25 things that have changed about journalism during my quarter century as a hack

The brick phone! Great piece Tim. Yes, if only more journos would take an interest in how their story is playing with the audience – difficult with the workload now…

Tim,

Thank you for this. You have encapsulated better than I could and it was a nice trip down memory lane. When I left my first newspaper I asked if I could take the spike with me. I still have it somewhere.

I still use shorthand to this day and combined with the keyboard I can’t actually remember the last time I spent some time writing normally on paper.

Glad to see that you had the same experiences as myself with the snapper always dropping in those missed questions or saving your ass when you were just fresh.

I have to ask though. What was your first frontage headline? Do you remember it?

Brought back some good memories Tim. Agencies too were very different 25 and more years ago. Whilst there have been some huge advantages with changes and more fantastic tools to use, we seem to have lost some valuable inclusions along the way.

Agencies invested in training programs and their staff, mentors stretched, challenged, encouraged and often stopped you stuffing up and real career paths beyond 35 were possible.

Perhaps we have become overly self indulgent and obsessed about congratulating ourselves with numerous awards that other industries see as more than a little ridiculous. Being excessively busy and working towards burnout whilst sacrificing time with family and friends is worn as a badge of honour.

And sometimes we even lose sight of that our role is very simple. We aren’t creating world peace, feeding the hungry or curing diseases. We just sell more stuff and hopefully have some fun along the way.

Nice piece of fine nostalgic insight. That pic of you in the fireman’s helmet is hilarious.

There’s a lot I can relate to there. I started with a country newspaper in South Australia. I used a typewriter for the first six months before we moved to clunky green-screen word processors – that was in 1982. I recall attending rural shows, leaning against the car and balancing the typewriter on my knees so I could prepare the results for my paper and to phone through for the Advertiser. We had proof readers and paste-up artists back then as well.

Surely the biggest change in journalism in the last quarter of a century must be that there used to be jobs back then.

yep started in newspapers in 1981…in the advertising department. On the totem pole we were somewhere below the reel mounters on the presses. Senior management, editors, journos comps then everyone else was the way I remember it- and the comps would dispute journos being ahead of them. Everything was done by hand, layouts on paper, in pencil, so they could be changed at the editors whim, ad copy taken done over the phone, and recorded in a book. Cut out repeat ads, send them to the block room to dig out the old zinc, and then off to the comp room to be made up.
Despite the manual labour it was an intense but fun job, and you felt like you were part of something important. Still in it today, the sense of being part of something important may be diminished slightly, or maybe that’s just cynicism…

Outstanding piece.

Ah yes, the old days. Plus aggressive and abusive editors, luv’em.
In my first journo job the editor was the then legendary Red Harrison, former WW2 spitfire pilot or some such.
I proudly but tentatively slid my first ever story to him for his perusal and after a quick read he said, “This is shit.”
I slumped back across the newsroom thinking my career had ended before it even started. But Terry Conroy, the chief sub, aware of what was going on, mentored me as such by telling me I had the basis of a very good story but had ruined it by including smartarse “university paper” asides and comments.
All my supposed cleverness was excised and Conroy marched me back across the newsroom again to front Red.
He looked at me and then at Conroy and said to him, “I thought I said his story was shit.”
Conroy: “He’s rejigged it Red and I think it’s worth your time to look at it again.”
Red read it, and abruptly declared, “Okay, that’s the page 3 lead.”
He then looked at me and snarled, “Why did you waste my time by bringing me the shit version in the first place?”
Lesson learned.

Lovely piece Tim, remember that Nokia Brick and layers between writing and publication. Good to be reminded of the ridiculous hours too. And that nothing stays the same.

Very very interesting. I grew up near Aldershot and I remember the Aldershot News clearly. Sad to see that it’s gone. Thank you for the memories Tim.

AS a former journo for almost 30 years, I thought your piece was excellent Tim, on every point. And the last one is the saddest. That adrenalin of an exclusive, byline and front page is the one of best rushes you could get. I don’t sense it’s like that anymore for all the reasons you outlined.

Being a bit older than you (not much!) can I note a few things: while working for Variety in Sydney we had to courier our copy to NY every Thursday, with a telex as a back up for urgent stories (or by phone). The huge fax we received in 1985 replaced that. We had to have an hour long tutorial.

I ditched the typewriter in 1986 or so for my first laptop (Tandy) with 12KB memory and a screen about 25cms long and 10 wide. The first email then happened the next year via MCI and a modem you had to stick on the headset. Then came the first mobile in 1989 or 1990. It cost $1000.

