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Union-Tribune joins 21st Century

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Stitch, Aug 31, 2009.

  1. chase.colston

    chase.colston Member


     
  2. JBHawkEye

    JBHawkEye Well-Known Member

    Somewhere in my desk is a pica pole and photo wheel. And the border tape was another favorite. Came home every day with pieces of it stuck to my shoe.

    First summer job I had in college was cut-and-paste at the hometown newspaper. At my first full-time job, we had people in the composing room who did the cut-and-paste, but I would fill in if needed.

    When I got here, the composing room was a union shop. One day, just to get the last page done, I started to do some cutting. I got my ass chewed by the supervisor. Never did that again.
     
  3. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    Usually in a union shop, they would hit you across the hand with a pica pole (AKA line gauge) if you even touched the type.
     
  4. Pendleton

    Pendleton Member

    Border tape on shoes. Photo wheels. Blue pens. Cutting off the very tip of my finger with an exacto knife. Turning a comma into a period. Half-tones. Wax everywhere. This thread is making me smile.
     
  5. SoCalDude

    SoCalDude Active Member

    One place I worked, unbelievably, had a shift change right on deadline, which was 11:30 for that edition. It was a union shop.
    We had a page ready, but one story came up 3 inches short. A filler was sent out to fit that hole. The pasteup guy waxes it, trims the type, checks his watch and leaves. It was 11:25, but their contract said they get a five-minute cleanup period. All the guy had to do was stick it down and roll the page, a 10-second process. He didn't do it.
     
  6. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I not only could touch the type, when it got busy I would cut it out and paste it up, but I usually did a crappy job, so I tried to stick to just waxing.
     
  7. sportschick

    sportschick Active Member

    We use ours as back scratchers or for jousting.
     
  8. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    You'll put your eye out.
     
  9. DirtyDeeds

    DirtyDeeds Guest

    Awesome stuff. I remember it all well. Especially the border tape on the shoes and turning a comma into a period. Guys here would throw the type in the trash if you touched it.
     
  10. JBHawkEye

    JBHawkEye Well-Known Member

    We had one guy who, when the shop foreman would blow the whistle for the first group to go to lunch, would drop his knife and walk away from what he was doing, no matter what was left to do on the page. One day he had one sentence to cut from a wire story to finish the page. He refused to do it. Someone else had to come over and finish cutting the sentence.
     
  11. JBHawkEye

    JBHawkEye Well-Known Member

    You know, sometimes we forget about the little things that we love about the business.

    This summer, a writer from another paper came down here to send his story from a prep baseball game he was covering. The paper he works for no longer prints on site (it's a Gannett paper, they print it at a plant two hours away). He said, "You know, I forgot what it smells like at a place where they still print the paper in the building."
     
  12. Mystery Meat II

    Mystery Meat II Well-Known Member

    Or for making warbly sounds when you hold both ends and bend them.
     
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