The only constant is change

Our son Brett has gotten Deb and I involved in a project in which he and his brother Keith, and hopefully future generations, can learn more about us, along with our parents and grandparents, through our own storytelling.

Both of us answer one emailed question per week sent by Storyworth. The answers are then compiled together in a book. We can add photos if we wish. So far in my story I’ve talked about my father and what he was like when I was young, my most memorable trip as a kid, and my favorite family traditions growing up.

One of the questions in the series asks, “What advice would you give to future generations in your family?”

I haven’t submitted my answer yet on that one, but the more I think about it, I’d say to always be adaptable to change. Just when you think you know how to do something in your craft, technology will advance and you either sink or swim in learning the new methods.

I came out of the University of Iowa School of Journalism trained in a variety of areas. News writing style according to Associated Press standards, interviewing and research techniques (before the internet), and even some photography and page design skills, although much of that was learned on the job in the early years.

But, one thing I probably didn’t fully grasp was the reality that exercising those skills would look much different 10, 20 or 30 years down the road than it was upon entering the work force in January 1980.

Following are some examples of how technology has revolutionized this profession in the 45 years I’ve worked in the field. If I was resistant to change, or stubborn about embracing new methods, there’s no way I could have stayed in it this long. I’m not one who inherently loves change. I like to get in a routine and master something. But the world doesn’t work that way.

In my first four years in daily newspaper work, I wrote stories on an Underwood manual typewriter. We had typesetters who put those reports into column type, which was then affixed to pages by wax adhesive. We could literally cut and move paragraphs within a story on the page before it was sent to the press operation.

The finalized layout of the page would be photographed using a large format camera, creating a film negative. The resulting negative was then used to create a printing plate, which was mounted on the printing press.

In later years, we advanced to computerized preparation of our stories, and digital layout of the pages on our computers. Our newsroom computers communicated with the press operation technology, which sped up the process immensely.

Another huge time-saver was the advancement of digital photography and editing. Through the 1980s and 1990s, we still shot photos on film and developed film in our darkroom every day. If you messed up with the chemicals and exposure, those shots were ruined. It took time each morning to go through that process.

Now, I can shoot an event with my digital camera, put my memory card in the card reader at work, and have multiple cropped and edited photos ready for the newspaper itself or online edition within minutes. Those who are too young to have experienced film photography have no idea how much easier it is today. I couldn’t check my camera monitor to see how my shots looked back in the day. I just had to hold out hope that I got something good, and that nobody would mess up in the darkroom that day.

Before the internet, when I was covering games out of town and had to transmit stories on deadline to my newsroom in Mason City, for example, I had to do it on a Radio Shack personal “computer” called a TRS-80 that would transmit the data along telephone lines. It had couplers to go around the phone earpiece.

If the phone line connection was crappy, or there was a lot of auxiliary noise in your environment, such as the roar of the crowd at a state tournament while you were sending a story, it might not transmit correctly and you’d have to try again.

With the advent of the internet in the late 1990s and the ability to instantly send stories from your remote laptop, things got much more efficient.

Through all the years, software programs for writing, editing and incorporating photographs advanced rapidly and I did my best to keep up with the training so I wouldn’t become obsolete. I’m still doing that at age 68, and I got started on the typewriters and film developing at age 22.

If you had told me in 1980 that someday I wouldn’t have to look up background facts in an encyclopedia or the library, check spellings in a dictionary, or that I could just “Google” something immediately online, and even use “Artificial Intelligence” to obtain instant, completed projects, I probably would have replied, “What are you, a script writer for the Jetsons cartoon? Quit with the crazy talk.”

But, here we are. If you’re just starting out, prepare for a wild ride.

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Contact the writer:

Email: malachy.lp@gmail.com

X: @larrypeterson