Late Edition
A Love Story
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A loving and laughter-filled trip back to a lost American time when the newspaper business was the happiest game in town.
In a warm, affectionate true-life tale, New York Times bestselling author Bob Greene (When We Get to Surf City, Duty, Once Upon a Town) travels back to a place where—when little more than a boy—he had the grand good luck to find himself surrounded by a brotherhood and sisterhood of wayward misfits who, on the mezzanine of a Midwestern building, put out a daily newspaper that didn't even know it had already started to die.
"In some American cities," Greene writes, "famous journalists at mighty and world-renowned papers changed the course of history with their reporting." But at the Columbus Citizen-Journal, there was a willful rejection of grandeur—these were overworked reporters and snazzy sportswriters, nerve-frazzled editors and insult-spewing photographers, who found pure joy in the fact that, each morning, they awakened to realize: "I get to go down to the paper again."
At least that is how it seemed in the eyes of the novice copyboy who saw romance in every grungy pastepot, a symphony in the song of every creaking typewriter. With current-day developments in the American newspaper industry so grim and dreary, Late Edition is a Valentine to an era that was gleefully cocky and seemingly free from care, a wonderful story as bracing and welcome as the sound of a rolled-up paper thumping onto the front stoop just after dawn.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greene, a veteran Chicago columnist and author (When We Get to Surf City), offers a glowing tribute to the glory days of America's newspapers and the simpler society they so aptly reflected. Currently a CNN contributor, he remembers his days as a copyboy and other apprentice positions at the Columbus Citizen-Journal and the Columbus Dispatch, two rival newspapers in Ohio's capital city, with the noisy reporters, prying editors, artful pressmen and artisans in the composing room. Greene laments the passing of a proud tradition from the peak year of 1984 with 63.3 million circulation sliding to 50.7 million per day, noting its generational gap of 63.7% of daily readers being 55 years or older contrasted with 33% of readers ages 25 37. Refreshing, respectful and comical, Greene's press-time recollections are meant to be read slowly and savored as the current chaotic computerized information business replaces newsprint, banner headlines and night owl editions.