Today’s black and white newspaper is like having a throwback Wednesday, reminiscent of my early days here at the Southern Standard when the news was truly black and white and read all over.
When I began here 25 years ago today, the idea of having color in the newspaper was futuristic fiction, something out of a James Bond novel. That’s right, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. I began working here as crime and courts writer a quarter of a century ago on this very day in 1990 at the tender age of 25. I had big hair and tipped the scale at a buck-fifty. Now I have a bald spot and, as you avid readers know, I tip the scale at a fit 200. And frankly, my 50-year-old self could beat the absolute tar out of my 25-year-old self without breaking a sweat.
For those wondering, I didn’t study to be a newspaper man in college. I was going to be a lawyer. I even took the LSAT but ended up being content to sit at this same desk for 25 years. And, coming to work here was really an accident. I applied for the job while here putting a yard sale ad in the paper for my mother.
I was between jobs since a college degree isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Jobs don’t just fall from the sky once you get a degree at considerable expense. You actually have to compete for jobs with other wide-eyed graduates.
When I first applied here, I wanted the sports job but it wasn’t open at the time so then-editor Pat Zechman suggested I try the crime and courts job until something else came available. Since that time, numerous people have tried their hand at the sports desk. I haven’t asked for it.
Anyway, one of the first places I was introduced to when I began here was the dark room. We were all expected to develop our own black and white film and then print pictures. This was a slow, arduous process that would frustrate me to no end. You could have a great picture but if you didn’t develop it right and then print it where it would reprint well on the page, you had wasted your time. Then there were the fumes and the possibility of dropping a heavy chemical bottle on your toe which I once did on Christmas Day.
I’m not sure when it happened, but there was a day when we began letting Walmart develop our film. Then we started using a negative scanner to put the picture straight into our computers. Then, just before the turn of the century, I went out and covered a wreck. It ended up in color on the front page and the feedback was so great that we began printing spot color and then completely in color. That picture hangs on the wall just inside our local Applebee's. It’s a truck on its side with a policeman beside it.
As for the darkroom where I spent so many hours, it’s now were I get my coffee and Pat burns her popcorn.
Standard reporter Duane Sherrill can be reached at 473-2191.