Section 1: Q: We're talking to Tom Kollings. Can you
give me the date, your name and the address
as to where we're conducting this interview?
A: Tom Kollings, and I don't know the date.
Q: June 19, 1999.
A: June 19, 1999. In Des Moines, Iowa, at my
home. 2804 43rd Street in Des Moines, Iowa.
Q: Okay Tom, I know that we talked a little
bit about before we started the tape here,
about the fact that you got into stereotype
department of the Des Moines Register based
on the work that your father was doing. That
he helped get you there.
A: That's correct.
Q: Maybe you could tell that story, what was
it?
A: Well, I graduated from high school, Des
Moines Roosevelt in 1950. Dad wanted me to go
into the trade and it sounded like a pretty
good thing, so he got me in the stereotype
department and that's where I started in
1950. Now he'd been in the stereotype
department since 1928. He passed away in 1958
so I worked as an apprentice. And an
apprentice at that time was six years. So I
got two years off when I went into the
service in 1950-1951. Spent 21 months. I
think 15 months down in Orlando, Florida, and
the other in Macon, Georgia. I started, I
came back and went right back into the trade
and the Register and the union granted me the
time that I spent in the service toward my
apprenticeship. A six-year apprenticeship.
Q: This was nearly 50 years ago. What is it
that someone in the stereotype department
would do?
A: Well the stereotype department essentially
made the plates that went on the press. And
the press at that time was a letterpress type
of operation, which means it takes, the paper
goes through and over these plates and the
plates are indented so that only the printed
surface is the raised surface. Then you just
put on those plates.
Q: The plates are cylindrical.
A: They are cylindrical and when they made a
page, what they did was the composing room
set it up in a linotype operation, set each,
all the lines into what they called a chase,
which held everything together on page size.
They wheeled it into us and we made a
reproduction of it, I think which is probably
what stereotype means, reproduction. Made a
reproduction on a matrix, a moist matrix,
took that matrix and dried it out, trimmed it
to size, put it in the machine that had about
three tons of molten lead and poured it on
top of that. And the machine turned the plate
around, cut off the excess. We picked the
plate up and put it on another machine where
it went through and cooled it off and shaved
off the underside. You need two plates for
each page because one goes on top of the
cylinder and one goes under the cylinder. So
as it revolves, you get an impression. And at
that time the presses would run, they could
run, they were programmed to run about 60,000
pages, or papers, an hour. In the good old
days, in the 1950s and 1940s, we had a
circulation of about 500,000, I think it was
at that time. Now the circulation has dropped
down to about 260,000 or 280,000. But since
we had such a large circulation, they would
run up on Saturday night for the Sunday
paper, we would have to make eight of those
plates because we would run four presses. Two
for each press, and when you're looking at
four presses, you're looking at 60,000 an
hour for each press, you're looking at, what,
4,000 page, papers, a minute. So the deadline
was essential because if you were five
minutes behind, you were 20,000 papers behind
in the pressroom.
Q: So ...labor intensive work...
A: The essential part of it was that in the
newspaper business, it wasn't like a can
factory. It would start out on a slow basis
and build up to a point to where everybody
was really, really pushing it to get it in on
time and then it would drop off again and
start up for the next edition. So it was kind
of an up and down work program.
Q: How many people were working all at once
at that time?
A: In our department?
Q: Yes.
A: Well see, our department wasn't that
large. We had day side and night side, and I
suppose we have fifteen or twenty on each
side. And of course there was more involved
than just making those plates, but
essentially that's what it amounted to.
Q: What were the different duties that people
had? Were they different?
A: Well there would be two people that would
mold the page. You'd have one person that
would reinforce the depths on the matrix
after it was semi-dried. Then we would dry
it out again. Then you would have four people
on each machine. We had essentially two
machines, two or three machines that cast
this. And that was the major part of that.
And then we had what we called a "job room"
where we would make the foundation for zinc
cuts. The pictures were made into zinc that
were about .065 thick and they would have to
be put on lead base and we would make the
lead base for all the art that went on a
page. The page itself, everything was at a
.002-.003 tolerance when you molded it. So
the page itself, all the lead type was .918
high.
Q: The number again?
A: .918. So you would make type-pie that was
.918 and everything that was molded had to be
exact within .002-.003 of that. Otherwise it
wouldn't print. And so then we would make the
plates and send them down to the pressroom.
We had a, not at first, but later on we had a
master pot with about 20 tons of metal. Each
machine had about 2 or 3 tons of molten metal
in it for these plates to come out of. And
then it would be reclaimed down in the
basement and this would be pumped up to these
machines from the basement. We were on the
third floor so you are pumping all the way
from the basement to the third floor with
this molten lead.
Q: Reclaimed meaning they were being melted
down again?
A: When you get done with them, you throw it
back into the pot and re-melt it. So there
wasn't any waste. When I started, when they
eliminated the stereotype department, they
eliminated all the linotype machines and they
eliminated the hot metal department. They
went to a plate that was called a dialitho
plate that was made in Salt Lake City, Utah.