And one thing you didn’t mention was the UTTER importance of your tatty contact book (I once had to get mine express mailed to me after leaving it in a NZ hotel) with its precious direct and home numbers.

Who would’ve thought back then a mobile phone is all a journalist needs now?

Had a similar experience as a copywriter.My first boss was an old-school guy who hid his kind heart under a barrage of insults and speculations about my low intellect while teaching me the countless errors of my ways. Talk about unqualified knucklehead learning on the job!

He was so ferocious (it seemed) that I would only leave copy on his desk when he went out and or to lunch. Then one day he said to me: ‘Look son, if you’re going to write this awful #@#&!!ing crap, at least be man enough to bring it to me in person!’

He is long gone now. I’m glad he’s no here to see what has become of our industry.

congratulations on what you’ve achieved with the burgeoning Mumbrella empire Tim. I think you’ve found your niche. To hell with A levels.

Oops! I meant ‘not here’.

I’m 69 (a young 69 I hasten to add) and it mirrors my recollections. A copy boy in Adelaide, a cadet journalist in SA on a regional newspaper, then the ABC and a year working in North Herts on a paper that’s since gone to newspaper heaven. The same experiences, dial phones, snappers in the UK but photographers and cameramen (one woman) in Australia, smoke filled subs’ room, a chief reporter who knew everything and, as a copy boy, delivering dim sims to the subs on a Saturday night only to see the leftovers pelted around the room and narrowly missing the beer bottles and flagons of claret…old reporters who wore fedora hats inside, men who knew every word in the dictionary, chiefs of staff who told you the difference between effect and affect, and an editor who had lunch outside every day and came back at the end of the day with a red face. All changed now, but it for the better I fear. Still. That’s progress. I think.

Could I also point out – the picturegram machine – for sending photos down a telephone line. Truly ‘mazing at the time. Kinda like a fax, with the black and white photo curled around a rotating drum. A thin stream of light detected the image and sent it to another similar machine in far away places. Didn’t think to call it photo sharing at the time…

But more importantly, did you ever go to the artificial ski slope in Aldershot? Great memories of broken fingers and sore heads there.

PS Enjoyable nostalgia – thanks.

Good yarn. Having once accidentally sat on one of those metal spikes (for spiked copy) when taking a break on the corner of a desk quite a few decades back, it’s one aspect of old-style journalism I was pleased to see vanish. Hard to get spiked with a computer (though we’re probably just being nuked instead).

Great piece Tim. I came up through an ad sales dept in the same period – I can still remember the nicotine stained ceilings, shite coffee and the utter disgust my former editors had for suggestions from overly cocky junior sales grunts! Brilliant days.

Great piece. I started almost 30 years ago too. Typewriters, newspaper office library, riding in cop cars for the night with no-one from PR in sight, not knowing who was in the editorial room because of the smoke from the cigarettes, Friday afternoons at the pub, great contact book, ducking copy thrown at my head by my first editor because it was “shit”, never being asked to take a photo because I was a reporter and just some of the best belly laughs of my life. Have just started my own publication – The Local – and it’s all fun and real journalism again. Back to basics. tlnews.com.au Journalist’s dream job!

If you want to know about how it used to be, try reading Mumbrella (or anything else for that matter) via the Web at 256kbps because its school holidays and the kids have used up your 200GB allowance and you still have three days to go in the month!

Tim, I loved your piece. It took me back 30 years, when I started in journalism. Haha, I remember the spike, the manual typewriter, the fax. I also remember the telex machine! And that’s not to mention the press releases which were posted. Yes, young PR people, snail mail. So it took days for a release to hit a journo’s desk. I also remember the LONG LONG lunches and smoke filled pubs we frequented after (and during) work.

Tim, your story made me sad and nostalgic. When I started with Fairfax, we had a sensational cadet training program and had some excellent journalists mentoring us. How that has changed… and not for the best. We also had some outstanding sub-editors. Ones who wouldn’t let a mistake-laden front cover hit the newsstands.

No I’m in PR (yep jumped to the so-called ‘dark side’ back in the 90s), and I agree wholeheartedly with all your comments about the rate of change in how we do things (technology is an amazing thing).

The last couple of years have seen enormous change in journalism and PR. I feel sorry for those young kids with stars in their eyes hoping to become a journo. Because it sure as hell aint so easy any more.

Thanks for taking us down memory lane. It reminded me of my first job, before Fairfax, at the National Constructor, owned by Sir Asher Joel, one of the gentleman publishers way back when. Sometimes I wish we were still in the good old times 😉

Still have a rather too vivid memory of a demonstrative journo slamming his arm down on the subs desk at Cumberland Newspapers – right through a letter spike.

