Life In the Slow Lane

It's no longer a secret: The really cool Des Moines nonfiction writers have united

That's a pretty nifty writing group we've got going. Thank you, Des Moines writers. To recap:

We started the Nonfiction Writers of Des Moines a couple months ago when I couldn't find a local writing group that focused on nonfiction. There are several very good general writing groups in the area but they tend to focus on works of fiction. Thus, our group was born. The group has a pretty lively Facebook page that is accessible to anyone. So far it's been a decorous place, free of the trolling and general nastiness that plagues many online forums. Check it out here.

Our membership list is slowly growing. We already count among our members a documentary film maker, a book publisher, a former Drake journalism instructor, a professional musician, an ex-priest and a prominent local freelance writer. Our roster includes published authors (traditional and self-published) and writers who are seeking inspiration and assistance in starting a project. Genderwise, it has about the same number of men and women. It's an interesting and diverse group of bloggers, historical fiction writers and other wordsmiths who share a passion for storytelling.

We've had three meetups so far, the most recent this week. Among topics covered this week were using Twitter as a writing tool, various means of promoting a blog, the value of writing every day, an update on how the book publishing business has changed over the past 20 years, a fascinating briefing on Alfred Lawson (A Detroit entrepreneur whose career ambitions crashed and burned in Des Moines) and the story of how one writer turned in a 700-page manuscript to a Beta reader and was told, "Well, it's a good start."

As good as the group is, we still have room for more. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just someone who is yearning to share a good story, we all benefit from the company of like-minded, supportive people. Please share this post with anyone who may be interested.

We'll probably have one more meeting in our home, but our group will soon outgrow our cozy living room. We'll probably be looking for another site after that. A couple of possibilities are our local Urbandale library or a coffee shop, like the gathering room at Twisted Bean on Merle Hay. We've been meeting on Wednesday nights, but we could change to whatever the group decides. If you have any thoughts, please send me an e-mail.

Again, thank you, Des Moines writers, for supporting our group. Let's keep the ball rolling.

Now, an interlude from one of my favorite guitarists/groups:

 

Life without a spouse? Unthinkable, yet likely

Do you often think about life without your spouse?

That was the theme of a movie Linda and I watched last weekend. The movie, The Leisure Seeker, was the story of an aging couple determined to check off one last item on their bucket list before one or the other succumbs to the inevitable infirmities of aging. It was a well-crafted tale that dealt with one of the most common yet seldom discussed aspects of human life – adjusting to life alone after decades of sharing with a loving spouse.

Ironically, we watched the movie on the same day that Dody Boswell died. She had been widowed just a week earlier with the death of her husband, former Iowa congressman Leonard Boswell. It’s not that rare that a spouse dies within hours or days of a spouse. Think back; when George H.W. Bush was hospitalized right after the funeral of his wife, Barbara, didn’t you think he was a goner, too?

Lengthy marriages are special. To get to 40, 50 or more years in a marriage means a lot of hurdles have been overcome, lots of compromises have been made. Working as a team becomes second nature, almost automatic. As we age, though, things also become more complicated. A married couple may have grown together over the years, but they may age differently from each other.

This has been the experience in my family. As my parents aged, my mother’s physical condition deteriorated much more rapidly than my father’s. Conversely, my dad saw a decline in his mental acuity at about the same time. Together they made a good team for years, but Dad was pretty much in a fog in the years between her death and his. With good professional care and the help of my brothers he was able to live out his final years in dignity.

It’s much more common, of course, for a widowed person to carry on after the intense immediate grief following the loss of a spouse has settled into a person’s soul. My paternal grandmother had more than two productive decades after being widowed in her 50s. I have several friends who seem to be coping quite well several years after the death of a spouse.

There’s little more daunting than the prospect of living a life alone after sharing virtually everything with a loving companion for a half-century yet it’s something that half of us old married folks will likely face in our lifetimes. We can do our best to prepare for it, even accept it, but we don’t have to like it.

I watched a good bit of the Little League World Series on TV last week, mostly because there was a Des Moines team in it. Little League has come a long ways since I first played for my church team, wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt as our uniforms, more than 60 years ago.

I noticed on a visit to Dick’s Sporting Goods a few years ago that you could buy a kid a $39.99 tee ball bat, a glove specific for each position and eye black stickers (10 for $5.95). Tee ball would have been called a sissy sport if it existed when I was a kid.

