Worth reading

I just finished "Black and White and Dead all Over" by John Darnton. What a read! It's a mystery that starts with the murder of one of the assistant managing editors at what appears to be a thinly veiled reference to The New York Times. What I love about this book are the details the author includes about how newsrooms used to be, and the longing the old timers seem to have for the "good old days." I remember hearing about those days at the Connecticut Post.
Cigarette butts hanging off desks, booze bottles stuffed inside drawers, reporters returning to the newsroom to file stories after their three-martini lunches. (No, wait, my bad. That last one happened several times when I worked there.)

This book has it all for old timers: the composing room, the pneumatic tubes, the typewriters. And can you believe the AME is found with an editor's spike rammed into his chest? If you know what an editor's spike is, you will love this book. If not, you might learn something.

One of the funniest tidbits Darnton uses is the fact that several of the "dinosaurs" -- journalists who've been there since the old days -- keep yellowed copies of what is considered the worst lead ever written at the paper. When work is slow, one of them will open a drawer and take it out and read it. Guffaws follow. Reminds me of the editor who, during a lull, used to yell across the newsroom, "Nixon just died!" At least he never did it on my deadline. Then there was the editor who used a line gauge (a fancy name for an editor's ruler) to open his soda can. (Hey, it makes sense. He never cut himself.) And then there was the story about the reporter who covered the Earthquake World Series in 1989. When the editor finally heard from said reporter after hours of wondering his fate, he asked for the story before asking how he was. How can you miss things like that?