While the changing technology is interesting, what I remember most fondly are the characters. Later we adopted desktop computers, where everyone has their own central processing unit, and all the CPUs are networked together via sophisticated software. The newsroom transitioned to soft-touch keyboards and monitors that fed into a mainframe computer. In the mid-1980s, the Journal moved to a state-of-the-art campus at 7777 Jefferson NE. There, I found a newsroom that vibrated with the non-stop clickety-clack cacophony of IBM Selectric typewriters and teletype machines, the amplified voices from police scanners, and the hissing of pneumatic tubes that carried paper and instructions from one end of the building to another. When I came to the Albuquerque Journal in 1979, the building was located Downtown at Seventh and Silver. It was a visual and auditory process of monstrous beauty. These were assembled into a metal frame that was locked into a large, loud printing machine that pressed paper against the inked frame to transfer the image. Once a week I watched as sheets of paper with stories pounded out on manual typewriters were duplicated on the keyboard of a behemoth hot-type Linotype machine that transformed molten lead into lines of reverse type called slugs. My first job out of the University of Illinois was as a Peace Corps volunteer, working as a reporter and editor for the government-operated newspaper in the South Pacific Tonga Islands. I have been lucky to bridge the pre- and post-internet worlds. Younger readers tend to gravitate toward digital platforms, and newspapers, including the Journal, have responded with page-for-page electronic editions and websites. I love seeing it on newsprint and feeling the paper in my ink-stained fingers. The written word to me has power and longevity. I’m a newspaper guy, and even though I’m retiring as of March 31, I will always be a newspaper guy. Rick Nathanson, a staff writer at the Albuquerque Journal, will say goodbye to his media home of 44 years.Īs a staff writer for the Albuquerque Journal for nearly 44 years, and a journalist for several years before then, I’ve come to appreciate that what I’ve done professionally has become inextricably woven into the fabric of who I am. Rick Nathanson (Photo: Chancey Bush/ Albuquerque Journal)
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