The good old days

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2003 12:37 pm

Thirty years ago, newsrooms across the country were filled with Joe Lambs, those occasionally hard-smoking, sometimes hard-drinking, always hard-working journalists who scoffed at 40-hour work weeks and cared not a whit for the finer points of â€œmanaging up.â€ They cussed and yelled, they prowled the streets and hung out in the cop shops. They disappeared and showed back up days later, sometimes with a story, sometimes not, but always with a better understanding of what was going on outside the newsroom.--(Lisa Grist Cunningham, Rockford (Ill.) Register Star, writing about Joe Lamb, the late Register Star editor)

When I started as a sportswriter 33 years ago, the newsroom was still sprinkled with gruff, unvarnished, crusty characters straight out of The Front Page. They hid bottles in brown bags in their desk drawers, accidentally set wastebaskets on fire with their cigarette ashes, hurled insults at cub reporters, swore a blue streak as deadline approached, dripped coffee and food down the front of their white shirts, and rushed to the closest tavern when their work day was done.-- (Cliff Christl, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)***Thirty years ago, there were a lot of stories about the rough-and-tumble journalists of the 1930s and 1940s, who invariably had bottles of liquor stored in their desks and who cursed up a storm. It was clichÃ© then, and itâ€™s clichÃ© now. Iâ€™ve known some world-class drunks in the newspaper business, but never saw anyone reach into a desk drawer for a snort. I would bet that there are just as many drunks in the business today as there were 30 years ago. Most people didnâ€™t â€œcuss and yellâ€; those who did were either ignored or told to shut their filthy mouthsâ€”much like today. People in the newsroom are as likely today to spill food on their shirts as they were in 1972.***[ February 17, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2003 5:26 pm

although i did see the occasional bottle of booze get pulled from a newsroom drawer much earlier in my so-called career, i haven't seen any decrease in on-the-job drunkenness. that's across nearly 25 years and five daily papers.at my first job, pot-in-the-parking lot was more obvious than the booze. little change in the loud rants and cussing either, except that with pagination we have a target we lacked in 1979.as a nonsmoker, i appreciate the cleaner air. but as bad as the smoke was at my first paper, it was no worse than the chewing tobacco; once, i nearly drank from a cup of coke that someone was using as a spittoon.
i do miss the occasional flaming wastebasket or drawer, though. taken as groups, the drinkers, chewers, ranters and smokers have been no better or worse at their jobs than others.

Bakelite · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:42 pm

I think the reality lies somewhere in between. The old-timers I've worked with tell stories about copy boys being sent out with drink orders and beer buckets being lowered by pully to the bar downstairs. I have no reason not to believe them.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:44 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Dean Betz:
I think the reality lies somewhere in between. The old-timers I've worked with tell stories about copy boys being sent out with drink orders and beer buckets being lowered by pully to the bar downstairs. I have no reason not to believe them.<hr></blockquote>Some of those stories were told with "irony." It's kind of like reminiscing about copy editors who went out to the parking lot on their lunch hours to get high. I'm sure it happened, but not that often.

Bakelite · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:52 pm

I'll buy that. A few drinks on the sly or a stealthy toke in the parking lot is not the same thing as a newsroom in a state of near-riot from shouting, abrasive, intoxicated "newsmen."Although I have to admit that sounds like a lot more fun than some newspapers' sterile, insurance-office ambience.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 2:25 pm

Not legend, truth:I worked with a guy (columnist and gifted science writer who won the Westinghouse Award) who used to go to the bar across the street a number of times a day. He had an arrangement with them under which they'd sell him beer in soda cups. And, incredibly, he would sit at his desk and drink it through a straw.He was dead from alcohol and chain-smoked handrolled cigarettes by the time he was in his early 50s. (Pete Zicari from this board knows the guy too, and can probably confirm all this)My point, if there is one, is that there still are plenty of characters in this business. Their legend just grows with time. I wonder about the stories that will be told about me in 10 years, if I am remembered.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 5:51 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Bumfketeer:
I wonder about the stories that will be told about me in 10 years, if I am remembered.<hr></blockquote>I'll always remember the drunken "jimmylegs" crack.

jmcg · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 10:27 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Dean Betz:
I'll buy that. A few drinks on the sly or a stealthy toke in the parking lot is not the same thing as a newsroom in a state of near-riot from shouting, abrasive, intoxicated "newsmen."Although I have to admit that sounds like a lot more fun than some newspapers' sterile, insurance-office ambience.<hr></blockquote>The point being, I take it, that if someone and his or her colleagues are going to get wasted at work, they should at least have the courtesy and common sense to keep quiet about it?

pzicari · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 10:46 pm

My ears were burning.
Myself, I have always suspected that the colorful drunken-newsman stories were a wee mite inflated, but I did know the guy bumf refers to. I started my first job, in Oneonta, NY, on the heels of a guy who was said to have poured a pot of glue into a Remington typewriter, then set it on fire. In those days I believed some amazing things and I am now skeptical of the story. The writer went on to AP in Albany, if he'd like to confirm it.
In my sheltered career I've known only six serious drinkers well enough to know what was in that cup. Of those, two were utterly incompetent and miserable to be around, and were none-too-gently shoved out; two others were pretty good company wet or dry and did what they did (cops, mainly) well, and survived to totter away under their own steam; and two others who didn't know any better than to come in with the crayture on their breaths after newspapers switched to insurance-agency rules sometime around 1980.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2003 11:35 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by jjmoney62:
I'll always remember the drunken "jimmylegs" crack.<hr></blockquote>Bullshit, JJ. I didn't start the drinking until I felt remorseful at having pissed off everyone with RLS.

Bakelite · **Posted:** Thu Feb 20, 2003 7:00 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by jmcg:
The point being, I take it, that if someone and his or her colleagues are going to get wasted at work, they should at least have the courtesy and common sense to keep quiet about it?<hr></blockquote>No. That completely misses the point.[ February 20, 2003: Message edited by: Dean Betz ]

KfitzR · **Posted:** Mon Mar 03, 2003 3:40 pm

Do let me add:
(From the mid 60s)
The financial editor who kept his gin at the back of the G drawer in the morgue, with his rye under R.
The legislative bureau chief - a great guy - who threw his underwood over the railing of the legislative rotunda down three floors to solid marble below after writing his final piece at the end of a long and testy session.
The policy of putting out wastebasket fires by jamming another wastebasket on top of them and suffocating them out.

Jackie · **Posted:** Mon Mar 03, 2003 9:16 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Wayne Countryman:
little change in the loud rants and cussing either, except that with pagination we have a target we lacked in 1979.<hr></blockquote>Testify, brother, testify!
I do appreciate that no matter how uptight the newsroom environment, at least in my experience, pagination rage is still a perfectly acceptable reason to let fly a string of profanity that might even make Sharon Osbourne blush.

jmcg · **Posted:** Tue Mar 04, 2003 8:07 pm

In defense of drunks, or at least in opposition
to the temperance crowd, consider the Newsweek blowjob on W. Bush this week. He says he'd never
have become president if he hadn't quit drinking.

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