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40 years of typing and griping

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By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto

sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: October 28, 2009

Didn't plan on missing that anniversary deadline. Of course I didn't plan to be still sitting here at the Type and Gripe factory after 40 years either. My mom is still waiting for me to get out and find a real job, or at least something respectable.

That's not likely either.

I was hooked on this place after that first morning when I showed up at 4 a.m. on the sports desk of the old afternoon Tampa Times and watched in amazement as the sports editor tossed a cigar into a paper bin, set off a towering inferno, fell out of his chair and later that morning drove us to a dive for a breakfast of oysters and beer.

It's pretty much been like that ever since. Neither the newspaper nor I have aged all that gracefully in four decades and I suspect there is a pool out there somewhere betting on which of us hangs it up first.

Another cup of coffee
I wouldn't bet on that being the paper. It is still our best connection to the community. For all of its aches and pains, just seeing it lying out there in the yard in the morning tells me at the very least I'll have a few minutes to drink some coffee and get a sense of what's going on around here.

I know that change is inevitable. It has been changing around this place for decades as we put away those old Royal typewriters, switched to electrics, started hiring women, banned smoking and then stared in awe at the new word processors.

The first word processors almost did us in. They only purchased a handful, and for a few months reporters would circle the long table staring at other reporters who had snared the first half-dozen machines.

The other problem with them was a nasty habit of shutting down without warning. For awhile we had a big box on the newsroom wall with three lights. When the green light was on all was well. The yellow light meant something was about to happen and to save our stories on the machine. If it went to red a klaxon would sound, sort of like a submarine going down. The problem was the box would go directly to red and we would lose stories that had taken hours to produce.

Critics are eager to bury the paper for the slicker and quicker ways of delivering information. Today the newspaper is the gray lady of our communications armada, which includes television and online services. I understand there will soon be a fourth platform, with devices implanted into the brains of all newborns, able to receive news, commercial free, directly into the brain.

The murky doings

I don't know. They still haven't come up with a better way of spending a Saturday or Sunday morning than settling back and reading about the weekend games. The obituaries speak from the heart of families who want you to know a relative who has passed on. And we have the comics and the opinion pages.

Your local news is here. You can still follow the murky doings down at city hall or the county only in the paper. If you are wondering why your street is torn up or why your kids were sent home from school, here is where you find out.

And after 40 years of writing about everything from skunk apes to where to find the absolute best Cuban sandwich, you've still got me. Hey, I didn't say we were perfect.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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