Here's the trailer for The Leisure Seeker:

 

 

 

In the news: Aug. 19, 1957

If you like heated bathrooms, you may have liked Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz

Remember Earl Butz?

He was the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture four decades ago, first appointed by President Richard Nixon and continuing under Gerald Ford. In 1976, John Dean, former White House Counsel under Nixon, was released from prison after a short stay for his role in the Watergate scandal. Rolling Stone magazine hired Dean and sent him to Kansas City to report on the Republican National Convention. It was while Dean was acting as a reporter that he found himself engaged in a conversation with Butz and singer Pat Boone. Here's part of Dean's story, as reported in Rolling Stone that fall:

"Pat [Boone] posed a question: “John and I were just discussing the appeal of the Republican party. It seems to me that the party of Abraham Lincoln could and should attract more black people. Why can’t that be done?” This was a fair question for the secretary, who is also a very capable politician.

“I’ll tell you why you can’t attract coloreds,” the secretary proclaimed as his mischievous smile returned. “Because colored only wants three things. You know what they want?” he asked Pat.

"Pat shook his head no; so did I.

“I’ll tell you what coloreds want. It’s three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. That's all!”

The quote was generally cleaned up for publication but versions of it found their way into newspapers across the world within hours of Rolling Stone hitting the newsstands on October 1, 1976. On the morning of Oct. 4, UPI reported that Butz was under pressure to resign but had told the press that he had no intention of quitting. He resigned that afternoon.

My, how times have changed. Look where we are today.

Just thinking of enumerating the fissures in our republic give me a headache. There's no shortage of analysis of our predicament on cable TV, if you dare watch. As one institution after another crumbles from within, our future looks increasingly bleak. Real matters of consequence -- like climate change, income inequality, fiscal irresponsibility and basic humanity -- are swept aside by increasingly strident bickering.

It's beyond belief to me that a segment of our citizenry sees this civil foment as a good thing. Regardless of social status, we all have a stake in this. It wasn't that long ago that a politician would lose his grip on power for saying something stupid. Who would have guessed that the Watergate era would be seen as the good old days?

That's depressing.

Calling all D.M. area writers: Want to meet?

"You know, Walter, you have the best job, getting to interview the rich and powerful," a friend once said to CBS newsman Walter Cronkite. "You've met the most interesting people in the world."

"Yes," Cronkite replied, adding some clarification. "And most of them are journalists."

That's a story I've shared countless times since entering the journalism profession 50 years ago. Now, I must confess, I've never been able to verify that it was Cronkite (or anyone else) that actually uttered those words. Nevertheless, it's a sentiment I wholeheartedly endorse.

I found working in newsrooms over a 35-year career to be a stimulating environment. Whether it was Damon Runyonesque characters like Max Namen of the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil who gave me a crash course early in my career on how the FBI collects eyewitness descriptions when I was way over my head trying to cover a bank robbery or seasoned professionals like Buck Turnbull who chewed me out for apparently not knowing the difference between Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids in a dateline on a story he authored for the Des Moines Register. "Jesus Christ, you make me look like an idiot," he bellowed.

I've been away from newspapering for better than 12 years now, but I still write. Besides blogs like this, I've got one completed book (technically) in the hands of an agent and another (technically) in the works. I put the qualifiers in the previous sentence because I'm pretty sure my agent has given up on me and I haven't touched the (active) project in months. So, unless I get on the stick, no one will know my telling of the story about "How dancing teenagers took over America and Dick Clark took over rock & roll," or how America's most popular airline essentially went belly up within 10 years of its peak popularity.

Working alone has its benefits. A stimulating environment is not one of them. I miss helping reporters shape stories. I miss those unexpected phone calls from Bob Feller bitching about a story or Ivan Lendl plugging an upcoming tennis exhibition. I miss the adrenaline rush of a story breaking (really breaking, not CNN-Wolf Blitzer "breaking") on deadline. Heck, I even miss the news meetings where every section shared their offerings for the next day's paper.

I'm guessing I'm not alone in that writing-alone-is-cool-but-I-miss-working-with-others feeling. I'm also thinking that a little interaction with others might keep the writing spark firing. Many of you may have already created your own Writing Support System. I have not. I've checked out more than eight Des Moines-area writing groups recently and have yet to find a good fit. What I'm looking for is a group catering to nonfiction writers who appreciate the sharing of ideas and professional advice and who are genuinely interested in what others are working on.

