. When I was laid off in 2015, digital ads were less than 10 percent of our income. A handful of old ladies who continued to pay for the print product (that’s what we’d been taught to call our newspaper at that point) were subsidizing the newsroom that produced the news we put onto the website. Each day, as I counted the deaths on our obit page, I knew I was essentially counting how many paid subscriptions we had lost that day.

Clicks don’t support a newsroom and never will. And for years, as news executives were urging us to put every story online as quickly as possible, we were teaching the public to expect the news to be free. It worked. People now become angry when asked to pay for online access.

I was right to worry. That mayor who gambled with the city credit card died recently. I heard about his death a few days later and checked my former paper’s website. As of that time, there was no story. Almost nobody works there anymore. There’s no institutional memory. Nobody knew who he was or how newsworthy his death was. I took to social media and nobody had any clue he’d died. That’s what happens when you’re in a news desert.

I chatted with my town’s city attorney recently. We sometimes clashed when I was the newspaper editor, but I always liked him and we are presently on the same side of a neighborhood zoning issue. He mentioned that it’s awfully convenient not to have any watchdogs around anymore, though he acknowledged it’s a bad thing. His 100-plus-year-old father was the legendary editor of a large newspaper many decades ago. I know he gets it. If he wanted to, I’m sure he could tell me a dozen juicy stories that nobody has or ever will report.

Nationwide, the watchdogs are all being euthanized. Oh, the national news is still being covered, but not the local stuff, and that does matter. Nobody handed any of us the news. We had to dig for it. Nobody is digging anymore.

Plenty of people are producing content, of course, because it’s fun or because it’s in somebody’s corporate interest or because they have a political agenda. None of that is news.

People have always groused about the media, but community journalism was largely done by people who did it for all the right reasons. In my newsrooms, we routinely had conversations about the right way to cover an issue and who we could talk to to get the other side and what would best serve the public interest.

News is the only business I know of that tried hard to give the public not what it wanted, but what we thought was best for it. We were like a restaurant that ignored your request for a side of mashed potatoes with extra butter and brought you steamed broccoli instead. For our trouble, we were usually reviled and hated and accused of being in it to sell newspapers.

But nobody in the newsroom cared what sold newspapers; we weren’t going to be paid much regardless of how many copies we sold and we knew it. If we had been in it just to sell newspapers, I always said, we’d have stopped running stories about city council meetings and would have focused on running pictures of hot girls holding cute kittens. We understood perfectly how easy it would be to pander, but we didn’t. I never knew a reporter who would have wanted to work for The Enquirer, even though it reportedly pays well.

I always thought the death of newspapers would be very bad for society, but it’s been far worse than I ever imagined. People with an agenda are pushing a lot of what pretends to be news. A lot of people always had a low opinion about the media and now, they’re mostly right. Unfortunately, a lot of people distrust even the most solid sources of news, but have faith in the most biased and propaganda-driven dreck. I’m dismayed by how many people honestly cannot tell the difference.

I am proud to have been a journalist and I’ll miss it forever. I feel fortunate to be among the relative few who got to experience the glory days. If I could go back in time and choose a different career, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t change a thing. It was worth everything to get to be a journalist. I mean that, even though I’ve struggled to find a viable Plan B. It’s not my own professional future I’m most worried about. It’s our democracy. There is no fix in sight, and I’m not optimistic about what comes next.