I discovered that the Knoxville News-Sentinel, the newspaper
that formed the model for the fictional Knoxville Times of my novel, Byline,
had an alumni page on Facebook. Although I didn’t recognize any of the member
names, I asked to join the closed group and was accepted. I posted an image of
my American Newspaper Guild card on the site.
Scrolling through the posts, I found dozens of pictures of
co-workers from the mid 1950s and early 1960s, pictures of newspaper people
whose descriptions and traits I had borrowed for my book. Here was the
sweet-natured cartoonist. There was the scary news editor. Here was the smiling
face of the morgue—now called the library—manager.
So many of my colleagues stayed on after I left, first for
Spokane, Washington, then to Greece, New York, San Francisco.
It was a sobering discovery to learn that almost all of them
have died. The one live person I knew was a red-haired photographer who was
only a couple of years older than I, and he proved to be the website’s
administrator. I remembered his strolling out of the teletype room, waving a
piece of paper and saying, irreverently, “Pope’s pooped” when Pius XII expired.
This fellow drove me, in 1963, to get an interview with
someone involved in a Congressional inquiry. She was visiting relatives at
Christmas, and I faked my way into her house by carrying wrapped gifts, as if I
were a family friend. The story was picked up by the wire services, Newsweek
and Time magazine, with my name. It was my Brenda Starr moment...such a big
deal at the time, and such a forgettable deal 50 years later. The photographer
didn’t even remember me.
On the alumni website, I saw pictures of the old copy desk,
the newsroom, the composing room, the pressmen with their newspaper hats. I saw
pictures of the presses being moved with heavy equipment when they became
obsolete. I saw the typewriters go and the computers come in, saw copy boys
become writers and editors, marry, have children, retire. Saw the assimilation
of the rival newspaper, the move to a new campus, the launching of an on-line
edition.
The old News-Sentinel had four editions every day, back in
the day. When a big story broke—the death of the Pope and Kennedy’s
assassination both happened when I was on the copy desk—an Extra would be put
out. The newsboys on the street really would shout “Extra, extra, read all
about it,” just like in the movies. The paper’s circulation was huge, among the
top one hundred nationally.
I can only assume that the newspaper, like all newspapers,
has downsized. One alumnus, responding to a photo of the old pressmen in their
newspaper hats, remarked that the broadsheet newspapers are now too narrow to
make those hats...but then there are no ink-spattered pressmen either.
When I wrote my novel, I drew a map of the old newsroom and
made a list of all the editorial employees, pretty surprised that I remembered
those things when I can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday. I am glad I
wrote my novel, trying to describe how it was in the glory days of newspapers.
But I found all the information on the alumni page disquieting. I was left with
mixed emotions, as if I had experienced some odd sort of time travel, more than
fifty years of the road not taken.
(The novel Byline is available on Amazon.com)