It was a tin plate, like tin, flexible tin,
and you snapped it on the presses downstairs
instead of locking them on like those big
plates. They had saddles on these presses so
that you locked them right on the saddles and
they would print from that. The images were
photographed onto this plate through the
chemical solutions they had. Only the ink
would stick to the areas that you wanted
printed. --
Section 2: Q: What was the pay?
A: The pay back in 1950 for a journeyman was
$100 a week. In 1950, that was really good
pay.
Q: That was good.
A: And I tell you that when my dad started,
he said, "Tom, what we have, it's all union."
Stereotype, pressroom, all the production
department was strong union, but they were
not militant union. They were just good
strong union members that believed in what
they did and my dad always told me, "You do a
day's work for a day's pay." A good day's
work for a good day's pay. No more, no less.
Q: And what do you mean by a strong union but
not militant?
A: A strong union is when we negotiated
something, we expected the company to stand
up to their contracts. And we expected, when
we negotiated something, and it was in the
contract, we stood up for what they wanted.
We had no strikes. Everything was negotiated.
And the negotiations in the earlier days when
I was negotiating for the union, it was on
maybe a half a dozen pages, maybe
fifteen-twenty pages or less, the whole
contract for the period. And what you would
have is you would have a production manager,
a lawyer on their team and business manager,
that's three, and we would have four or five
from the union. And we'd sit down and our
side, I always figured we were always at a
big disadvantage because we didn't deal in
figures and all they had to do was pull a
file out and say what the cost of living
raise was. So everything was up there. The
only thing we dealt on was sincerity. And I
remember one time when we were negotiating a
contract and we were arguing over a penny. We
progressed to a point where we in a penny and
they kept saying, "You know, the well is dry.
There's nothing more." And I said, "Listen, I
know you are making a lot of money. I don't
know how much money, but you are showing a
lot of profit. And all we want is a part of
that profit." And I remember distinctly the
business manager saying, "We're making money,
but you know, you wouldn't want to work for a
company that was in the red." And you know
what do you come back with that. You know,
the idea is all we want is our fair share.
And another time when I got fairly excited,
you know, the lawyer said, "Tom, what you do
if you don't make a point, you get loud. If
you don't have a point solid, then you start
yelling." And that calmed me down. But it was
all very fair, even and it wasn't like it is
today.
Q: As for the issue about the penny, it
sounds to me like you wanted this but they
weren't willing to give it up. Did you feel
that you were treated fairly?
A: What they wanted to know is if we really
knew what we needed and what was fair. And
I'm sure they had it all set out in their
minds what they'd given us before the
negotiation. Even start at how much they were
going to give us, but it was up to us to get
to that point.
Q: What did the union need more of back then
as far as you're concerned to get what you
needed, to get what you wanted?
A: A lot of it had to do too with the
operation between and jurisdiction things. In
other words, ours would start in one spot and
the printers would start in another spot. And
nobody crossed over in the jurisdictional end
of it. And we had such things as on a holiday
we would only work; if we had to work a
holiday, it was time and a half plus a day's
pay. And you only worked, it was for the
hours actually worked. And we would only
work, according to our contract, what we
wanted was that we would only work on work
that was essential for that edition. In other
words, the four-color that was going
somewhere down the line we would not go in
and do that. And that was, I remember that
came up as an issue and to tell you about
exactly how the operation was, we had a
four-color, a Pepsi four-color. And this was
way back; it's funny how you can remember
this. But the foreman came over, I was a shop
steward, and he said, "I want somebody to
work on that four-color." And I said, "You
can't do that because that isn't part of the
edition. This is a holiday." And he said, "I
can do what I want. I'm the foreman." I said,
"Call our business manager at home and ask
him because it's in the contract that we
don't do that." And he called and from what I
understand he said, "Yes, I remember that.
Don't have those guys work on it." And it
wasn't anything about looking it up; he
remembered it and he took it from there.
I was very impressed. And this was everything
on a handshake. I mean, there wasn't any
going to war over anything. People trusted
one another back then. Now you look at the
contracts in the later years. You would fight
over a meaning of a word and the contracts
would be 30-40 pages long. Of course, as
things progressed in automation, why there
was a loss of people and the union, of
course, went down. Actually, during our time,
you could almost say you didn't need a union
because the people that ran the Register were
so extremely fair. And I have to say this,
the people at the Register, whether I was in
production or the newsroom, treated me like a
million dollars and they treated the people
in the older days like a million dollars. And
everybody had a lot of respect and we had a
lot of pride in our work as craftsman. As you
went back, in the older days, we had people
in our department who were 80 years old. I
mean if they didn't want to retire, they
didn't have to. They weren't pushed out and
they just went on. It was extremely a
trustworthy place to work. But we were owned
by a family then. We weren't owned by a
corporation like you have now. And back then,
if you remember, television didn't start
until 1950. And when television came in and
then you had another market that cut into our
circulation and we had to fight and scrap for
it. We were the only paper in the state of
Iowa, really, but when television came
in...so it would be fair for me to say that
the competition really cut into our
circulation starting in the late 50s.
Q: Competition with other media.
A: From other media. Exactly.
Q: Do you remember the name of the business
manager who you dealt with, Tom?
A: Harry Prugh.
