I started working as a newspaper photographer in 1968. The type was lead. The stories were typeset on Lineotype machines. The typewriters in the newsroom were manual with a roll of newsprint to type on. When the story was finished the reporter just ripped the paper off using the typewriter’s paper bail. The “modern” newsroom was a bunch of desks jammed together in the middle of the room. No cubicles, no partitions and certainly no private offices. It was a different world from newspapers today.

Today newspapers are dying. And so are the people who worked for them back when they were the main source of news. Those old newsrooms created a certain type of person. Those old newsrooms are gone now. Those editors with the green eye shades and garters on their shirt sleeves have all shuffled off. But a bunch of us are still around. And newspaper people are interesting people. And they have stories to tell.

This blog will show you those news people...the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press...and let them tell you a little of their stories. Reporters, photographers, editors and also Lineotype operators, pressmen, engravers...anyone who worked putting out newspapers in the 1980s or earlier...back before the digital age changed everything.

I'm going to travel to meet those people and photograph them. And I'll take a recorder and ask each person I photograph to tell me some of their favorite stories from those days.

So, check back to meet these people and hear their stories. And if you are one of them...one of us...get in touch so I can come and hear your stories and take your photo for this blog. I hope you'll all participate as appropriate and help me find others who should participate. I hope when I finish that I'll have created something that you will all enjoy and that will pass along a little bit of who we were and what we did...and why it mattered in a world with no internet, no cell phones, no blogs, no CNN...

Monday, August 27, 2012

Timothy E. Black


Timothy E. Black
Photographer, The Newark (Ohio) Advocate, 1981-84
Freelance photographer in Columbus, Ohio, working frequently for the Associated Press, 1984-90
Photographer, Business First (Columbus, Ohio) weekly newspaper, 1986-89
Regional Photo Editor, the Associated Press, Chicago, 1990-94
Overnight Photo Supervisor for North America, the Associated Press, New York City, 1994-2006
Freelance photographer, Newark, Ohio, 2006-present

"Nowadays anybody with their telephone, with their computer, with anything, they can make an image.  I wouldn't necessarily say they are making a photograph.  Anybody can make an image and anybody can share it with anybody else.  It's no longer a precious thing.  It's just an image.

"Many times when I worked at the AP I would be called upon to scan pictures because someone died or something.  It always struck me when I called up our librarian and had him bring down a box full of negatives  and I'd be going through those looking for 'the' picture to send out on the wire because the first one you sent out was the one everyone used, whether it was the best one or not.  And it struck me time and time again that I'm holding this negative, and this negative was there and it has followed this route all the way to my hands 40, 50, 70 years later.  Holy cow.  I am physically connected to that event and to that person.  That doesn't happen any more because there is nothing physically moving from point A to point B.  It's all just electrons."          

Tim on what it takes to be a news photographer:  
"About 90 percent of it is being there and the vast majority of that is driving like Mario Andretti.  And then the other 10 percent is waiting.  And about 1 percent of it is actually making a picture and hopefully getting it in focus."


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