Happy 75th
The Western Producer has survived as a weekly newspaper for 75 years and is now contemplating another remodelling job of the editorial department.
After retiring from the staff seven years ago when we were still using one paper clip where in flossier times we might have used two, it gives one a feeling of confidence that present-day management feels expansive enough to refurbish.
I suspect the new alignment will be designed around the present-day centre of the universe, the computer.
When I started at the Producer I was given three tools to work with, an upright Underwood typewriter, a stack of 6×8-inch copy paper and a handful of fat orange-colored pencils. To cover a meeting, I stuffed some copy paper in my pocket and took along two pencils. That constituted my tape recorder.
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My word processing involved pounding the Underwood. My spell-check was the x key that I used to wipe out a misspelled or badly chosen word. We had a two-person department then, Tom Boyd and John Glacken, whose full-time job was reading and correcting our writings. If they found a split infinitive or consistently misspelled word the writer could expect a visit.
But let’s not dwell on olden times. This column is written on a Macintosh computer and sent to the Producer on a diskette.The old Underwood was replaced in 1948 and Tom and Johnny are long since gone, replaced by a computer function.
The only regret I have about the computer age is that human proofreaders were a heck of a lot more fun at the office Christmas party. Anyway, Happy 75th, Western Producer.