Q: Harry Prugh.
A: Harry Prugh. That was the business manager
and Bill Doriss was the mechanical
superintendent and Hedo Zacherle was the
lawyer. Vincent Starzinger was the lawyer
before Zacherle was. Those lawyers were
extremely fair to people.
Q: The Register ones.
A: I mean they talked at our level; they
didn't talk down to us. --
Section 3: Q: You talked about the difference between a
corporation and a family. Actually Cowles was
a corporation.
A: Yes, but it was kind of a family. I mean,
my dad negotiated with Gardner Cowles when he
was on the negotiating team with the union. I
negotiated with his kin. Charles Edward came
in later on. Of course, we went through the
business manager, but the Cowles people owned
it and they ran it. And they ran it like a
family operation. I understand, Brian, I
could be wrong on this, but I understand that
when Gannett took over and later, that they
expected a 29% profit. This is a rumor that I
heard and back then I heard and understood
that the Cowles were satisfied with a 9%
profit. So where do you make it up? You know,
you make it up in personnel.
Q: What do you think about that, the fact
that they were cutting personnel?
A: Well, I think it was rotten. You're losing
the best, the foundation of the newsroom -
the good reporters and people that they
retired. Early retirement. What is early
retirement? That is to kind of release the
people, the older people that have built up
and maintained the salary over and above what
they had to pay maybe for two or three
interns. And so they lost those people and
the ones that didn't retire eventually wished
they did. And they were kind of...the
pressure was there that they didn't want to
work there anymore after a year or two when
they didn't retire. And I think, oh I can't
think of the man that used to be in the
editorial department, that stuck around. And
he quit at 65 and went up to Ames [IA] and
works for Michael Gartner up there. I can't
think of his name now.
Q: Oh, it's not Flansburg, is it?
A: Yes, James Flansburg. He didn't take early
retirement, but when he hit 65 he took it. He
got fed up.
Q: You make a point about it being rotten
that they cut all these personnel, but if you
look at it from a businessman's point of
view, they got to please the shareholders.
A: Yes, that's right. And that's the whole
difference right there. I'm not saying
it's... well, back in the old days, nobody
got fired. And when I worked in the
stereotype department, you got to remember
now, this is a whole different operation and
I'll tell you the difference. A lot of
difference is between...the departments ran
themselves an awful lot. Back in the old
days, journalists from the newsroom, down in
the advertising department through the
pressroom, were all heavy drinkers. I mean
they had bottles in the drawers up in the
newsroom. We had heavy drinkers, a couple of
them alcoholics, and in the stereotype
department they had bottles stashed away.
Everybody smoked back in those days. You go
up in the newsroom in the early days, well,
even when I went up in the newsroom, there
was smoking. The room was full of smoke.
Everybody had a cigarette and an ashtray.
There was burns all over the desk. And the
desks upstairs were in a circular area where
you had key man who would either be the
telegraph editor and what we called when I
went up there was the slot person. He would
have all the copy from the editors around
him. There would be spikes the copy was stuck
on top of. And you had ashtrays around,
everybody was smoking. And the thing about it
is, whether it was in our department, a
person, you had people down there that could
work better and do more work drunk than a lot
of them could sober. And the same thing in
the newsroom. The persons in the newsroom,
Brian, and I still think they got quality
people, they impressed me when I went up
there as just outstanding as far as
intelligence was concerned, just outstanding.
I mean there wasn't anybody up there...I mean
we had people that had been teachers in high
school. Master's degrees. They could make
twice the money on the outside but they had
this in their blood. And back in the old
days, by the way, when we had all this molten
metal and ink, you had a particular smell in
the whole plant. You could smell the
newsprint. You could smell the ink. It
smelled like a newspaper. Now it smells like
can factory. (laughs) I hate to say that.
But you are right. You are looking at taking
care of shareholders and what they have to
satisfy. Newsprint has gone up. The cost of
paper has gone up and the cost of operations
has gone up. They've taken a harder line on
employees. When I went up in the newsroom as
a make-up editor, we didn't have any, what do
you call it, we didn't have to fill out any
forms or anything for salary reviews. There
were no salary reviews back then. The editors
knew what you were doing and the managing
editor would take care of that. Now they have
the salary reviews. You have to write out
something and then they write something back
and you go in and negotiate and they tell you
what you are going to get. And even in the
production, I think they do that now. The
unions are nothing anymore.
I guess I wanted to say back then that people
were treated so fair. Everybody was union
except the newsroom and they couldn't get a
union in the newsroom because there was no
real need for a militant organization. I mean
they were treated fair enough they didn't
need a union. And if a company doesn't really
need, the people don't need a union to
protect them; it's pretty hard to sell to
individuals that they need to be a part of
the union. Like Schaefer Pen. Schaefer Pen
could never get a union in because they
treated their people so well there was no
need for a union. --
Section 4: Q: You said your people didn't need a union
because you were treated so fair. Why was a
union in place?
