At The Gazette
From James Donahue’s Diary
The Kalamazoo Gazette was located in a large building in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo. We were within blocks of a main street that had been turned into a giant park and mall with the major stores facing it. Also nearby was the Upjohn Company, one of the major pharmaceutical firms in the nation.
Kalamazoo was a unique city, filled with giant and well preserved old mansions from the early lumbering days in the area. There was obviously a lot of wealth that still flowed throughout the city. All of the downtown stores were heated by a central steam generating plant. During the winter wisps of steam could be seen coming up through manhole covers on the streets.
There were two basic cities at Kalamazoo. One was the City of Kalamazoo and the other was Portage Township, which strangely retained its old name, but the entire township had been incorporated into city status. The two cities were divided by Interstate 94 which ran directly across Michigan between Chicago and Detroit.
My first job was to cover Portage Township city government. I attended a few council meetings, and was just beginning to learn how that government operated when I was moved into a new position as Music and Religion Editor.
That was my title, although I never did much if any actual editing. My job was to cover all the musical and religious events going on in Kalamazoo. I worked directly under a snarly little man whose name I have long forgotten. This man did the page make-up. My job was to supply the stories to fill the pages. Occasionally, when he was on vacation or gone for other reasons, I was called on to design page layouts, which was a problem because I had not been trained in editing at that time. Some of the make-up guys in the back room helped me over those humps and together we got those pages put together.
The managing editor of the paper was a white-haired veteran of the newsroom who was not hard to work for, although he was so set in his ways that there were certain rules we all had to abide by. Although we were all packed in a newsroom that was too small for the number of people working in it, and we lacked file cabinets beyond the drawers in our steel desks, he insisted that our desk be always cleared of paper and anything we might be working on when we went home at night. Anyone who has ever worked in journalism knows that is almost impossible, since we always have ongoing work and are constantly multi-tasking with numerous stories at the same time.
The editor also insisted that all of the male reporters be clean shaven and wear a tie to work each day. I always have hated anything tight around my neck, wrists or even my ankles, and the tie rule was a problem at first. But I discovered clip-on ties. Thus I wore a tie when I entered the office each morning, but it came off the moment I was at my desk. If I had to go out on an interview or meet with the editors or someone coming into the office with a story, it was easy to tie that top shirt button and snap on the tie. I got away with it. But out of rebellion, I started selecting the gaudiest colored ties I could find, and tried to wear them with contrasting colored shirts so the ties looked ridiculous. The other reporters noticed what I was doing and started doing the same thing. We were an odd-looking bunch when we all had our ties on.
Those were the days when the civil rights movement in America was heating up, and newspapers were hot to hire black reporters. The problem was that good black writers were few and far between. One day the Gazette managed to take on a young man who agreed to be “trained” in the newsroom. This guy didn’t know beans, but because he was black and willing to learn, he was the office mascot. The newspaper was sending him to college to study journalism while he worked at the newspaper. My desk was next to his, so I found myself writing many of his stories, as did other staff writers. We were always annoyed that our stories would appear with his photo-by-line. It was the Gazette’s way of telling the world that we were fair because we had a black writer on staff.
One day this young black man went off for a week of vacation, something that nobody else qualified for until after a year of employment. That was the kind of deal he was given just to get him to work there. But he was a fool. When he came back, he had grown a beard. When the editor ordered him to shave it off, he refused. They fired him on the spot. A few days later a notice went up on the bulletin board. It said beards and moustaches would now be allowed but they had to be kept neat and trimmed. Nearly every guy in the place grew a beard, including me. I have had mine ever since.
One of the reporters on staff was Lane Wick, who also transferred over from the News-Palladium. His desk was along one wall right beside a large second floor window that gave him clear view of the street below. What was funny about the view he had was that from where he sat, he could see right into the side windows of the cars that stopped at the light at the corner. Often attractive women would be stopped there with their skirts pulled up high over their legs, or they would be wearing shorts. When the view was especially good, Wick would shout out: “Red Alert!” and all of the male reporters would rush to his window to get a look.
My desk was located in the rear of the office, about three steps from the newspaper’s morgue, or library. They had a lady employed as our librarian. Her job was to clip stories from the newspaper every day and file them in a bank of file cabinets for future reference. The morgue was important in newspapers because reporters could use these files to get background information about ongoing events and thus a better understanding of the significance of whatever happened at government meetings and other events. The librarian also maintained a large coffee maker that always produced hot fresh coffee. To drink her coffee, we all had to belong to a club and agree to pay a nickel per cup. If we were broke we could drop IOU’s into the collection can and pay later. At the end of each year she usually made such a profit from all of the coffee sold that everybody who participated got a free frozen turkey for Christmas. It was a cool deal. And I became a coffee addict. I always had a cup of coffee at my side when working at that desk. That old habit has remained with me for the rest of my life.
When I arrived at the Gazette, my photography work ground to a stop. The newspaper had a staff of working photographers on duty so when we went out on assignment and wanted a picture, we took a photographer with us. I liked the arrangement at first because I didn’t know my way around town. I just let the photographer take me where I needed to go. But I missed shooting my own art.