In the absence of such a group, I'm interested in forming one. There's a lot of creative talent in the Des Moines area. I think it would be good to convene as much of that talent as possible on a regular basis. With all the writers, editors, designers, graphic artists and publishers in the area, there should be ample opportunities for professional assistance and/or collaboration.

What do you think? If enough people show interest, I'll be happy to schedule an organizational meetup. Message me through Facebook or send me an e-mail, Let me know what you would want from such a group and when works best for you (day/evening, weekday/weekend). Also feel free to share this with any serious nonfiction writer who may also be interested. I hope to hear from many of you. Thanks.

 

Shedding some light on Giuseppe Polomi

I have a confession: There is no Giuseppe Polomi. Except for the one that inadvertently escaped from keyboards under my control a half dozen or so times over the past 40-plus years.

Truth be known, no more than a handful or two of people were ever aware of the mythical Giuseppe, a jack of all trades whose sole existence is owed to the pairing of agnostic wire service editors with a sometimes overzealous local newspaper editor. As you might guess, I was the latter.

I can't pinpoint the exact first time Giuseppe's name popped into print, but I would guess it to be around 1976 or 1977. I was sports editor of the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil at the time. A big part of that job was picking out the stories and photos for each day's paper, assigning each a proper place within the section and making sure they were carefully edited and carried clear, accurate headlines. It's a more difficult task than lay people realize. Every story looks pretty much the same as it is printed off the wire, but each has to be assessed as to its "news value." As a smaller daily, the Nonpareil wire service was very basic. Instead of getting separate stories on every major league baseball game, for example, we'd get one roundup story for each major league. Small selection, small staff. It all made sense in a way. Unfortunately, we also had a very limited choice of photos (especially on days when the photo wire would run out of paper overnight or get jammed).

It was on one of those days when I wanted to use an interesting wire photo that had scant information. Faced with using yet another information-packed (but boring) photo of a baseball player sliding into second base, I chose to use the more interesting photo. While trying to flesh out the photo's cation, I opted to identify a person the wire service didn't identify. That unidentified person thus became Giuseppe Polomi. Over the years, Giuseppe popped up in other captions, such as in this photo from July 30, 1978:

Creation of Giuseppe was wrong, despite my good intentions. In retrospect there were other things I did in those days that would be considered unethical by current journalistic standards. So, I may as well come clean on some other journalistic transgressions from my days in Council Bluffs, like the time I enjoyed fried sweetbreads at Omaha's Bohemian Cafe on Civic Auditorium Manager Charlie Mancuso's dime and then pulled my Hornet Sportabout around back, whereupon Kansas City-Omaha Kings rookies Len Kosmalski and Scott Wedman tossed bags of Wonder Bread products in the back.

Or the afternoon stuck in a blizzard in the mile-high Omaha Press Club, knocking back Bloody Marys as I waited with Steve Pivovar of the Omaha World-Herald and bowler Loa Boxberger for another bowler, Joe Joseph, whose flight from Detroit was delayed. Or the countless Press Club dinners hosted by promoter Tom Lovgren as he announced the newest fight card for C.B. favorite son Ron Stander. We even took road trips, like the annual trek to Sidney where we broke bread with the country act set for that year's rodeo while filling up on barbecued steer. There were fancy lunches to pick the College World Series queen and, oh yeah, the bottles of booze from the Omaha Royals and wrestling promoter Joe Dusek.

Ethics in journalism has always been something of a moving target. Smaller papers with limited budgets are more likely to accept freebies than reporters and editors at larger papers. That became clear to me when I moved to the Des Moines Register in May 1981. The Register had a clearly articulated ethical code of conduct that was strictly enforced. I saw good reporters lose their Register jobs over ethical issues. We even sent checks every year to the universities of Iowa and Iowa State to cover the costs of food consumed in press boxes by our sports reporters. Obviously, the Register was no place for Giuseppe Polomi.

For more than 24 years, I toed the line. After holding several key positions in the sports department at the Register, I found myself back on the copy desk in the latter years of my career. I was pleased to be able to share my knowledge and experience with younger staffers but, truthfully, the work, while demanding, wasn't particularly stimulating. One of my favorite duties at that time was to grab the sports "ears" out of the edit basket. "Ears" were three-line snippets that appeared at the top of page 2C every day. These were "readers" - obscure, interesting items that would never find their way into the section's regular news hole. They were great fun to do - scour the wires, look for something weirdly interesting, boil it down to three lines and slap a headline on it.