A: It was just something that, I guess, came
along with the introduction of the
newspapers. They were unionized way back
before my dad got there. And it was a good
thing in a lot of respects. You know, a
person could come in, you had a card saying
he was a trained stereotyper, he could walk
into the right department and they would put
him on the next day. And we had a lot of what
they call "travelers" come through who would
a couple of days and then leave. And there
always seemed to be enough work. Also during,
talking about being fair, during the days of
the depression my dad said that the
individuals in the department went on a
three-day week voluntarily so there wouldn't
be any layoffs. The company wouldn't have to
lay off anybody. Can you imagine that
happening now, you know? It just doesn't work
that way.
Am I rattling on too much, Brian?
Q: No, this is great. You were also show
steward of the union and president of the
union. Can you talk about some of the issues,
the union demands, during those times? You
said they were few and far between but
obviously you had them.
A: Of course, wages was always one item and
working conditions probably was another. And
vacations. I think when I first went up there
we had a week's vacation and eventually ended
up with five week's vacation. Holiday's was
another thing.
Q: Five weeks per year?
A: Yes. That's what it was when I left up
there. What would happen is kind of funny.
The unions would negotiate and then when we
got done negotiating, the editorial, the
newsroom would get just a little more than we
got because they based their salaries on what
the unions got. And so, you know, what did
they need a union for? But we went in and
negotiated from a couple of paid holidays to
eventually seven paid holidays. We negotiated
to the point of having a 40-hour week to a
37-1/2 -hour week. Conditions that were of
that nature. I don't remember. And the
work...what we should do. "Manning" was
always another, "manning." We had what they
call "manning." You had to have so many
people on a machine. And that was based on
our bylaws, international. All over the
country we had on these automatics that made
these plates, we had to four men that had to
be on those machines. That was negotiated in.
I can't think of anything really outstanding
and like I say there was other portions of
the contract that dealt with our union as
opposed to another union and where our
jurisdiction ended and where theirs started.
Q: What was the name of the union?
A: Stereotypers Local #40.
Q: How many in a local?
A: There was about 40. About evenly split
between days and nights, I believe. Now
Brian, it has been 50 years.
Q: Were you all on the same page or were
there divisions within the group?
A: Everybody was paid the same, except for
the assistant foreman and the foreman.
Q: I mean were there differing opinions about
what you should be asking for within the
group or were you all pretty much agreed on
what you needed to ask?
A: They only difference between pay, are you
talking about pay...?
Q: Well, I'm talking about the membership,
were they agreed, was everybody talking
about...?
A: Oh yes, we would negotiate a contract and
take it back to the union and then vote on
these issues. In our department there was no
breakdown of different duties within the
union. Everybody was supposed to be competent
at everything so that the foreman could move
you around from one spot to the other without
any problems. Also the pay was all standard
except for differential between the day side
and the night side. The night side made just
a few bucks more a shift than we did.
Q: How about turnover? Was there much
turnover there?
A: No, it was just unbelievable. Like I said,
we had people there that were 80 years old.
There was no turnover at all. And there was
traditionally a turnover up in the newsroom.
I would say back in the olden days, you can
probably get this from other editors, that
these people, we had such a sound newsroom
that those people could leave and go to the
New York Times and Wall Street Journal or any
place and almost walk on without any
problems. It was a tremendous training ground
for any young person that wanted to, if they
wanted to advance to a larger newspaper, a
bigger size, maybe more money.
Q: Were people happy in the department?
A: Oh sure. I mean there was always, like I
said earlier, as far as I'm concerned if I
wanted to live my life over, I couldn't have
chosen a better field that I was happier with
than what I did. And the people in our
department, in the stereotype department,
they were a happy group. We all worked
together. I mean afterwards, after we got off
the shift, if somebody was building a garage,
we'd go over and help on the garage or move
or whatever. We were a pretty tight unit.
Q: And pleased with the Register management,
I bet.
A: Yes, oh sure. Of course you always have
your ups and downs, but as a whole we were
extremely satisfied. And then as time went
on, the human relations department is what
they call it now, they started getting people
in that...we had one person in there, his
name Vijon. He came from a meat packers
industry and he almost pulled everybody out
on strike because he wanted to cut this and
cut that. And we had a real struggle with
him. All the unions did until they got rid of
him. And then we got another person in that
followed him, his name was Rocky Groves and
he was real sharp, but he wasn't cutthroat.
And I don't know. You have to look at it just
like you say. Management has got to make
money. Our people in the unions, all the
unions, we all kind of worked together when
it come contract time. We didn't have a
secret. All the unions kind of shared what
the management was going to give us so we all
worked together to a certain degree. They
worked hard and they were happy. Everybody
was happy. --
Section 5: Q: Of course, later on you became a writer.
Did you ever think back in the days when you
had been on the stereotype department that
you would be a writer?
A: I'll tell you what. You know, Brian, it's
just unreal. This is just unreal that I
became a writer. As I came up, it's not
unusual to be called up to the newsroom as a
make-up editor from the production
department. We had two make-up editors up
there, one for nights and one for days. And I
was called up as a feature make-up editor.
