No. 195: Ink, Inc.

The Vindicator, Youngstown, Ohio. By Tom Wills, April 2013, from a 1968 photograph.

"Working in Gotham City."

Big, wide, marble steps. Giant steps.

That’s what I remember most about the first time I walked into this building.

Smoky and cold. Echo-y.

It was 1983. The Vindicator building was 52 years old, I was 22.  The newsroom was on the second floor, behind big doors.  It had big windows.

Hello.  Tryout, two internships, then a real job.

Working in Gotham City.

Youngstown, after the bottom fell out.

Concrete and steel on Vindicator Square.

My anniversary here is April Fools Day.

I share the date with the publisher, Betty Jagnow, who observes 65 years at the paper.

This picture is for her.  A card and a cake just didn’t seem enough.

The inscription on the back reads: "Congratulations on 65 years from your newsroom managers."

Sixty-five years and still going, still coming in early, and known to take the stairs.  

You have to respect that.

This, too, will last.

"There have been many cakes."

Her husband -- now retired -- hired me,  and I have tried to be true blue.

The place has longevity.  
Rather, it did for many decades.

All things change with time, however.

The newsroom is now in another building, just across the street.  The steps are smaller, more narrow -- and there are more of them.  There are few windows.

Lately the newsroom is populated by younger people, the new 22-year-olds, who stay for a year or so and are gone.  We train them and have cakes for ‘em when they go. There have been many cakes.

A university uses us for its classroom.  We print the senior projects, the final exams.

We have a radio station inside of a newspaper, broadcasting on the internet.

Mind = blown.

Vindicator Square and Boardman Street

"It took me 51 years to outgrow them."

The place, then, is a mix of long-timers and transients.

A few of us, myself included, are hanging tough here as the newspaper industry struggles nationwide.

In the news biz, “30” means “finish.”

I had been telling everyone, “30 years and out.”

But it's not going to happen: I’m too young, have too much of what my job helps pay for (house, cars, tuitions, loans), and I'm too in need of health care to quit.  

Plus, I know the place needs me.

It needs the other “senior staffers” too, to keep the kids grounded and out of lawsuits. It needs us to teach patience and reasoning.

Some disagree with me here, and that doesn’t bother me anymore.  It took me 51 years to outgrow them.

 

Gotham.

 "The future of journalism looks crummy."

I realize, however, that I am now an echo of the past.

Newspapers, and this place in particular, keep a hold on those of us who remember better times.

Those of us who remember our youth here or out in the field. 

Oh, how we chased stories up those stairs, and many other steps. I used to run like hell, taking two at a time.

Mostly nowadays it’s a different kind of hurry, phoning it in.

We’re giving the news away for free, first whenever possible, on your phone, pad and screen.  

Who wants to pay for it now?

Everyone’s tripping over themselves to gain a lousy minute.

I think it’s a little scary, and sometimes sloppy.

I always tell the kids to be careful, just like a parent.

But the real truth is, they scare the hell out of me.
The future of journalism looks crummy.

I returned to our newspaper’s morgue the two photographs that I used to create this drawing.

“Morgue” is a print journalist’s word for “library,” where we keep old papers and pictures, in boxes and binders and folders. 
The morgue is where everything is turning yellow and brittle.

Nowadays, everything is archived online.

Click this, click that.

I think we lose more stuff now than ever.   

 

"I like machinery but learned to tolerate technology."

I breathe deeply the smell of the morgue. I love old things.
I embrace words. I dig ink and paper.
I like machinery but learned to tolerate technology.

What I'm getting at is, work is not the same place. And it never will be.
I'm not in the same place, either. I think about leaving, more than ever.
That might be harder for me than it sounds: Some of my closest friends are on that second floor. Journalists are the smartest people I know.

There used to be dozens of them here.  Now there are about two dozen, on a very good day.

When I do go – whether on my own, or having been shown the door -- I will be able to look back at the old building, and all of the other concrete and steel on Vindicator Square.

My conscience will be clear.  It won't be my fault.
Until then, I'll take the stairs, usually one at a time. Sometimes I will do two, but not because I'm in a hurry.
I have already had a long run.