I was sitting up straight and not chomping my gum, working on Obits.
Our newspaper was an independent. Our editor was fit to be tied, slightly hot under the collar but more of the red was blooming all over his face. As if by some silent doorbell or having taken a cultural cue from post-punk-music, a wave of reportorial types were submitting a rash of story. Some of the old-schoolers' whispering got barky about think, the nerve, and waltz. So, the editor reiterated fact from fiction to the choir; repeatedly advised people not to try and hide politics and points of view; then rearranged all the filing containers. The newsroom people then acted like a giant carbon filter to the water pouring in as anything goes.
Over Reuben Sandwiches later in those days, the drifting and sneaky would be pegged. Having been told to put it in sports, but a piece was found in the lifestyle area didn't get an at-large "fired" but it got the correspondent audience with, whisper, old Maggie. She was sure to pick apart a pie crust until objective news points could be differentiated from political hooliganism.
Some of the people dashing in to file same old, same old were only briefly flummuxed by the recategorizing in that year.
Nobody in the networks was making headlines out of already confusing information like in a professional landscape where all business has the same rank as equals (except in competition); your national defense and your housekeeping aren't categorized like the GDP Stamp makes it seem especially in an already increased socialism. There's added pressure to our politics...public/private, bidding, timing...sort it or don't, the power of the nation is a lot more than words on paper.
And, the power of our nation is not in an obituary yet. I once had an older person tell me his vote was his bid, he was bidding on future Americans to uphold the power of our nation.
That editor was exhibiting his integrity to the professionalism of journalism. He'd also been living and working in a college town for quite a while, and was taking a professor approach. He told some if us after we'd gotten through the fierce fight of "re-org" that he'd been aware that most of the wave of submissions would be top quality work. And that he was contributing as much to the development of people as actual news. How so? Maggie asked. He humbly and so not definitively explained good judge of character; young people nervous to pursue the very subjects they might be best at writing.
Gottah go to work, yikes, the time.
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