Now a make-up editor, I'm not sure if you
know what a make-up editor does, it's
challenging in a very rewardful type of
occupation. What my job was to put the inside
of all the pages of that section together. In
other words, the editors would give me copy,
the length of the stories, and the art and I
would have dummies of all the pages with the
ads drawn and the rest of it was blank. I
would take it and design every page on the
inside with the art and with the stories
involved. I had to wait for the pages from
page one from the news editor. And on
Saturday for the Sunday paper, geez, you have
the news editor, you had the managing editor
would come over, you had sometimes the editor
would be there. All three of them, all
hovering over his desk. And my desk was right
there, right across from him. They would
figure out page one, then I would take the
jumps from page one and put them in the
inside and then build my pages around that.
And I also worked very closely with the art
director. If we had a story that was 45
inches long on the inside and we had a lot of
big art, something had to give.
Q: Now this of course is before you became a
writer? I would like to talk more about your
make-up editor position. You would go back to
stereotyping department. You weren't thinking
about writing, I guess?
A: No. And we had an outdoor writer by the
name of Reese Tuttle at that time that was
just dynamite and then he retired. So they
called me up as make-up editor essentially.
And I worked, oh, I suppose, I can't remember
how many, I think about three years, I was
doing nothing but make-up. Became an expert
in the make-up department. And then what
happened was that they were getting a lot of
letters. Larry Stone was then the outdoor
writer and he would write...one week he would
write on environmental issues, the next week
maybe on hunting and fishing, the hardcore
issues. And when he wrote on the hardcore
issues, the environmental people weren't
happy. When he wrote environmental, the
hardcore hunters and fisherman weren't happy.
So they had to find a medium and they knew I
was really into hunting and fishing. It was
my hobby. So they asked me to present them
with two or three articles on hunting and do
the best I could and see what they looked
like. I turned it in to...Dave Witke was the
managing editor at that time. So I turned it
into Dave and he came back and he said, "Tom,
it's all here. And it's pretty rough, but
that's what we have editors for. So you write
and we'll edit."
Q: This is about 1975, isn't it?
A: Let me check. It was in 1981.
Q: 1981.
A: And so, I started writing in '81. I
started writing every other Thursday to start
with on my own time. And they gave me $20 a
column. And then eventually they took me off
that and gave me a day off to do my column
because I was doing it on my Saturday and
Sunday. Eventually it ran, when I quit, I
think I was doing it at three days off to do
my writing and two days on make-up. I still
did the make-up, which was kind of neat. But
my wife said, when you asked me about
dreaming about this, she said when I first
started, "How in the world are you going to
get a story every week? Every week?" And I
said, "Geez, there is nothing out there that
you can't do." You have to look at it, when I
got the job I had a lock on it, Brian. I had
a lock on this job, not because I was a
Pulitzer prize winning writer, but because
there were 300,000-400,000 fisherman out
there and 260,000 hunters and they all spoke
the same language I did. So my creditability
was built in and when I first started, of
course, you write a couple of hunting and
fishing stories. Say you string the fish and
you write a couple of fishing stories, but
you can't write the same thing so you have to
have a different hook. You have to have a
different twist in the story. So I would hang
out in bait houses. I would hang out in the
sporting good stores. I would go fishing and
somebody always said, "Geez, you ought to
meet this person. He's a dynamite fisherman.
And he's quite a character." There it is. So
I did the first-person stories, a lot of
first-person stories. I would use that
first-person as a vehicle to get into a
person's character or a situation
where...what do you call it when you talk
about an individual, it would be more of a
human interest story on this...and into
conservation. The secret to a first-person
story is to put yourself so far in the
background that people hardly know you are
there, but they do know that you are there
which leads to the credibility of the story.
So I used to go through and write a story,
then go back and go through it and take out
all the "I's" and "me's" that I could
possibly find.
Q: So you wrote first person first.
A: You still have to, it's still a
first-person story but you take out the
"I's." You don't stroke your ego. If you are
stroking your ego, you're not writing for the
reader. You're writing for yourself. So you
don't put in there, "I hit all the birds. I
got all the fish." Let the other person do
that. And you never put numbers as far as "I
caught five fish and he caught six fish or
four fish." You say you caught nine fish. We
caught nine fish. It was in that direction.
But the human interest story. I remember one
that I went up on the Mississippi and I was
talking to hatchery manager up by Guttenberg
and I was doing a story on walleye fishing
and I said, "You know, I need a story
somewhere down the line. Do you got anybody
that's really interesting?" He said, "Yes, my
brother-in-law. You ought to do a story on my
brother-in-law." And I said, "Why is that?"
And he said, "Well, he's a real character."
And so I said OK and called him and lined him
up and went to meet him and it was a perfect
situation. Here was a guy that was what they
call a "river rat." He had a big flat bottom
boat. We were going after a species of fish
that people don't fish for. Big, big drum.
Not catfish, not walleye, but drum. And he
had this big flat bottom boat, he had a pair
of bib overalls on him, he had tobacco stain
running down each side of his cheek and all
over his bibs and the boat was flooded with
tobacco stain where he chewed all the time.
