Newspaper Mystery

I am in the throes of writing a mystery novel set at a large metropolitan newspaper in the 1950s. Being in the throes means that I have about twenty files on the computer as well as a large binder filled with notes, maps, and scribbles on envelopes and napkins.

The work brings up all sorts of memories of my first job, working for what I am calling the Knoxville Times: Sounds, feelings, even the names of people I haven't thought of in years.

And since we are far removed in time and space from those days, I might as well confess: I am the one who misspelled either "Seize" or "Siege" in a banner headline on the front page. It was some years after I started at the paper and I was on the rim of the copy desk, where we edited copy and wrote headlines.

The headline was passed to the copy chief, who sat in the middle of the U-shaped desk. He put the half-sheet of paper in the pneumatic tube which went to the composing room, where it was set in print, locked into a lead page, cast into a cardboard mat, recast as a cylinder in lead, put on the presses and printed.

The news editor swore very loudly when he saw the paper. The presses were stopped. The page was remade, the earlier copies of the newspaper scrapped, and all this was on overtime at regular union wages. And then the hunt began for who was at fault. Meanwhile, the man who sat next to me on the copy desk had found the original paper with the headline and had buried it in his desk drawer.

Heads would have rolled, of course, except that nobody seemed to know anything about who was really responsible for the misspelled headline. There were five or six of us on the copy desk; the news editor and the managing editor had seen the proofs and had not noticed the mistake.

I confess: Not only did I write that headline, but just now I had to look up the spelling of "Seize" because "I before E except after C" is still stuck in my head.