[Redrum]

It was the Star-News, not the News-News but nowadays it has been bought and sold and absorbed and combined so many times who knows how much is left?  But, a great place to start in the news biz.  Very old-movie newsroomish.  Editors and writers with bottles of whiskey tucked away in their file drawers.  Guys smoking on the job at the copy and editorial desks.  Stories phoned in and dictated to someone typing on a manual typewriter.  And the best part:  vacuum tubes (thwipp!) for sending copy, messages and proofs between editorial and composing on different floors.  All this, thanks to Ben Ridder (of the Knight-Ridder chain) who cared more about racing horses than newspapering.  So the second floor was where his office was and Santa Anita Race Track, a 15 min drive east, was where his heart/ and he was. When Ben croaked, so did Knight Ridder's benevolent tolerance of this movie set operation  and change became inevitable.  But we saw the first computer typesetting come in.

Before I went off to see the world I got to: tangle with head sports writer for his shameless felating of the Ohio St. Buckeyes before the 1971 Rose Bowl.  I got crossways with the typographers union and they staged a work stoppage. Very old school.  And while putting the paper to bed early on morning, for the first and only time I got to say "Stop the presses!!" and we got the story of the Palestinian attack on the Munich Olympics on the front page.  It was more fun than I've had in any job since.  What's weird is I don't remember John Freed. Perhaps he came after I left.  Or, I was drunk most of the time.  But if he was there, I hope he had as much fun as I had.

[Redrum]

It was the Star-News, not the News-News but nowadays it has been bought and sold and absorbed and combined so many times who knows how much is left?  But, a great place to start in the news biz.  Very old-movie newsroomish.  Editors and writers with bottles of whiskey tucked away in their file drawers.  Guys smoking on the job at the copy and editorial desks.  Stories phoned in and dictated to someone typing on a manual typewriter.  And the best part:  vacuum tubes (thwipp!) for sending copy, messages and proofs between editorial and composing on different floors.  All this, thanks to Ben Ridder (of the Knight-Ridder chain) who cared more about racing horses than newspapering.  So the second floor was where his office was and Santa Anita Race Track, a 15 min drive east, was where his heart/ and he was. When Ben croaked, so did Knight Ridder's benevolent tolerance of this movie set operation  and change became inevitable.  But we saw the first computer typesetting come in.

Before I went off to see the world I got to: tangle with head sports writer for his shameless felating of the Ohio St. Buckeyes before the 1971 Rose Bowl.  I got crossways with the typographers union and they staged a work stoppage. Very old school.  And while putting the paper to bed early on morning, for the first and only time I got to say "Stop the presses!!" and we got the story of the Palestinian attack on the Munich Olympics on the front page.  It was more fun than I've had in any job since.  What's weird is I don't remember John Freed. Perhaps he came after I left.  Or, I was drunk most of the time.  But if he was there, I hope he had as much fun as I had.