Great Piece, I love the history of most things, this is especially interesting.

I remember a chief announcer complaining about the insertion of the word “tragic” in copy reporting a traffic accident. Seems funny these days, where traffic accidents are often treated like an opportunity to write and voice a dramatic monologue.

I started to tear up Tim.

I could hear the police scanner bleeping and cackling. I could see the white Holden sedan and driver waiting downstairs to speed us to the news event. I could hear the “sssshhhh” from the back seat as the photographer opened his first tinnie of Reschs for the day — at 6.15am. Most of all, I could SMELL the print from that monolithic building in Jones Street, Broadway. I loved that place.

Thank you for giving me a reason to remember.

You nailed it with 1, 2, 12 and 14. Fairfax wouldn’t grade you unless you had 100 words a minute shorthand. Your copy would go past 9 — NINE — sets of eyes before it was printed. You learnt from men (it was the 80s!) who had forgotten more about journalism than what you thought you would ever know.

I wanted to take a spike too when I left for advertising but was told I couldn’t. In the best traditions of the tabloid reporters who had gone before me, I did anyway.

Crikey, you’re memory is impressive. I had completely forgotten about the spikes but, now you mention it, I do recall having to clear the darn thing out every so often and agonising over what I dared to throw away. Even in these tech-friendly days, I still store old notebooks and, like you, use my shorthand regularly, much to the consternation of many who see it. A lovely look back to a different time and, yes, I also think the saddest loss is that ‘hold the front page’ moment and then seeing your byline there in print. Lovely piece Tim, thanks for the memories:)

Tim, as that Chief Reporter, you make me feel about 900 years old, but I am actually only six years older than you!

I look at the stickers on the windows every time I drive past Penmark House.

I would add that as a cub reporter, you were incredibly hard working – it was difficult to get you to stop – so you were always going to do well! And, although I haven’t seen her for four or five years, Shelagh Stephenson always mentioned you when I spoke to her.

Sadly today, the Aldershot News has one reporter and the Farnborough News has one. The circulation is about a fifth of what it was in ‘our day’….

Do any of you former or current journos in the UK remember or know of Home Counties Newspapers which included The Luton News, North Herts
Pictorial, Stevenage Pictorial etc? Wonder what happened to them. I spotted a photo of the old office in Hitchin (several hundred years old) and it’s now a dry cleaners.

My first job was at triweekly country paper and second at a suburban weekly both very similar to the one you describe in this article. I started in 1991, and everything you wrote brought back huge waves if nostalgia. I later moved on to metro Sundays, dailies and national dailies, and my current job as a “new media editor” for a news website, but there was nothing like the pure journalism of my first few jobs. Cranky subs, spikes, fax machines, phone interviews and all. No doubt much of what has changed is for the better, but I feel privileged to have been part of that final golden era for newspaper journalism. Thanks for sharing.

Having started in the same newsroom as Tim about two weeks earlier I can vouch for (almost) every word. No mention though of the boozy lunches that stretched for hours, although Tim’s work ethic, fuelled by Diet Coke if I recall, put the rest of us to shame.
You’re right Tim that so much has changed. I now work as comms manager at a UK hospital that serves the same people we used to write for at the Aldershot News and our patients’ magazine has a higher circulation that the newspaper group we used to write for. So much has been lost but I’m pretty optimistic about the future of journalism, albeit very different from the one we knew when we worked together at Penmark House. Happy days, great article!

Nice yarn!

Wow, you brought back a few memories there (and a few former colleagues in the comments!) I’d forgotten about those spikes too … and now I’m remembering spiking my hand on several occasions after getting over enthusiastic with it.
Great piece Tim, I really enjoyed the memories.

Tim – great piece – I knew you as one of the Two Tims of Campaign in the sandpit circa 2005, and clearly you have done better things!

A great look at the industry, that I only glimpsed through work experience slots in the early 90s. I don’t think most of those lessons have been passed down, and we are poorer for it today.

(but I don’t believe you learnt on a typewriter – even my fancy journalism college had greenscreen word processors (locoscript?) in 1991 😉

I started learning shorthand in the early 1990s – but never quite finished the course. I can write in shorthand, but never quite mastered the art of being able to read what I had written! However, it made such an impression on me that I still regularly write shorthand in my head… Since RSI has kicked in, I am much more of a fan of dictation software. A lifesaver!
Loved reading your article. Yours, dictated in Kampala, Uganda…

I remember that your story was ‘spiked’ if it wasn’t to be used – a term still used today.
As a cadet I could earn a grade (and pay) rise by achieving certain speeds in shorthand … I got fast, quick.
Those layers are such a loss, for the reader, and for young journos who don’t have as much access these days to the ‘wisdom of the elders’. Those elders who are left don’t have time to mentor.
You’ve told my/our story well. Thanks for the memories.

