Full Cycle
l am sitting at a battered old wooden desk cluttered with newspapers, letters to the editor, lined pads, handwritten notes from the staff, a tall glass holding pencils and pens, a dirty coffee cup. My Dartmouth green sports jacket hangs limply from the top of my wooden chair. I am dressed in chinos, dirty white bucks, and a long-sleeved sports shirt without tie. I am on the phone.
The time and place? Robinson Hall, Main Street, Hanover, New Hampshire home of the Daily Dartmouth, circa 1951.
And, Main Street, Westport, Connecticut home of The Westport News, circa 1995.
After a full career in newspaper and corporate journalism, I am trying to disprove Thomas Wolfe's thesis. I have gone "home" again.
They say some people don't have to decide what they do for a living. I was one of those fortunate people. My Dartmouth experience decided for me. It all started in 1947 when, as a pea-green freshman, I sat at the feet of Daily Dartmouth editor Tom Gerber '43, whom I viewed as the nearest thing to Joseph Pulitzer when it came to newspaper writing and editing. I remember Tom's daily critiques of the paper as if it were yesterday. He stood at an easel with the newspaper marked up in red crayon from front to back and slowly turned the pages as he spoke. He told the staff how each story should have been written, all the time smiling and not raising his voice. I took notes. It was my first experience in journalism much better than a classroom
I'll never forget my first story. It was about the football team. I had been able to get the coach to tell me something he had not said before in print, so I used the phrase, "Coach Tuss McLaughry revealed yesterday."
"ONLYGOD REVEALS!!!" Tom had written in large capital letters across the sports page. I learned a lot from Tom Gerber during that first year, but nothing will even come close to those lessons in news writing. Keep it simple. Use the word "said." Keep your paragraphs short. Make sure you include the five W's and the H in every story (who, what, where, when, why and how). And on and on.
For the next four years, I spent every spare moment in Robinson Hall. It had a certain print odor that I came to enjoy. To this day, when I return to Hanover, I stop into Robinson to breathe in that newspaper odor. It's lost a little of its tinge, probably because computers have replaced our old standard typewriters; or because smoking is no longer allowed (I couldn't begin writing a story at my typewriter without lighting a cigarette).
In between classes and waiting on tables at Lou's, the Indian Bowl, or the Hanover Inn's coffee shop, I virtually lived in Robinson Hall. I only went back to my dorm (or fraternity house in my sophomore through senior years) to sleep. And, once a monthit seemed like more I spent the entire night at the print shop off Main Street putting the paper to bed. It was the greatest experience I had ever had. The smell of hot type and ink. The paper rolling off the presses. The "miracle" of a newspaper, filled with news and sports stories, every day except Sunday. Eventually, I became sports editor with my own office and, along with editor Ted Laskin and managing editor Frank Smallwood, I helped mark up the paper in red with all those freshman heelers at our feet.
My love affair with newspapering started in those wonderful, seemingly carefree days. My years in Robinson Hall so imbued me with the idea of becoming a journalist that I went to Columbia's School of Journalism after Dartmouth, spent two years as a public-information officer in the Army during the Korean war, and spent more than ten years in newspapering, first as a night police reporter on The Washington Post and then as a reporter and columnist with the New York WorldTelegram & Sun.
I have taken a few turns in the road to practice other forms of journalism since then, but my deepdown hope was always to return to the newspaper work.
Like then, it still doesn't pay well. It's still rather basic. No frills. You do everything your self. No secretary. Nobody to answer your phone. Nobody to write letters, make copies, or send faxes. Nobody to make travel reservations, or appointments, or to send out for pizza and coffee. After 24 years traveling around the world and editing Think, an employee magazine in corporate porate communications with IBM, returning to newspaper work in 1992 came as quite a culture shock. My first instinct when I arrived back in the seemingly unstructured, sleepy, undisciplined newspaper environment on the second-floor walkup in a downtown Westport building was to try and change it. I tried to run the operation like a good IBM executive. Everybody come to work on time. Keep a neat, clean desk. Meet deadlines. Strive for excellence. No errors. Keep conversation to a minimum. No four-letter words. Always be optimistic. No drinking during office hours, including at lunch.
It was like I had landed on a different planet. Nobody had any idea what I was talking about. The staff was doing its best. What more did I want from them? After a few months, I abandoned my former management style, relaxed, and went with the flow. Then it came to me: I was back in Robinson Hall. But without die beer cans. That's about all that had changed. Maybe some of the reporters were older; but, then again, so was I. The planet on which I had landed was the one from which I had been launched.
A former award-winning reporter, press secretary to New York Mayor John Lindsay, and corporate communications executive, KLEIN is now editor of the Westport News in Connecticut. He is former chair of this magazine's Editorial Board.
