History in a Hurry

Gimme Rewrite Sweetheart and Front Page Girl are good old-fashioned books, meaning you can't judge 'em by their covers.

Doris O'Donnell and Don Bean have lived - and written - enough history to fully appreciate the current state of journalism, and both are honest enough to admit they can't predict the future of the game. When O'Donnell and Bean started writing for Cleveland newspapers, that's what it was called: the newspaper game.

There were three - count 'em, three - daily newspapers in Cleveland when Bean and O'Donnell got started in the game. The players weren't perfect and the papers weren't unbiased, but they had plenty of watchdogs on staff. As Bean ruefully points out, in his reporting era  reporters would measure the depth of the concrete on the street. And if it wasn't what the taxpayers had coming to them, well, somebody would print it.

In her book, O'Donnell describes discrimination in the business, certainly, but she also describes a business with a lot of principles. Regardless of sex, reporters were supposed to consider themselves representatives of the community. While female reporters were expected to wear white gloves and hats and to say "Yes ma'am" and "No sir," they were also tough enough to measure the concrete on the street and find out just what was buried in Sam Sheppard's backyard. (That's a teaser. Read the book.) They were also given an unbelievably long time to get a story. It's unbelievable today, anyway.

Bean and O'Donnell both spoke at today's meeting of Ohio Professional Writers, attended by about a dozen current college students (journalism majors) and many more with hair long gone gray, fellow journalists who were getting their first beats about the time O'Donnell and Bean were retiring.

O'Donnell likes to say journalism is history in a hurry. And while it's hurrying faster than ever before, it's not dead yet. We can hope that among today's budding journalists are some visionaries who see the value in the old, and a way to make it new again.

The plea from this graying writer: HURRY.