Full Disclosure

As we were driving down the highway this afternoon, composing
our next vituperative attack on the mono-culture of the Five
Major
Media Conglomerates,
the Dowbrigade suddenly realized that he was actually an ex-employee
of one of them!

How could it have slipped our mind! Perhaps a deeply implanted post-hypnotic
suggestion made us forget, and still guides our actions in a sort of
journalistic Manchurian Candidate scenario. But probably we just forgot.

It was about this time of year, in 1970.  The 17-year-old Dowbrigade
had just been unceremoniously deported from the Holy Land for hanging
out with Palestinians and drug dealers, and was at loose ends in Rochester,
New York, waiting for replies to his college aps.

Somehow we got a job (why have we no memory of actually being hired?
Has it been erased or burned out of our memory in a mid-70’s MDA binge?) at the Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle, the main daily morning broadsheet and the Flagship
Paper of the now-nationwide Gannett Newspaper chain. Gannett currently
owns 99 daily newspapers, as well as USA Today, radio and TV stations
and hundreds of web sites.

Back in ’70 they were nowhere near that big, a half-dozen papers in
upstate New York, and the Dowbrigade was a copy boy at the biggest one.

Actually, as the memories flood back, we realize that the Democrat and
Chronicle was not our first exposure to the Gannett family!  In
fact, we used to date a dainty blond by the name of Karen Gannett! Ok,
in the spirit of full disclosure we must admit that they were "play dates",
as we shared a third-grade class with young Karen. However, that may
have had something to do with how we got the job.

In those days editors actually sat at their desks and yelled out "Copy!"
periodically, when they wanted or needed something.  Usually what
they wanted was "Art!" from the "Morgue", which was the pre-digital equivalent
of Google Image Search. If for example, Alf Langdon died, they would
send a copy boy down to the morgue to dig our all the file photos of
old Alf, to illustrate his obit.

Other than that, our main responsibility was manning the teletype machines,
which in those days were actual clattering keyboardless typewriters,
with long rolls of teletype paper which brought in the news stories from
UPI, AP, Reuters, etc. Our job was to rip each story off the machine
as it streamed in, and direct it to the correct editor by placing it
in a color-coded plastic tube and shooting it through a pneumatic pipe
system to the designated desk. Very 20th century.

The Dowbrigade remembers the thrill of being the first person in Rochester
to read the news, even before the writers and editors who would pass
it on to the general public. It’s the same thrill we get calling our
equally news-addicted father and telling him, thanks to our aggregator,
what’s going to be on the front page of his venerated New York Times
the next day.

Also, at around 11 each  night,
when the first editions of the next morning’s paper came off the press,
one of our more eagerly anticipated tasks was to jump into a papermobile, which
was, we were told, a special limited production model identical to
big city police cars, with extra power and acceleration to catch malefactors,
and drive like a bat out of hell to the suburban homes of
Paul Miller, Gannett’s chairman, and Allen H. Neuharth, who was the
executive editor.  They were supposed to peruse the paper and
call in any changes or editorial rewrites they felt were needed.

Of course, the 17-year old Dowbrigade merely loved racing down I-490
in a souped-up American automobile with a lisence to fly and a mission
to complete. The expressway was mostly empty at that hour and we could
really open her up.  At one point we got a ticket for going 95.  The
newspaper promptly had it "fixed", and after that we were unstoppable.

We did actually have some writing responsibilities at the D&C. Our
first paying writing gig was penning the four and five-word blurbs
which accompany
the capsule weather report on the front page. Pithy and humorous verbiage
like "Thunder the weather" and "In between the sleets".Those curious
as to the origins of the unique Dowbrigade esthetic need wonder no more.

Alas, our career as a professional journalist lasted a mere five months.  As
soon as we found out that we had somehow been accepted at a decent college
we began parlaying our journalistic earnings and parental goodwill into
a summer in Europe with the girlfriend before heading off to Cambridge.

However, in the spirit of full disclosure we feel obliged to share this
information. Complete employment histories and archived stories should
be available for all journalists, so that we can get a grasp on where
they are coming from and the evolution of their voices. So here is mine;
you be the judge of whether the Dowbrigade is a sleeper agent for the
Media Mafia.