Old school journalism

Want to freak out a newsroom full of college journalists?

Sit them down at manual typewriters and ask them to plunk “2011” onto a piece of paper.

They’ll only make it halfway.

“Mine’s broken!” one reporter at Florida Atlantic University yelled a couple of Saturdays ago, when we launched the inaugural ALL ON PAPER [1] project. “There’s no number 1 key.”

Via spin the cat [2], “HOW TO BUILD A NEWSROOM TIME MACHINE « journoterrorist [3]”

I don't know whether to be amused or horrified.

I used to write a column [4] for the FAU (Florida Atlantic University) [5] newspaper The Atlantic Sun [6] (now The University Press [7]) and I certainly remember walking into the weekly meetings on Wednesdays and seeing the layouts for the current issue out on the tables. I would then use an X-Acto™ knife to cut out my column (since they were going to toss the layouts) as a momento.

[If you look closely, you can make out the guide lines] [8] [9]

I wrote most of my columns on my TRS (Tandy/Radio Shack)-80 Color Computer [10] but there were times when Wednesdays came around and I hadn't even started my column, much less finish, so on those rare occations, I would grab my manual portable typewriter (a gift from my paternal grandfather, who wanted me to learn how to type if I was going to become a programmer) and literally bang out my column at school.

[Not only was the keyboard bad, but the screen could only fit 16 lines of 32 uppercase-only characters. Hard to say which was worse—this computer, or the manual typerwriter] [11] [12] In fact, the column pictured above was one such column banged out on a manual typewriter, written in the cafeteria as I was eating lunch with a few friends. And on my manual typewriter, not only was there no “1” character, there wasn't a “0” character either!

I also found it amazing that the students had to use a make-shift dark room. What? Is there no dark room at FAU (Florida Atlantic University) anymore? I distinctly remember there being one, back when I took photography.

[This is what they call a “negative”] [13]

Yes, I know all about removing 35mm film from the canister and loading it onto a reel in total darkness, using obnoxious chemicals to develop the film, and once rinsed, letting the film dry overnight, then coming in the next day, cutting the film into strips of five pictures each, mounting the strips into a protective sheet, making the proof sheet, picking which photos (10 out of 72) to print, placing the film into the projector, exposing the photographic paper and using different obnoxious chemicals to develop the picture (and as much as I like my 35mm camera, I do not miss the expense of buying film nor the expense of having it developed).

[This hasn't seen much use in the past fifteen years] [14] [“It is a good day to jump out of a perfectly good airplane!”—Ken Maier] [15]

So I find it odd that they didn't bother to ask the Art department if they could use the dark room.

That is, if the dark room still exists.

[1] http://journoterrorist.com/2011/07/26/paperball/

[2] http://spinthecat.blogspot.com/2011/08/newsroom-time-machine.html

[3] http://journoterrorist.com/2011/08/02/paperball2/#

[4] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/murphy/

[5] http://www.fau.edu/

[6] http://universitypressonline.com/atlanticsunthrowback.html

[7] http://www.upressonline.com/

[8] /boston/2011/08/03/thumb-column.jpg

[9] /boston/2011/08/03/column.jpg