As I moved within two weeks of leaving the Register to start my own personal history business, I realized that I had walked the straight and narrow long enough. I did this:

OK, that was wrong, too, but it kinda felt good at the time. Up until this posting I believe only former co-worker Tom Longden and, perhaps, Randy Witke knew about this particular lapse. It's not out of any sense of guilt or remorse that I share this. I just felt that in this post truth era it's a story whose time has come. Plus, I believe the clock has run out on the statute of limitations.

 

 

Can we just slow this technology train, please?

Man, I need a break. From technology, that is. I'm plumb tuckered out.

Don't get me wrong; technology is a wondrous thing. When it progresses at a reasonable rate, that is. But what's happening now is just too much for me.

I'm no technophobe, either. I studied computer programming in college in 1963 and Linda and I had rudimentary cable TV in California in 1970, around the same time I was managing airplane parts by computer in the U.S. Air Force. I maintained a cassette tape-driven mailing list on DOS files saved from a Radio Shack home computer in the early 1980s and time-shifted TV programs on videotape in 1977 when a blank videocassette cost $20 (if you could find them).

I started working with PCs in the mid-1980s, even paying a bit more to add a 20MB hard drive as an option to my first IBM machine. I stuck with Microsoft products for the next 20 years until I got fed up with the constant updates, security patches, incompatibilities and warnings about "illegal operations." MACs were a much better fit for me at first and I still prefer them to PCs, but their advantages are getting smaller all the time. For a long time things went smoothly, then things started catching up. First my browser became un-updateable. Same thing happened to Skype and a couple other programs that refused to let me update or use the old version. Rather than update my operating system (not that hard on a MAC, by the way), I went for a fancy new computer.

New computer, new problems. More incompatibility, a couple of useful add-ons to the browser that no longer work and on and on and on. You can probably relate. As frustrating as my complicated relationships with hardware and software is, the Internet presents its own peculiar challenges. Consider The Cloud, where laptop and desktop are supposed to meet for a communal purpose. My desktop and laptop seem to regard The Cloud as a place where they'll converge only when they're damn good and ready and without human intervention. Facebook, once a congenial place for sharing pleasant reminiscences, thoughtful commentary and familial updates, has been infected by a snarky tone that has the ability to permeate the most banal exchanges. Internet streaming of "entertainment programming" has also proven to be disruptive to the cable TV business. On the recent Golden Globes telecast there were entire TV categories that I knew nothing about because I watch none of the streaming services.

I have other issues with modern technology, like how "smart phones" have created a zombie class, how personal privacy is practically non-existent (remember the Equifax hack?), how mega mergers and acquisitions stifle diversity and how the end of net neutrality threatens to create funnels and roadblocks unimaginable just a year or so ago.

Yes, there's a lot of technology happening and it's putting a lot of us on the fence: Do we jump in and try to keep up or do we just throw up our hands and say "That's it. I've had enough?" Personally, I'd like to see a moratorium where nothing changes technology-wise for, say, a year. By then I may have caught up. But that won't happen. I'll keep stumbling along, cursing all the way, as I struggle to keep my head above water. I'll probably keep from drowning, but, damn, it's exhausting.

Author Larry Lehmer is a former newspaper reporter and editor who is seeking a publisher for his book about the Philadelphia years of American Bandstand. He is also a retired personal historian and occasional author of the popular Before Their Time blog, which tells the stories of well-known or important people who died at an early age. He's also something of a curmudgeon.  

 

Why did "The Best Care in the Air" disappear?

In the mid-1990s, my wife, Linda, took her mother on what was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. Rose was in her mid-70s at the time and recently widowed. She had always wanted to visit Washington, D.C., and Linda decided to help her mother finally realize her dream.

Linda's cousin Billy, an Omaha travel agent, helped set up the trip. Billy came through beautifully, booking a non-stop round trip by air for the two of them and finding a snazzy room in a Westin hotel. Not long before their scheduled departure, though, Rose fell and injured a leg. Undeterred, she insisted they proceed on the trip.

Although Rose thoroughly enjoyed seeing the sights of Washington from her seats on various tour buses, the limiting experience of being bus-bound was less satisfying for Linda. On the other hand, Linda loved the Westin while Rose thought it was too fancy, what with its concierge and all. One thing they both agreed on, though, was that the flight to and from the nation's capital was fabulous.