We went out to anchor above the lock and dam,
and one end he had for an anchor, he had a
piece of boiler plate, and the other end he
had a piece of a railroad track. He was a
typical river rat. My strategy for people
when I go out with them is try to read them
and make them feel comfortable. So the best
way to make this guy comfortable is to come
out with some pretty base language. And once
I did that he felt, he knew that, you know, I
wasn't high-fallutin reporter from the city
that didn't know his way around. We got along
terrific. Had a terrific time. And we caught
drum. There's other situations, like I say,
there were cases too where I wrote a straight
conservation piece. The best type you could
write for the paper would be a controversial
piece when you present both sides.
Q: Did some research?
A: Go through research and a lot of phone
work. But there are a lot of stories out
there. You know, now I struggle a little bit
now that I've been out of the swing of
things. I only write a couple times a month
and I write for several different magazines
on a freelance basis. But I'm wondering
myself how I did it. I would be fishing
anyhow, Brian. Fishing or hunting anyhow. So
I was just out there picking up a job. The
thing, the other thing you have to do is get
different people. You can't do the same
person all the time. And the more interesting
the person, the better the hook. The same
thing on a situation. The best situation is
where you are in trouble. I mean you get in
the boat and it's raining and the rain is
freezing and washing over and it turns into
an adventure piece rather than just "I'm
catching fish and he's catching fish."
Q: Had you had any background in journalistic
writing anytime?
A: No. I had Business/English in college. And
some English, the basic English courses. And
some public speaking courses too, but no.
They termed me as a "walk-on" when I first
started. What I did was I wrote my stories
and I first had a very good friend that was
an editor up there, a copy editor and I ran
my stories through him for a couple of years.
He would edit them and bring them back and
show me what I did wrong, what I didn't do
wrong. He said, "You're writing your sentence
backwards. You're starting with 'from here on
out I had a good time' instead of 'I had a
good time from here on out." I was writing
sentences backward to a certain degree.
Fortunately they were pretty well in order.
And he edited and showed me. And then it was
on-the-job training, to the point where I
eventually ended up winning several awards as
a matter of fact. And you know, I told you
the earlier writer was Reese Tuttle. He was
also president of the National Isaac Walton
League. He was a very well thought of
individual And they started giving out Reese
Tuttle awards and I got one of those, which
kind of capped off a career.
Q: Who was the copy editor that you were
bouncing this stuff off?
A: Charlie Nettles. And I think that you may
have an appointment lined up for him or at
least he got a letter for an interview.
Q: Well, we got a long list of people...
A: I imagine. (laughs) --
Section 6: Q: I want to take you back a little bit to
the days that you were working the stereotype
department. Things were changing the mid-70s
with technology, new techniques and such. But
that meant your status at the Register had to
change or you had to leave.
A: That's correct. That was in 1976 and what
happened is that they went from what they
call "hot type" to "cold type." Which meant
that all the plates that were being made were
out; all the linotype was out. The type that
came down to the composing room would come
down through a computer and out. And as a
make-up editor then, I would take this and
the printers would, instead of using their
hands and setting type, they were scissors
and pasting it up. And of course that
eliminated a lot of the composing room,
knocked it down. They didn't fire anybody.
They moved the stereotypers. They took early
retirement, like I said there was a lot of
old stereotypers. They retired or they took
early retirement or they put them in
different portions of the building. Four of
us went to the pressroom. Some went to the
mailing room. Some went to engraving or plate
making. And some went to mail room. They did
the same thing to the composing room. The
people, the linotype operators, they shopped
them around so nobody was laid off. It was
really neat.
Q: Was there ever a concern for security in
your job?
A: Everybody was scared to death. Just really
scared to death. And I will never forget the
time when the mechanical superintendent
came up, I was working days at the time, and
he said, "I'd like you to call a chapter
meeting," and we called a chapter meeting and
got everybody upstairs during a slack period.
And he said, "What we got, we got this cold
type coming in." And he said, "Some of you
people don't believe this. Believe it. My job
is to eliminate you." And, you know, that
just sends the fear of God through you. Some
of the people had gone out and tried working
on the outside and they came back. It was too
tough. (laughs) We had it really pretty good.
There was terrible apprehension. I went down
to the pressroom with four other guys. They
sent us down to Oklahoma City [OK] for three
weeks, four or five of us, to a non-union
training facility to be a pressman. And we
already knew what was going on down there. We
were in with people from management from all
over the country that were training to be
strikebreakers. And we were in the situation,
it was really kind of funny, they were all
scared of us. They thought we were this
hardcore Teamster-type union people, you
know. We were just like they were. And it was
a three-week vacation. And when we came back,
that was the condition. That we could go down
to the pressroom if we went to this school.
So we went down there and took it and came
back and went down to the pressroom. The idea
was to bring this along as a pressman in a
years time and you know, you got to feel that
you know that in the pressroom, they had four
or five years as a flyboy. Six years as an
apprentice before they get their journeyman
card, became trained journeymen. And they
were bringing us along in a years' time. But
our priority wouldn't start in the pressroom
before the last flyboy got his journeyman's
card. So your priority as far as what goes
with priority or seniority with the union
didn't start until the last individual that
was hired ahead of you, no matter what his
status was, got his card as a journeyman.
Q: So you're starting out as a flyboy then
almost from...?
