On the Sandusky Beat
From James Donahue’s Journal
My morning routine at the bureau was to walk to the Sheriff’s Department, located directly behind the courthouse, go into the dispatcher’s room and read the night log. This is a report of all of the calls received and the general operations of the police. Sanilac County’s dispatcher handled more than just police matters. Every city and village police department call, fire call, ambulance call in the county and even some calls forwarded to the Michigan State Police came through that one dispatcher. Consequently, that log book gave me a lot of important information within a few short minutes.
The dispatcher on in the morning on most weekdays was a no-nonsense woman that I knew would be a key to my success as a police reporter. It took a while but I eventually won her trust and friendship. She made sure that I was called when something important was going on anywhere in the county.
Once I read the log I could pick out certain incidents and ask to read the report left by the officers who responded. On the fire calls, I had a list of all of the fire chiefs and called them for information. Every fire department in the county was a volunteer unit so this usually involved tracking the chiefs or assistant chiefs down at their place of work.
The second stop in my morning rounds was across the courthouse lawn to the State Police post. I found these officers friendly and helpful, especially in the early years of my beat. A desk sergeant told me there was always a coffee pot on in a small room off from the main desk, and that I was welcome to hang my own cup on the wall with those of the officers.
After that my routine involved a brisk walk back to my office where I typed up any police or fire stories gleaned from my stops and then sent them over the teletype to the Port Huron office. Once this was accomplished, my day often involved stops at the courthouse, city hall or calls to school superintendents, city, village or township officials to gather stories about decisions made at council or school board meetings, or pick up court news. I made regular stops to District Court to collect lists of arraignments and sentencing, attended Circuit Court criminal arraignments and sentencing every Monday morning, County Board of Commissioner meetings every Wednesday, and city council and school board meetings, usually always on Monday nights and sometimes two or three nights other nights during the week.
Sanilac County is the largest county per square mile in the State of Michigan. It is primarily an agricultural area. I covered three cities; Sandusky, Brown City, and Croswell, plus the villages of Applegate, Deckerville, Carsonville, Lexington, Marlette, Peck, Melvin and Minden. There were something like thirty townships, seven school districts and an Intermediate School District within my “government” beat. My duties also took me north into neighboring Huron County when major events were happening anywhere from Bad Axe north to Port Austin and east to Harbor Beach. Little wonder that I needed a car on that job.
This was the way things were when I began my job at Sandusky. As time went on, there were some dramatic changes made in the way I operated, the newspaper I worked for, and the people I had to deal with.
When I first worked for the Times Herald it was a family-owned operation located in an almost historic old building located about a block off of the main downtown part of Port Huron and just south of the Black River. The newsroom was on the second floor. The old wooden floor boards creaked when we walked on them. Behind the news room was a bank of linotype machines and hot lead tables where each page of the day’s paper was put together as the stories were written and passed on. The printing press was located on the main floor right under the newsroom. When the presses began to roll at about noon, the entire building rumbled and shook. It was always an exciting time when this happened because another publication of a daily newspaper was successfully completed. The place looked just as I remembered it when I had worked there right after graduation from college.
What I did not know until I arrived was that the newspaper had just been purchased by the Gannet Newspaper Chain, a massive media corporation headquartered in New York that was quickly becoming the largest chain of newspapers, radio stations and television stations in the world. That purchase was not felt in Port Huron for the first few years, but when it came, it brought drastic and dramatic changes to everything we did.
There apparently was an urban renewal program going on in the old downtown district of Port Huron and the Gannet Corporation took advantage of it to purchase the entire city block of property on Main Street, adjacent to the old Times Herald building. On this property was constructed a massive new building, complete with a modern computerized complex, new rotary presses and a giant satellite dish on the roof. Port Huron became one of many newspaper offices in the country to receive and publish daily editions of USA Today, in addition to The Times Herald. USA Today was transmitted to the paper via that satellite dish.
When I started my job my morning story deadline was 10 a.m. for most copy and I could still make a front page spot on a major story by 11 a.m. That was when the paper was still using the old linotype and hot lead system. The newspaper arrived in town by about 3 p.m., just in time for the paper boys getting out of school to grab their bundles and circulate the papers from door-to-door.
As things progressed, and we moved into the new computerized systems, my deadline moved up an hour to 9 a.m. with front page copy still accepted by 10 a.m. Later, as newer advancements were made, my deadline was set at 9 a.m. for everything. The newspapers now arrived in town after 4 p.m. and sometimes later. They said the early deadlines were going to be temporary but they remained permanently in place. That altered the kind of coverage we could give to any late-breaking story, and it forced me to stay up late on nights when important events occurred during night meetings. These stories had to be written and filed before I went to bed, and I had to be up and back on the job by 8 a.m. every day at the latest. Some mornings I didn’t have the time to personally make my police rounds so I did them by telephone.
