“Is that all Doralee could get out of him? I’ve seen her push those two perfect cones of hers up to some guy and have him blubbering in ten seconds. Didn’t the Doralee treatment work on Shiu?” I asked.
“Like a charm,” Carley said with a laugh. “Shiu reached up and patted her on the boob. She yelped and went back to the society desk like she was shot out of a cannon. I sure wish she’d ask me a question.”
I waved at the bartender for another Stroh’s. “Me too, but that doesn’t tell us diddley about what’s going on.”
“I think we’ll find out soon,” Grace said. “Ellie Jones upstairs told me old Tom Swift spends an hour a day with the Mighty Midget and comes out with stacks of papers. Yesterday she said Swift told Shiu as he left, ‘Don’t worry, I’m ready to start now. You just be sure the stuff is going to arrive on time.’”
“Stuff?” I asked. “Sounds like a cocaine shipment.”
Whereupon we all turned our interest back to the beer in front of us and the Formosan tag team wrestling match on the TV screen over us.
The answers to the questions began arriving the following week. Two semi-trailer trucks pulled into the newspaper parking lot and, according to Grace, the toughest-looking bunch of roustabouts this side of On the Waterfront began unloading. Shiu and Swift supervised the men and within a few hours the lobby of the newsroom was piled high with containers.
Swift then went to his office and brought out a sheet of paper, thumbtacked it to the staff bulletin board, and without a word vanished into the elevator.
Grace called me (and the rest of the reporters who worked outside the office) and told us we better come by the office before checking out for the day. “I don’t know if it’s good news or bad, but at least it’s news. They’re going to put in computers.”
We were a backwater operation, but most of us knew something about the widespread switch from typewriters to computer terminals in the news business. Someone asked Fargo before the paper changed hands whether we would be going to VDTs and he replied, “Mr. Morgan says they’re gimmicks.”
But gimmicks or not, there was what looked like enough cartons and crates to outfit a major polar expedition waiting to be unpacked in the newsroom and a “Memorandum to the Staff’ on the bulletin board:
Effective Monday next, the process of producing this newspaper with state-of-the-art electronic word processing and editing equipment will begin.
During the coming weekend, half of the newsroom will be prepared for installation of the new equipment and training the staff for its use. The existing desks will be consolidated within the newsroom and regular dally production of the newspaper will be continued without interruption. The staff is expected to maintain its present high standards of work during the temporary unavoidable crowding that will be caused by the installation of the new equipment.
Training on the new equipment will be conducted by expert technicians engaged by All-American Enterprises beginning at 4:00 p.m. Monday. All editorial employees will be present at that time for a one-hour orientation session and to receive their assigned periods to receive “hands-on” instruction in use of the new facilities.
(When she read that, Doralee flounced up to Grace and announced that no ape from Chicago was going to cop a feel from her while pretending to be teaching her how to use a computer. “My boyfriend is six feet six and he’s going to be here with me when I get m*y training,” she said.)
The bulletin went on:
Some dramatic and exciting changes will be coming to the Register & Press in coming months, of which the installation of the new equipment is only the first, the electronic writing and editing system will permit all involved in the newspaper to increase our productivity and publish a product that will be competitive in an era of high technology.
This change will be made with the utmost regard for the needs and requirements of the Register & Press staff. Ample time will he devoted to the instructional process and familiarization with the new equipment. Therefore, the enthusiastic cooperation of every individual on the newspaper staff will be expected. Anything else will be dealt with by disciplinary action, up to and including summary discharge.
“Iron fist under the velvet glove,” Bicker said as he stood at the bulletin board with some of us “outside” staffers who had come into the office to look at the boxes and read the bulletin. “Now is when these guys are going to start squeezing us old-timers. They know damn well some of us aren’t going to be able to work with these things and it’s going to be their chance to toss us out on the street.”
“No such thing, old boy,” said Swift, who had come up behind the group at the bulletin board. “This system is no harder to use than a typewriter, and anyone who can’t cope with it will be assigned alternative duties while they get extra training. We don’t want to throw anyone out on the street… except, possibly, malcontents.”
He stared coldly at Bicker, who, for the first time in anyone’s memory, had no argument. “OK, Mr. Swift. I’m going to give it my damndest.”
“I’m sure everyone will,” Swift said as he turned away.
The next Monday was a national holiday and the statehouse was closed. I went into the office to write a feature and, of course, to see what was happening. All of the desks had been crowded into the front half of the newsroom, but except for a bit of sidling to get from one place to another, work was progressing without too much difficulty. But the three desks that usually were open for use by reporters had been stacked against a wall, so there was no place to work except at one of the news desks. I pulled up a chair at Carley’s desk and slid his typewriter around so I could use it while he worked over the wire copy with scissors and copy pencil.
The rear of the newsroom was entirely different. New Formica-topped tables, each with a shiny new computer terminal, had been set up, and half a dozen technicians were busy checking wiring and the computer keyboards and screens. The stained and cigarette-scarred old tile floor had been covered with a light blue rug, and three electricians were on ladders replacing the old hanging bulb fixtures with new fluorescent lights. The place looked like before and after in an office furniture catalogue.
“It’s supposed to be ready by four this afternoon, but I doubt it,” Shep muttered as he worked over the wire copy. “I heard when they went to wire the new lights and put power in for the computers, they found the existing wiring had been installed about 1910 and had been pulled through illuminating gas conduits. We’re probably lucky we weren’t burned out of here years ago.”
The techs were still fiddling with the machines at the appointed hour, but Shiu, Swift, and one of the best-looking females I had seen in months appeared in the newsroom on the tick of the hour. The staff, afraid to set foot in the renovated part of the room, perched on the old desks.
“Now then,” Shiu began. “We’ll just ask the installation people to take a break for thirty minutes and the staff please will gather around for aT)rief talk. Thank you.”
Shiu waited while the sixteen of us moved into the new section and settled into the molded plastic chairs that had been set out at the desks.
“What you see around you here is the newsroom of a modern newspaper, or it will be when the project is completed,” Shiu said. “All-American Enterprises has spared no expense in providing the staff of this newspaper with the latest, state-of-the-art equipment. It will be several weeks before we are in a position actually to produce the newspaper with this equipment, but I promise you we will do it.