What a fab walk down memory lane! It mirrored my younger days as an spotty-faced trainee reporter on the now defunct Oldbury Weekly News just north of Birmingham in the UK in the early 1960s and the still thriving Express and Star until I moved to Oz in the late 80s. I was known as Dennis Poxon in those days but have now changed my name. Oh happy times. Still got printers ink in my blood, hence Caravanning News. No one to check my copy these days … It’s a one-man band. Mind you, I must admit to cringing sometimes when I read it after it’s been on the web for a few days. Again, thanks for the nostalgia.

I loved this story. Completely resonated with me. In appreciation of your writing Tim and with a curtsy to grand times. Thank you

I remember that separation between editorial and advertising really well. When I started as a journo editors could not be bullied into running stories just because a company advertised with them. One of the mags I wrote for had a motto of “Tell it like it is” and they did.
Then gradually it became tell it like it is (but don’t offend the advertisers)
Tell it like it is (but make sure that it is positive for the advertisers)
Until it because – Tell it like the advertisers want it to be

At that point, I realised that I had essentially become a PR who was just driving a crappier car than my agency colleagues.
🙁

I too learned the journalism trade by writing stories one par at a time on slips of paper on a manual typewriter.

Years later, I read a biography of Raymond Chandler — you know, the author of the Big Sleep and other noir crime novels.

The biographer commented on his ‘unique’ writing technique. To the biographer’s astonishment, Chandler wrote his novels one par at a time on slips of paper on a manual typewriter.

But of course Chandler wasn’t unique. Although he was an unemployed oil executive when he started writing, his early training was in newspapers.

He wrote his novels the same way he was taught to write news stories — and in my view it shows in the tightness of his prose.

I started out as a newsltd copy kid at holt street in 1995. No-one called my name, just yelled “copy” when they needed lunch picked up, coffee or anything else. Lazy journos. But on the late shift, the call “copy” would send me running to the composition room to pick up a bromide print of a page and then run it to the subs night desk for a check before it was sent to te presses. I loved it. Imbued me with a tactile sense of news.

I, too, am a few months shy of 44 and started my first newspaper gig on The Border Mail in 1992. I recall my first day interviewing Craig Mclaclan (former Neighbours actor and, ahem, pop star). On my second day I went to court with the grumpy court reporter and listened to a tail of woe from a local marijuana grower. I knew I’d found my niche. A little over a year later I was subbing on Fleet Street and getting 125 quid for a six hour shift. Do Fleet St subs even get that nowadays? Thanks for the piece. It brought back many memories.

Hi Tim

You have really struck a chord with this one, Tim ! At Cumberland, cadets were either ‘horse’ (copy carrier) or Fred. Job promotion was a phone call from the editor in chief’s secretary telling you to go his office , followed by : “Okay Fred, you start work at Penrith on Monday as reporter. Keep up the good work”. You earned your real name once you showed you could do the job. I remember attending a cadet lecture at News Ltd in town and told by then Daily Mirror editor tips on doing “death knocks” ,ie interviewing family of usually young people who had died in traffic accidents, a Mirror staple. His tip for early morning dks- knock on door, pick up milk bottles (remember them), and when the mum/dad answered the door, hand them the milk bottles and start talking as you walk in, to stop them slamming the door in your face !!!! Questionable ethics ( I came away wondering if I was in right game) …. but in those days, the Sun was breathing down your neck – every story counted.

I had two paper rounds as a kid in the UK, one morning and one evening. £15 per week. Rain or snow I would be out before and after school delivery the news. A Doberman chased me once and wanted to eat me. The police greeted me at the front door of a house, the owner was dead in the back garden. One morning in a street with steep driveways I had to crawl as the ice was so slippery. My Sunday morning round destroyed my shoulder, heavy broadsheets and supplements; the bike crossbar would carry my day glo orange paper bag. I grew up with papers, the ink stained my hands. The smell of the print was strangely nice. It will be a shame to see them go.

Delivering*

Fabulous piece, Tim.

I can best you in terms of years of service – by 16 – but most, if not all, of the points you make resonate with me.

Kudos to you.

Chris

PS Sid Bonkers points out that it is try to not try and…

PS Did you spot the unnecessary q at the end of my name?

Sid Bonkers put it there, I swear.