Progress also eroded my way of operating in Sandusky. I eventually lost my company car and they began paying mileage because I was forced to use our personal car to cover the beat. That meant keeping a constant log of every mile driven. When rushing off to a fire or a bad wreck, I never remembered to take a moment to write down the reading on my odometer before going off to the scene. I found myself guessing at my mileage each week when it was time to turn in my mileage forms with my time card.
The Times Herald originally paid everybody a Christmas bonus at the end of every year. This was equivalent to an extra week of pay and was always handy to help cover the cost of Christmas or prepare for dealing with the IRS at tax time. It was not long before Gannet did away with the bonus. We received a slight increase in salary in its place.
The equipment I used in the office changed over the years as well. First I was provided an IBM electric typewriter that replaced my old Royal. I got one because every desk in the office was equipped with these new typewriters. The idea was that the machines were designed to feed information directly into computerized readers in the main office that were supposed to speed up operations. That was one of the times we had our deadline set back an hour. I didn’t need such a typewriter because I was still transmitting my copy via the old teletype. They changed this when they provided my office with a scanner that read typed page copy and transmitted it over a telephone wire.
I didn’t have that long because the next thing that arrived was a very early computer. It was such a simplified device it amounted to nothing more than a word processer. It had a small screen with green letters over a black background. The computer, itself, was enclosed in a very large box. I was able, for the first time, to send copy from a computer over a telephone wire into a mainframe computer in the new Port Huron newspaper office. The computer room there was massive. Who could have guessed the quick advancement of communication devices when that building was built?
This early computer was eventually replaced by another more complex computer that utilized the old MS-DOS operating system that took the mind of a rocket scientist to operate. I had to spend a week with all of the other staffers attending classes in Port Huron just to learn how to use the thing. In the meantime I had been using a used Macintosh computer at home and replaced it with an improved Apple computer. It was so much easier to use I brought it to the office, experimented with utilizing the telephone line to contact the mainframe and found that it was workable. I stopped using that monster and used my old Macintosh to write my stories instead.
Thus I think I have covered the nuts and bolts of the job and how I did my work. The real stories about what occurred there should make better reading.
From James Donahue’s Journal
My morning routine at the bureau was to walk to the Sheriff’s Department, located directly behind the courthouse, go into the dispatcher’s room and read the night log. This is a report of all of the calls received and the general operations of the police. Sanilac County’s dispatcher handled more than just police matters. Every city and village police department call, fire call, ambulance call in the county and even some calls forwarded to the Michigan State Police came through that one dispatcher. Consequently, that log book gave me a lot of important information within a few short minutes.
The dispatcher on in the morning on most weekdays was a no-nonsense woman that I knew would be a key to my success as a police reporter. It took a while but I eventually won her trust and friendship. She made sure that I was called when something important was going on anywhere in the county.
Once I read the log I could pick out certain incidents and ask to read the report left by the officers who responded. On the fire calls, I had a list of all of the fire chiefs and called them for information. Every fire department in the county was a volunteer unit so this usually involved tracking the chiefs or assistant chiefs down at their place of work.
The second stop in my morning rounds was across the courthouse lawn to the State Police post. I found these officers friendly and helpful, especially in the early years of my beat. A desk sergeant told me there was always a coffee pot on in a small room off from the main desk, and that I was welcome to hang my own cup on the wall with those of the officers.
After that my routine involved a brisk walk back to my office where I typed up any police or fire stories gleaned from my stops and then sent them over the teletype to the Port Huron office. Once this was accomplished, my day often involved stops at the courthouse, city hall or calls to school superintendents, city, village or township officials to gather stories about decisions made at council or school board meetings, or pick up court news. I made regular stops to District Court to collect lists of arraignments and sentencing, attended Circuit Court criminal arraignments and sentencing every Monday morning, County Board of Commissioner meetings every Wednesday, and city council and school board meetings, usually always on Monday nights and sometimes two or three nights other nights during the week.
Sanilac County is the largest county per square mile in the State of Michigan. It is primarily an agricultural area. I covered three cities; Sandusky, Brown City, and Croswell, plus the villages of Applegate, Deckerville, Carsonville, Lexington, Marlette, Peck, Melvin and Minden. There were something like thirty townships, seven school districts and an Intermediate School District within my “government” beat. My duties also took me north into neighboring Huron County when major events were happening anywhere from Bad Axe north to Port Austin and east to Harbor Beach. Little wonder that I needed a car on that job.