Cousin Billy had the foresight to book them on Midwest Express, a relatively unknown and recent arrival at the Omaha airport. Linda and Rose were quickly immersed in the Midwest Express experience, a smorgasbord of little luxuries that justified the sassy airlines' claim that it provided "The Best Care in the Air." It was more than braggadocio.  There were leather seats and plenty of legroom. There was food, real food, served on real china and accompanied by wine, from a bottle. And there were cookies, warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies that appeared to have just popped out of the oven. And the people were nice, all of them.

Since my own flying experiences were not nearly as grandiose, I was, of course, jealous, realizing full well that I'd probably never experience Midwest Express myself since virtually all of my flying was out of Des Moines, a city not served by ME. So, I pretty much put Midwest Express out of my mind for the next couple of decades.

But I started thinking about it again this past spring. It was right after I had found a literary agent willing to pitch my latest project, a book about the Philadelphia years of Dick Clark's American Bandstand, and I was looking for a new project. Whatever happened to that neat little airline that Linda was so impressed with, I wondered? I went to Google.

Almost immediately I learned that tens of thousands of people had experiences similar to Linda's. So many, in fact, that Midwest Express won dozens of awards and developed what can only be described as an intense cult-like following. People would fly out of their way to pass through ME's hub in Milwaukee. They'd pay a little extra to stretch out in those leather seats and lusted for the airline's cookie recipe.

But I also learned that Midwest Express (and Midwest Airlines, as it was later known) had disappeared by 2010. What happened?

The most oft-heard explanation is that 9-11 happened. That terrible day grounded more than Midwest Express, experts note. While 9-11 was a huge factor in the airline's demise, it's not the only one. Truth is, Midwest was in financial trouble before 9-11. So, just like about everything else in the airline business, it's complicated. Just the kind of story I like to dig into.

I've learned a lot while researching Midwest Airlines in the past few months, like how it grew out of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation and was reluctant to stray too far from its Wisconsin roots. I've learned how, despite the deregulation of airlines in 1978, the flying business may be the most-regulated industry operating in the U.S. I've learned that keeping planes in the air is as much a question of fuel prices, national security and environmental issues as it is a matter of physics. And I've learned that having "The Best Care in the Air" is not enough.

Basically, I've learned that there's a lot I don't know. But I'm still trying. You can only learn so much from scanning headlines and spreadsheets. Good reporters will tell you the real stories lurk beneath the headlines, in that area where real people are doing real things. That's where I'm hoping you will help. I want to get in touch with people who have honest-to-goodness stories to share about Midwest Airlines (emphasis on honest). No vendettas, rants or general BS, please.

Since I'm asking you to share a bit of your life, it's only fair that I share a bit of mine. My profile with this blog will tell you quite a bit. Google me and you'll learn more. What is less obvious is my association with airplanes. I took my first airplane flight in 1968 on a four-leg flight from Omaha to San Antonio (via Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Houston) to report to Air Force basic training. As luck would have it, I spent 3 1/2 years as an aircraft maintenance officer so I've spent time on flight lines, in cockpits, scheduling planes for trips halfway around the world and scrounging parts to keep planes flying. I have a bit of knowledge of the basics of flight and how to keep a big plane (C-141, C-5A) in the air.

I was also working at the Des Moines Register on July 19, 1989, when a United Airlines DC-10 with 293 souls on board made an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa, in a piloting feat equal to the Miracle on the Hudson, giving me a chance to see how a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper covers a huge airline-related story.

I revisited the United 232 crash a few years ago when I wrote a book to commemorate the Iowa Dental Association's 150th anniversary. As part of that book, I wrote about how Iowa forensic dentists worked diligently over a weekend to identify 74 victims of the crash. Dr. Dick Hettinger told of how the final vitim was identified:

"Someone asked, 'Who is this we're sending off?'," said Hettinger. "The answer was 'Number 74.' 'No!' my mind said and I turned to a friend and said, 'Isn't that Philip McNulty?' In seconds, the five days of work was summed up. We had been giving back these people's identities. No more body numbers. They all had names now. Our friends had names."

So, please, if you want to share, e-mail me. Thank you.

P.S. Who is Gino Guiduce?

 

 

 

Fewer editors? Seriously? What a stupid idea

At one point in my youthful past, I played softball on a team sponsored by my employer, The Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil newspaper. The boss sprung for a bunch of snazzy jerseys, emblazoned with the newspaper's name across the front. Sadly, the jerseys arrived with "Nonpaeil" (the "r" missing) in big block letters. I suggested that we just add an insert mark between the a and e, put the missing r above the text and call ourselves the Typos, since that's pretty much how the community viewed us anyway.

