A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . oops, wrong story. Sorry. But a long time ago I started this newspaper career in what was then called the toy department. No, I didn’t work for Frederick August Otto Schwarz (how cool would that have been!). It’s what we used to call the gathering of scribes, pundits and sometimes derelicts in a room behind the frosted glass door with SPORTS stenciled across it at your friendly neighborhood newspaper. It was usually well off the main newsroom because, well, the main news types didn’t consider us real journalists . . . hence the toy department moniker.
Truth to tell, it was probably fair. We did tend to have more fun. After all, would you rather sit around and talk about the drama of last night’s game or the tedium of the latest city council meeting? And so long as we’re truth telling, it was the department where some of the greatest prose in journalism was created. Did you ever read a lead in news that began: “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.”
That’s what Grantland Rice penned after Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame team upset mighty Army in 1924. And that, dear hearts, is writing.