This was the way things were when I began my job at Sandusky. As time went on, there were some dramatic changes made in the way I operated, the newspaper I worked for, and the people I had to deal with.
When I first worked for the Times Herald it was a family-owned operation located in an almost historic old building located about a block off of the main downtown part of Port Huron and just south of the Black River. The newsroom was on the second floor. The old wooden floor boards creaked when we walked on them. Behind the news room was a bank of linotype machines and hot lead tables where each page of the day’s paper was put together as the stories were written and passed on. The printing press was located on the main floor right under the newsroom. When the presses began to roll at about noon, the entire building rumbled and shook. It was always an exciting time when this happened because another publication of a daily newspaper was successfully completed. The place looked just as I remembered it when I had worked there right after graduation from college.
What I did not know until I arrived was that the newspaper had just been purchased by the Gannet Newspaper Chain, a massive media corporation headquartered in New York that was quickly becoming the largest chain of newspapers, radio stations and television stations in the world. That purchase was not felt in Port Huron for the first few years, but when it came, it brought drastic and dramatic changes to everything we did.
There apparently was an urban renewal program going on in the old downtown district of Port Huron and the Gannet Corporation took advantage of it to purchase the entire city block of property on Main Street, adjacent to the old Times Herald building. On this property was constructed a massive new building, complete with a modern computerized complex, new rotary presses and a giant satellite dish on the roof. Port Huron became one of many newspaper offices in the country to receive and publish daily editions of USA Today, in addition to The Times Herald. USA Today was transmitted to the paper via that satellite dish.
When I started my job my morning story deadline was 10 a.m. for most copy and I could still make a front page spot on a major story by 11 a.m. That was when the paper was still using the old linotype and hot lead system. The newspaper arrived in town by about 3 p.m., just in time for the paper boys getting out of school to grab their bundles and circulate the papers from door-to-door.
As things progressed, and we moved into the new computerized systems, my deadline moved up an hour to 9 a.m. with front page copy still accepted by 10 a.m. Later, as newer advancements were made, my deadline was set at 9 a.m. for everything. The newspapers now arrived in town after 4 p.m. and sometimes later. They said the early deadlines were going to be temporary but they remained permanently in place. That altered the kind of coverage we could give to any late-breaking story, and it forced me to stay up late on nights when important events occurred during night meetings. These stories had to be written and filed before I went to bed, and I had to be up and back on the job by 8 a.m. every day at the latest. Some mornings I didn’t have the time to personally make my police rounds so I did them by telephone.
Progress also eroded my way of operating in Sandusky. I eventually lost my company car and they began paying mileage because I was forced to use our personal car to cover the beat. That meant keeping a constant log of every mile driven. When rushing off to a fire or a bad wreck, I never remembered to take a moment to write down the reading on my odometer before going off to the scene. I found myself guessing at my mileage each week when it was time to turn in my mileage forms with my time card.
The Times Herald originally paid everybody a Christmas bonus at the end of every year. This was equivalent to an extra week of pay and was always handy to help cover the cost of Christmas or prepare for dealing with the IRS at tax time. It was not long before Gannet did away with the bonus. We received a slight increase in salary in its place.
The equipment I used in the office changed over the years as well. First I was provided an IBM electric typewriter that replaced my old Royal. I got one because every desk in the office was equipped with these new typewriters. The idea was that the machines were designed to feed information directly into computerized readers in the main office that were supposed to speed up operations. That was one of the times we had our deadline set back an hour. I didn’t need such a typewriter because I was still transmitting my copy via the old teletype. They changed this when they provided my office with a scanner that read typed page copy and transmitted it over a telephone wire.
I didn’t have that long because the next thing that arrived was a very early computer. It was such a simplified device it amounted to nothing more than a word processer. It had a small screen with green letters over a black background. The computer, itself, was enclosed in a very large box. I was able, for the first time, to send copy from a computer over a telephone wire into a mainframe computer in the new Port Huron newspaper office. The computer room there was massive. Who could have guessed the quick advancement of communication devices when that building was built?
This early computer was eventually replaced by another more complex computer that utilized the old MS-DOS operating system that took the mind of a rocket scientist to operate. I had to spend a week with all of the other staffers attending classes in Port Huron just to learn how to use the thing. In the meantime I had been using a used Macintosh computer at home and replaced it with an improved Apple computer. It was so much easier to use I brought it to the office, experimented with utilizing the telephone line to contact the mainframe and found that it was workable. I stopped using that monster and used my old Macintosh to write my stories instead.
Thus I think I have covered the nuts and bolts of the job and how I did my work. The real stories about what occurred there should make better reading.