The boss saw no humor in that and sent the uniforms back for re-lettering. As the accompanying photo shows, even major league baseball teams can have a typo problem. Truth is, everybody needs an editor. As an ex-editor myself, I'm probably more sensitive to these things, but it seems like typos (and just plain bad grammar) are everywhere. So when I learned that the esteemed New York Times was getting rid of some of its editors, it kind of raised my hackles.

In this era of cable news, obliterated "news cycles" and shareholder pressures, editors seem to be the expendables, the first to fall in the race to the bottom. This is more than shameful. It's stupid.

Let's face it: If newspapers have superstars, it's their reporters. The Washington Post and New York Times have rosters chock-full of superstars, many of them given apparent carte blanche to swing away in the current target-rich environment of big-league national politics. Prime time cable programs love to have their print brethren on their programs, where they hype their latest works well in advance of their formerly standard a.m. print debuts. I can't say for certain, but I'll bet there's a strong bench of editors backstopping those stories.

I suspect much of the public thinks of editors as proofreaders. Nothing could be further from the truth, though some news organizations appear to have accepted a computer's spellcheck function as a reasonable alternative to real editing. Editors do much more than correct spelling. At the upper echelons of newsroom editors, there's a lot of planning and resource management necessary if a gaggle of reporters is to function coherently and not devolve into a chaotic tribe of scribes trampling each other in pursuit of personal glory. It's another tier of editors that actually works closely with reporters, guiding them through the reporting and writing process of complex stories before turning them over to the heart of the editing operation, the copy desk.

Copy editors do check stories for spelling, punctuation and grammar, but that's just a small fraction of their duties. They also act as fact checkers — correcting mistakes and clarifying fuzzy portions of the story. They look for weaknesses in the stories they edit, often sending them back to reporters for additional reporting. They look for areas that could get the newspaper into legal trouble (publishers are responsible for libelous statements that appear in their publications). Contrary to popular opinion, reporters don't write headlines; editors do.

Editors also make stories fit a certain "hole." Newspapers have a certain neatness to them, every story with a headline and fitting in its assigned spot. That doesn't just happen. An editor decides how much space to give a story and another editor makes sure it fits. It's not unusual to reduce a story by 70 percent or more. That takes skill; an editor's skill. And much of this happens on deadline. Reporters often hang onto stories as long as they can. That cuts into an editor's time. Some reporters (even famous, prize-winning ones) need extensive editing.

Since I left the daily newspaper business more than 11 years ago, I can't tell you how things work today, but I can tell you how things worked at The Des Moines Register for most of the 25 years I worked there.

Perhaps the biggest factor in my leaving my job as sports editor of a moderately sized Iowa newspaper to become a copy editor at the Register was that the paper took its journalistic responsibility seriously. Its leaders routinely monitored news operations around the state, luring distinguished, experienced journalists from every corner of Iowa. There was great geographic and generational diversity among the staff, which was challenged by a relatively young, bright cadre of editorial leaders.

The editing operation was most impressive. Once copy was turned over to the copy desk, it went through a rigorous, multilayered editing process before appearing in print. A news editor mapped out the next day's pages and a "slot editor" managed the actual editing, assigning stories to individual editors. The slot editor reviewed the edited story before deciding whether it needed further editing or could be set in type. Once set in type, proofs of the story were returned to the newsroom to be checked again. After a page was assembled, a proof of the entire page was sent to the newsroom to be read.

Between editions (we had as many as five editions every night), the actual printed pages were checked yet again and the process of creating a new edition started all over again. Stories often changed between editions, further complicating the process.

The process may appear to be cumbersome, but it was an effective way to ensure accuracy while providing complete and timely information to Register readers. The multilayered approach to editing had a beneficial effect on reporters as well. Knowing when they were expected to file a story and how long it should be imposed a discipline that placed a premium on clarity and word choice.

I don't know how the editing protocol works at the Register today, but I do see the final product — and the results after several rounds of staff layoffs are sadly predictable. More mistakes find their way into the edition I receive in suburban Des Moines. Deadlines appear to be much earlier, given that many reports on evening events are incomplete (or missing altogether) in the next morning's paper. Oversight, too, appears to be missing. One sports report last winter listed high school basketball scores from South Dakota instead of Iowa. Stories are often repeated in separate sections. Space that was previously filled by a wide diversity of carefully edited stories from a variety of respected wire services is now filled by huge photographs or bloated staff-written stories.

