From filing w/acoustic couplers at pay phone to Uploading Video

You mean, they were pissed off enough.

Even four lines at a time you should be able to tell the difference between six inches and 20.

 

In my darkest, most nostalgic moments, I think fondly of the old TRS-80 Model 100s. The technology was pathetic, in retrospect, but damn if it didn't beat dictating and we were happy to have the luxury of typing up a story and sending it back to the home office in, oh, three or four minutes. The idea that we have phones in our pockets nowadays that are far more practical and powerful than those dictionary-sized monsters still occasionally boggles my mind.

For me, the "Trash-80" era was in the earliest days of my career. I actually bought one -- used, for $200 -- to use as I damn well pleased. For work. For freelancing. The very idea that I could write from home, or the road, or a restaurant, and not have to go into the office represented pure freedom. It wasn't working. It was sportswriting. It was a time when I was single -- no wife, no kids -- and had some drinking money ... er, spending cash ... in my pocket at any given time and could go anywhere I needed to go for any reason. Or no reason at all.

It was also a time when newspapers were making and spending money hand over fist, and mine had designs on covering the entire state. Sure, there were occasional prep football games in the middle of East Bullethole, where a finding a phone booth to use acoustic couplers took more time than actually writing the story. But there were just as many opportunities to drive 200 miles up the road to cover a meaningless, out-of-market NFL game just because it looked good that we were there, and we could file without dictating, and the office didn't mind expensing meals, hotels and bar tabs. It wasn't working. It was sportswriting.

Yes, it's easy to romanticize those machines, because of some great associations with them. From time to time, I get misty-eyed.

Also, one screen equaled one inch of copy.

 

I always estimated one inch per paragraph and was usually fairly close. Of course, always better to write long (within reason) than short.

 

We had an AP photo transmitter that hooked into a phone receiver mouthpiece with alligator clips. We had to find a phone with a mouthpiece that we could unscrew, remove the microphone thingy and clip into the electrical contacts. It took more than six minutes to transmit a B+W print, almost 20 minutes for color (and it had to be printed, first (in four feet of snow, uphill both ways))

I used to joke that I could tell what a photo looked like by listening to the BeeeeeeeeeBeeeeeeeeBeeeeeeeeBeeeeeeeeeBeeeeeeeeeeep! coming out of the AP receiver.

 

I was thinking about the fun of filing back in the day when I was uploading the video. Yahoo and dropbox didn't work, so I had to use FTP. It took 12 minutes to upload a two minute interview. But once it worked...

 

I had one of the Trash 100 models....the wires were so much better than the acoustic couplers. Covered a game once, open air press box, cold,cold playoff games. The Trash actually froze. I was on the road, wrote in the athletic office. Took it 10 minutes or so to warm up enough that it would work. Fun times.

 

I found an old TRS-80 at the bottom of a desk drawer I was clearing out. At first, I and my co-workers were afraid.



So I poked it with a thigh bone I had learned to use as a tool. It moved when I poked it, and it startled us and we jumped back.



It went still again, so I snuck up and poked it again. We determined it was not a threat.

 

I was young and stupid. I was also quick to argue with copy editors back then. Thankfully, I grew out of all of that.

 

In the mid-90s I had the bright idea of trying to cover basketball teams for papers who wouldn't send a beat writer on the road. Using college clips (it had been about 3-4 years since college) I somehow landed a job to do a U. of Washington game for the Seattle Times (I think, possibly P-I). At some point I realized I wasn't sure how exactly I'd get them the story. I had a home computer and figured I could email them. However, they didn't have a way to get email (hey, this was like 1994) or for me to connect to their system via my home Mac. I happened to work part time at a TV station and knew they had a fax machine and the Seattle paper was fine with doing it that way (thank goodness). I'm sure the paper I was stringing for also had one; no clue why I didn't use theirs - this might have been on a Saturday and that paper didn't put out a Sunday edition so the door might have been locked. Anyway, I covered the game, went home, wrote the story, printed it out and went to the TV station (it was like 1 a.m. ET at this point so it had cleared out) and faxed it over. I soon acquired a TRS-80. One of the best moves I ever made. Covered a ton of games after that over the next 4-5 years and was able to parlay that into covering a team for the paper I worked for.