From James Donahue’s Diary
The Kalamazoo Gazette was located in a large building in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo. We were within blocks of a main street that had been turned into a giant park and mall with the major stores facing it. Also nearby was the Upjohn Company, one of the major pharmaceutical firms in the nation.
Kalamazoo was a unique city, filled with giant and well preserved old mansions from the early lumbering days in the area. There was obviously a lot of wealth that still flowed throughout the city. All of the downtown stores were heated by a central steam generating plant. During the winter wisps of steam could be seen coming up through manhole covers on the streets.
There were two basic cities at Kalamazoo. One was the City of Kalamazoo and the other was Portage Township, which strangely retained its old name, but the entire township had been incorporated into city status. The two cities were divided by Interstate 94 which ran directly across Michigan between Chicago and Detroit.
My first job was to cover Portage Township city government. I attended a few council meetings, and was just beginning to learn how that government operated when I was moved into a new position as Music and Religion Editor.
That was my title, although I never did much if any actual editing. My job was to cover all the musical and religious events going on in Kalamazoo. I worked directly under a snarly little man whose name I have long forgotten. This man did the page make-up. My job was to supply the stories to fill the pages. Occasionally, when he was on vacation or gone for other reasons, I was called on to design page layouts, which was a problem because I had not been trained in editing at that time. Some of the make-up guys in the back room helped me over those humps and together we got those pages put together.
The managing editor of the paper was a white-haired veteran of the newsroom who was not hard to work for, although he was so set in his ways that there were certain rules we all had to abide by. Although we were all packed in a newsroom that was too small for the number of people working in it, and we lacked file cabinets beyond the drawers in our steel desks, he insisted that our desk be always cleared of paper and anything we might be working on when we went home at night. Anyone who has ever worked in journalism knows that is almost impossible, since we always have ongoing work and are constantly multi-tasking with numerous stories at the same time.
The editor also insisted that all of the male reporters be clean shaven and wear a tie to work each day. I always have hated anything tight around my neck, wrists or even my ankles, and the tie rule was a problem at first. But I discovered clip-on ties. Thus I wore a tie when I entered the office each morning, but it came off the moment I was at my desk. If I had to go out on an interview or meet with the editors or someone coming into the office with a story, it was easy to tie that top shirt button and snap on the tie. I got away with it. But out of rebellion, I started selecting the gaudiest colored ties I could find, and tried to wear them with contrasting colored shirts so the ties looked ridiculous. The other reporters noticed what I was doing and started doing the same thing. We were an odd-looking bunch when we all had our ties on.
Those were the days when the civil rights movement in America was heating up, and newspapers were hot to hire black reporters. The problem was that good black writers were few and far between. One day the Gazette managed to take on a young man who agreed to be “trained” in the newsroom. This guy didn’t know beans, but because he was black and willing to learn, he was the office mascot. The newspaper was sending him to college to study journalism while he worked at the newspaper. My desk was next to his, so I found myself writing many of his stories, as did other staff writers. We were always annoyed that our stories would appear with his photo-by-line. It was the Gazette’s way of telling the world that we were fair because we had a black writer on staff.
One day this young black man went off for a week of vacation, something that nobody else qualified for until after a year of employment. That was the kind of deal he was given just to get him to work there. But he was a fool. When he came back, he had grown a beard. When the editor ordered him to shave it off, he refused. They fired him on the spot. A few days later a notice went up on the bulletin board. It said beards and moustaches would now be allowed but they had to be kept neat and trimmed. Nearly every guy in the place grew a beard, including me. I have had mine ever since.
One of the reporters on staff was Lane Wick, who also transferred over from the News-Palladium. His desk was along one wall right beside a large second floor window that gave him clear view of the street below. What was funny about the view he had was that from where he sat, he could see right into the side windows of the cars that stopped at the light at the corner. Often attractive women would be stopped there with their skirts pulled up high over their legs, or they would be wearing shorts. When the view was especially good, Wick would shout out: “Red Alert!” and all of the male reporters would rush to his window to get a look.
My desk was located in the rear of the office, about three steps from the newspaper’s morgue, or library. They had a lady employed as our librarian. Her job was to clip stories from the newspaper every day and file them in a bank of file cabinets for future reference. The morgue was important in newspapers because reporters could use these files to get background information about ongoing events and thus a better understanding of the significance of whatever happened at government meetings and other events. The librarian also maintained a large coffee maker that always produced hot fresh coffee. To drink her coffee, we all had to belong to a club and agree to pay a nickel per cup. If we were broke we could drop IOU’s into the collection can and pay later. At the end of each year she usually made such a profit from all of the coffee sold that everybody who participated got a free frozen turkey for Christmas. It was a cool deal. And I became a coffee addict. I always had a cup of coffee at my side when working at that desk. That old habit has remained with me for the rest of my life.
When I arrived at the Gazette, my photography work ground to a stop. The newspaper had a staff of working photographers on duty so when we went out on assignment and wanted a picture, we took a photographer with us. I liked the arrangement at first because I didn’t know my way around town. I just let the photographer take me where I needed to go. But I missed shooting my own art.