A: Flyboy. I went down there, wiping down the
machinery. It was another instance that was
kind of tough. I was afraid of heights,
always have been. And if you look in the
pressroom you see that these presses go way
up, the super-structure. When I was a flyboy,
my job was to go up and wipe down all this
stuff. I mean it was dirt work.
Q: That's what a flyboy does?
A: He does all the dirty work. Washes out ink
fountains and takes plates to where they want
them set up on the floor and washes down
machinery and when it's slow. Then as you get
into your apprentice work, you help
journeymen change blankets on the presses and
set rollers and all that. --
Section 7: Q: You were talking about the work that a
flyboy did, your changing jobs.
A: In the pressroom is what all the
stereotypers went through down there and I'll
tell you another situation. And you talk
about tension. Pressroom people didn't want
us down there. They didn't want somebody to
come in and work for a year and get their
card when they had to work 12, 14 years to
get theirs. And so one of the, over in the
bar one night, one of the pressman over there
told my buddy, "You go down to this union
school and you're going to have to 'whup' me
to get back in." And he said, "Well, if
that's the case, lets just do it right now."
This is the attitude of a lot of the pressman
and then finally that they come to the idea,
"Gee if I was in their shoes, how would I
feel?" So eventually, when we did finally go
down there, they accepted us and helped us.
And now we got a couple of those stereotypers
are running that pressroom.
Q: Clearly you would have lost some money by
going from the stereotype department...
A: No.
Q: ...to a flyboy position? No?
A: No. They sent us down to wherever we went;
they sent us at our same scale. And they kept
us there. Like some of the people went to the
mail, as a paper handler and their scale was
lower than the stereotype scale of pay. The
stereotypers kept their scale of pay down
there. Now, they didn't get any raises but
they were stabilized at that until they
reached, until the paper handlers reached
that same pay scale.
Q: This is because you had the protection of
the union?
A: No, it was just because, I guess, we
really tried to negotiate that but if they
didn't want to do it that way, they didn't
have to. That was the way that the company
operated. They were extremely fair. You do
that now and you wouldn't have that.
Q: But nothing changed with benefits or
vacation or anything?
A: No, nothing changed. After it started
happening and then it was a matter of going
into a strange area and learning something.
And I did that two or three different times.
I did it when I went down in the stereotype
department to start with, and when I went in
the pressroom and then when I went into the
newsroom, and then went I into writing. And
then, in the newsroom we had changes. I
learned how to type in high school so I was
right on the typing and using the computers
upstairs, but I had never used a computer
before. But most of the guys hadn't either.
They hadn't been on the computer that long.
They were using typewriters until they went
into cold type. --
Section 8: Q: But you had been in the stereotype
department for 25 years, how did you adjust
to the new things that were happening in the
pressroom as in the flyboy, the journeyman?
A: Well, we just went down as, you know, you
accept what goes. I was nervous as the
dickens. And I had a philosophy and I still
maintain this philosophy that "You work as
hard and do as much as you can." And that
philosophy went right up into the newsroom
and when I was faced with all these people up
there with master's degrees and extremely
brilliant people, I thought there is only one
way to match them and that is work twice as
hard as they do. And a lot of these people
had the ability, but they never used it. And
so I was accepted by everybody up there
except for one or two of them. I didn't have
a degree, you know, but your make-up people
didn't necessarily need degrees. But up there
in the newsroom, everybody, it's mandatory
that you have a degree.
Q: The make-up specialist then, that job
description went through several evolutions,
too. I mean there was new technology going on
there.
A: Absolutely. I don't know how you're
picking on this; you must already know a
little bit about it. But yes, you're right.
It went through, when I first started the
make-up job was to, the editors would give me
the type, I would set it and release it. Then
I would go downstairs and make sure the
printers put it together like the schematic
that I drew, downstairs. That was when I
first started. At the end of my make-up
career, at the Register in 1996, and today,
the editors are doing all the printers work
and it's paginated. Instead of releasing
copy, they build a page right in the computer
and we release the whole page right straight
to the composing that sends it into plate
making, where they make the plates. So what
you did became extremely stressful at the end
because, like I had the travel section. I
would put together the whole inside of the
travel section and I would get the dummies in
the morning and I had to have that all built
and down with by two o'clock in the
afternoon.
Q: You were doing it with fewer people, too,
at that time.
A: You eliminated the printers and you had
the same number of people in the newsroom as
you had before but you were doing not only
the work you did before, but also all the
work the composing room, all the printers
did. You were doing their job, too.
Q: Were you compensated for that?
A: No, but you did it and you know, you can
only work so hard. You can only do so much.
And I figured you can only go so far. They
were a little concerned because I didn't do a
lot of editing. I would edit some stories, I
mean when I say edit, I would trim some
stories to fit a hole if it was a wire piece.
But if it was local, I would turn it over to
another editor and say we need three or four
inches out of this story to fit. And that's
the difference between back then, too, in
your early newspaper. Your early newspaper
didn't look like a magazine. I mean the
inside of the pages, I'd take a story down as
a make-up editor, I would put the story in.