In Australia, editorial traditionally ended up with the castoff typewriters from all the other departments, which mean that with seniority came the claim to the best of a bad lot.
Sticky or missing keys and dodgy ribbon rollers were the lot of cadets.
And all that carbon papery, often so that our bosses could on-sell the fruits of our labours to radio and TV newsrooms and wire services!
Not so many years back, the workplace health and safety narks stormed through newsrooms removing the spikes.
And, god rot them, nobody in authority in editorial told them to piss off.
A sign of our diminishing role in age when even advertising shonks are allowed on the editorial floor.

Hi Tim,
I didn’t have the opportunity to work with you, but I did work at Penmark House a few years later with James. I was came into journalism right on the edge of the new media revolution and looked on as many of the ‘Old Guard’ sadly received their marching orders when a new editor came in with a new computer system and the Internet. I feel privileged to have learned many invaluable lessons from the staff there – including the infamous Glaswegian news editor, who nearly blew a gasket at me on deadline once – but that was my rite of passage, could I hack it? The the practices you speak of were very good ones. Let’s hope as digital pans out some of of those old traditions filter their way down.
Sara Mills (Aldershot News, circa 1998)

GLASWEGIAN? The nearest I get to Glasgow is when the missus bullies me into driving there for the Christmas shopping! Invernessian young man, the city in which I am now living in brooding retirement. Yes Tim, I WAS that grumpy old news ed’ and I remember your interview as though it were yesterday. Like most aspiring whiippersnappers who stepped through the doors of Penmark House – I seem to recall we ‘senior men’ referred to it as ‘the banana warehouse’ – you appeared nervous and uncertain. However, to borrow a line from Abba, we ‘took a chance on you’ and it worked out just fine. Hard-working, dedicated, keen – take your pick of all the popular buzzwords. I’m afraid that your adventures in the world of what I still refer to as ‘new technology’ are way above my head, but I am delighted with your success. The ‘old Aldershot News’? Ah yes, we knew the days.
Ian Barron (News Ed’ – Retired!)

Yes! So well written – and I remember so many of these. I had a short experience of typewriters, by the skin of my teeth. I did a BA in journalism, at the first university to teach digital publishing back in the day. But one of my first work experience placements was at the Manly Daily in Sydney, where I had to do the folio copies, complete with spike stick. So glad I got to experience that. Later, freelancing in Cairns, I got to phone in copy to the Courier/Sunday Mail and overseas … some less urgent magazine stories were sent by fax and post prior to email. Sometimes the best stories came from the casual wrap up chat at the end – you don’t get that with emails. And young journos (and subs) certainly don’t get the mentoring they got back in the day. I’m hoping that eventually all that was old will become new again – well, at least the best of it will. Some of those traditions need to stay alive. A few may best be left in the archives.

Fabulous read! I, too, have notched 25 years as a journo, though that includes dipping into PR/media releases/corporate work, but at the end of the day for me it’s all about writing and reporting from a different perspective … ok, PR’s more about one perspective.

a key point: “The single most significant change for journalists is the ability for anyone to get their story out” -Tim Burrowes.
“To be independent then, you’d need to be able to afford to print your own mag or newspaper. Starting on your own would probably mean putting your house on the line. Now, of course, anybody can start a blog, and if that’s too much trouble, share on Twitter.”

Love this piece, Tim, so many things I could identify with – and a great kicker in the unspoken reality that 25 years ago, no-one would have written a list-based article with the title you use!

I was taught (at uni) how to file on a manual typewriter para by para, but there were already computers at the Spencer St soviet by the time I started.

Unfortunately, the computers were clunky great things on lazy Susans, so one computer could be shared between two reporters who invariably both needed it at the same time.

You seem to have missed out on the era of pagers. Fond memories of being buzzed and dashing to the nearest phone box to call the office…

The instant feedback loop of the internet is a mixed blessing. The audience is not always most interested in the most important news of the day, to say the least.

It also seems to be increasingly acceptable to report speculation around something as newsworthy in the “quality” “press” viz. Kate’s rumoured pregancy.

I loved this too Tim, working in Wairoa, northern Hawkes Bay in the mid 1980s I used to have to drive my copy to the tiny one pilot plane each night at the edge of town airfield to be flown to Napier for processing, the morning police round was phoned to a copy typist Carol, such a great adventure you are not aware you are having til later. Horrid being admoished from a distance or summoned to the head office though. A long funeral drive in the company car.

“I DONT GIVE A SH*T HOW MUCH THEY SPEND….F*CK OFF BACK TO ADVERTISING YOU C*NT!!”

Old school editors, gotta love em.

I know if o said carbon copy to most reporters today I would have to explain what it meant 🙂

@Rae

Or they would nod sagely and talk about global warming 🙂