Globe's roots

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Siobhan Moore, Ian Harvey and other "old fogies" were talking on Facebook recently about the Toronto Sun when it had its own presses and the joy of hearing them roar nightly beneath your feet.

This blogger can hear the young newsroom pups fresh off the streets moan about yet another TSF trip down memory lane, but if not for the dedication of newsrooms past, you might not have a job.

Which brings us to a favourite vintage news photo from the early 1960s, snapped by Bob Chow in the Globe and Mail newsroom when the morning paper was located on King St. W., just down the street from the Toronto Star.

This blogger is standing at the teletype machine checking copy while a hive of dedicated editors and other evening staffers do their stuff.

In the forefront, with back to camera, Web Anderson, a veteran rewrite man who took rewrite to a new level for several decades at the Globe.

First rim: Al Dawson in the slot and from his right to left: Photographer John Boyd?; Jim Knack, photo editor; unknown staffer; Joe Gelman; Tony Westall?; Bob Turnbull, city editor; Hugh Thompson, entertainment editor.

Second rim: Martin Lynch, the walking encyclopedia, in the slot and copy editors from his left to right, unknown; Barry Zwicker; unknown; David Spurgeon; unknown; Mike Hanlon; Lex Schrag; unknown; Eric Dowd. 

In the background, Joan Holobon and Rosemary Converey are two of the three women.

It was definitely a different age for newspapers. Teletype machines, typewriters, pneumatic tubes linked to the composing room and a pressroom/newsroom intercom. 

New computerized tools of the trade for newsrooms today, but give the old fogies their memories of the vibrancy of newsrooms past.