It might be two or three inches long, it
might be two or three inches short, but I'd
end up pretty close. Now when we were short,
I'd call up the desk and say, "I need a
two-head" if it was six-inch story; I would
need a 35 head story. Which is a little
filler, a smaller story. These were fillers
so when you got done, you opened up the paper
and it looked like it was a hot paper.
Something was put in on the
spur-of-the-moment and you were getting the
news, breaking news. Now you open up the page
and everything fits right down the line, see.
I'm looking at this and saying, "Gee, they
must have had this story pretty early to make
this work this good." And they got all those
shorts now, they got them in a line right
straight down. And they realized that those
shorts, at one time they wanted to eliminate
all those little shorts, and they found out
there was a lot of reader interest. When we
had those shorts, people would look around
and pick up on those shorts. I remember
during one period of time when Mount St.
Helen's erupted, we used to use almost always
an eight-head, an eight-head is the little
small head at the bottom. "Mount. St. Helen's
is Now Quiet. It's Not Erupting." And
somebody would type it up early and get
somebody's death that was some king of some
area that was on the deathbed and we would
have an update on that and would use that as
an eight-head.
Q: As a story?
A: At the end of story to fill it up or if
you needed a trimmer, you'd trim the story
in. But that's the difference between then
and now as far as appearance of the paper. --
Section 9: Q: Did that correspond with the change in the
ownership too, with Gannett taking over from
the Cowles or was it just...?
A: Well, it changed a lot with the type,
going from hot type to cold type. When I
first went up in the newsroom, like I say, I
didn't know anything. I worked three weeks
with one make-up editor, two weeks with
another make-up editor and then they stepped
me back and had me do the best I could with
help from people around me. But I also went
over to Drake University and got three books
on make-up. Thick books. And some of them
were co-authored by Gardner Cowles as a
matter of fact. And I read them because when
I went up to make-up, I'd say, you know, "Why
are you doing this? Why do you lay this out?"
The answer was, "That's the way we've always
done it." And I got tired of that answer so I
went over and got these books and found out
that you put pictures on top in a certain
area because that draws the readers eye in,
you read counter-clockwise normally. Your eye
follows this. You had rules and regulations
to follow. One of the things in one of the
books I'll never forget. It said, "The
problem with cold type as opposed to hot
type," the set type, is that you can do so
much more with cold type because you got a
scissors, you can put things on the slant,
you can do this, do that and make it a lot
more glitzy. And that could be considered a
fault because what you want to do...Brian,
it's always been the contention of a good
editor is that what you want in a paper is
something that's easy to read for the reader.
You're doing it for the reader. Now, when
they went to cold type that philosophy came
true. The artists that got imported into it
where you have got...Let me give you an
example. This is a business section. This is
pretty serious stuff and this is today.
Q: Show it to the camera.
A: Look at the elements. You don't know where
to start reading. This is what they used to
call "circus make-up" because you have all
these elements on a page. You've got a head
here. You've got a drop head here. You've got
a little leader in here. You've got different
size type, different looking type. You've got
some elements that you really can't decide
where to start. You're making it tough on the
reader. Do you see that?
Q: You bet.
A: OK, lets go to a front page. Last weeks
front page and I'm going to show you what I
mean. Now this doesn't look like the Wall
Street Journal because the Wall Street
Journal is all business and they are probably
one of the best newspapers in the country, in
the world. What you have here is you've got a
headline, you've got all these elements up
here, you've got an element here, you got
your art, you got a head, a drop head, art
here, and you look at that and you think,
"Where should I start reading?" As opposed to
something they used to do, look at that, look
how clean that is. You start reading here and
you go around, you don't have to jump over
anything. You follow your eye and it goes
right straight down and the art is put
together like that. And the front page used
to look like that. So when you went to cold
type, you got to an area where you could take
all these things and use a scissors to cut
them in. On the slant. And this comes from
the art director and this comes from USA
Today. And USA Today, I don't know if it is
making any money now, but it was always in
the red. And USA Today, I don't know if you
know it or not, told all its editors, they
had a main staff, and what they do is Gannett
had pulled their editors in from different
newspapers to work for a year so they would
cut costs in that direction. So we would
"loan" them an editor to go and help them put
out their paper. I looked on different
newspapers from Gannett and they are all the
same.
Q: The fact is because USA Today, of course,
is a Gannett paper.
A: I would say so but I think to be really
fair with Gannett, I think that a lot of
papers across the country have gone to this
type of layout. Except for maybe the Wall
Street Journal and the Christian Science
Monitor, and some of those that maintain the
old tradition and the idea that you are doing
it for the reader, not for some art director.
And another thing that you might notice.
They've eliminated a lot of rules because
people aren't trained make-up editors
anymore. And you have rules...when I'm
talking about making it easier for the
reader. A story should go right straight
through and when you get down to the jump
down here at the bottom, it shouldn't end on
a period. You should take a part, a portion
of the graph or the sentence into the jump
page because when you do that, when you end
it on a period, the reader stops. And when
the reader stops, he's not going to go to the
inside, he's going to down here to another.
And this is just last June 13, last Sunday's
paper. You got the lead story that ended on a
period right here. And so the so reader stops
and anytime the reader stops, you're not
making it easy for them. He has got to figure
out where the hell to go.