To be fair to the reporting staff, I think many Register staffers are immensely talented and hardworking. Their responsibilities have changed greatly in recent years. Even with several editions, reporters "back in the day" knew that they were writing for an audience that would be reading their work the next morning at the earliest. The internet changed that. Today's newspaper reporters are expected to file as soon as possible to get their story online before the competition. Many of them are expected to shoot photos and video, too, calling for skills much different from traditional reporting at a major newspaper. That has got to be a stressful work environment, especially when management, when justifying an earlier round of editor layoffs, said reporters will be expected to turn in stories suitable for publication on the spot. In my experience, that's always been the expectation, but rarely the reality.

Newspapers, which have been on a losing streak for a long, long time, are in a tough spot. That buying-ink-by-the-barrel thing has proved to be more of an albatross than a golden goose. Most papers have yet to find a solution to their dwindling readership. That lost classified advertising is never coming back. Ditto for car ads, real estate ads and those expensive national ads. The transition to paid obituaries has helped, but those older dead people also represent lost subscribers. For most of my professional career, newspapers struggled to stay relevant to younger readers, a battle that was lost long ago.

It saddens me to see what's happened to newspapers in recent decades, and I have no idea how to reverse the trend. One thing I do know, though: Getting rid of editors is a bad idea.

This blog post was guest edited by Kurt Helland, a gifted editor who spent many years at The Des Moines Register before joining the Des Moines Business Record. One quality of a top-flight copy editor is that copy can be improved by changes imperceptible to the original writer. Kurt passes that test admirably and I am extremely grateful that he accepted the challenge of improving the work of what our former colleague Maury White often referred to as "an ink-stained ragamuffin." Thanks, Kurt.

 

Here's a tough one: Do you do what you do even when you're not actually doing it?

I have this weird problem: How should I respond when someone asks me what I do?

I think they’re asking me about what kind of work do I do and aren’t really interested in the mundanity of my everyday life, but even with that realization, I hesitate before answering.

For one thing, I don’t really “do” anything, at least for renumeration. For practical purposes, it’s OK to say I’m retired, since I no longer draw a steady paycheck. But I don’t really think of myself as retired; I generally see myself as a writer, but that’s not entirely accurate, either.

True, I’ve had a book published in the traditional market (still in print, by the way) and have finished a second, for which I’m still seeking an agent. I author four blogs, though sporadically. And, although I spent the bulk of my newspaper career as an editor and manager, I began my career as a combination sportswriter/news reporter/rock music critic.

My conundrum is not entirely new. During my newspaper career, I was reluctant to tell people where I worked. Though I was proud of every newspaper job I ever held, I knew the public had a different take. In Burlington, everybody it seemed hated our publisher, the Pulitzer Prize winning editor John McCormally. In Council Bluffs, where I was responsible for sports coverage of the city’s four high schools, it was widely perceived that I was biased for one school or another. At the Des Moines Register, I heard about everything from poor delivery service to our favoritism for Iowa or Iowa State to our lefty political slant on everything we printed.

Another factor in my hesitancy to respond to inquiries about my vocation is that, at best, I’m a part-time writer. Every writer has his or her own “writing rhythm.” You’ve probably read about some successful novelist who snuck in an hour or two after the kids were tucked away at night or someone who writes religiously from 8 a.m. to noon every day or someone who writes 5,000 words every day. Well, those people are not me.

I’m more of a streak writer. I may write for several hours a day for weeks or months, then not write anything at all for another several weeks or months. Is it fair to call myself a writer when I’m not writing? Maybe so, but it doesn’t feel right. Maybe I should go to what my son once told a teacher when she asked what his dad did for a living.

“He types stuff,” he said. Fair enough.

I Saw It On TV Dept. It was an NBA game, I think, and there was a player on the court with nary a visible tattoo. Looked strangely out of place these days. Seeing tattoos on professional athletes is no big thing, but I still can’t get used to seeing an otherwise attractive person (my opinion) who has mutilated their body with some godawful, ugly tattoo. And I'm not the only one:

Author Larry Lehmer is a former newspaper reporter and editor who is seeking a publisher for his book about the Philadelphia years of American Bandstand. He is also a retired personal historian and author of the popular Before Their Time blog, which tells the stories of well-known or important people who died at an early age.