[GreenKeys] Teletypes in Newspaper Operations

[dmm at lemur.com]

Because my interest in Teletypes derives from my interest in
Linotypes and other linecasting machinery, I posted a query 
to the "LETPRESS" list (devoted to letterpress printing, with a
strong contingent of "hot metal" folks) asking what the path was,
in detail, for a wire service story from the time it was printed
on the Teletype to the time it was handed to the Linotype operator
to be typeset.  I received several interesting responses, both
on that list and offlist.  One of them was particularly thorough.
I asked its author, William Tudor, if it would be ok for me to post
it to the Greenkeys list, and he very kindly agreed.  I hope that
it is as interesting to the list as it was to me.

Here, then, is how he describes the process:


> This may be more than you want to know, but -- I worked in various 
> editorial jobs in five different newspapers of various sizes. I'll 
> describe the wire-handling process of the one I knew best, a 
> medium-sized daily, morning and evening circulation of about 150,000.
> 
> The wire room contained about 15 teletype machines. The wire services 
> had multiple circuits for use by larger papers. We received the 
> Associated Press A wire, which carried the top national and 
> international news; the B wire, for lesser news, including texts of 
> presidential speeches, etc.; the C wire, for business news; the S wire, 
> for sports; the R wire, for horse-racing results; and two state wires 
> carrying news from our state and nearby states. We also received two UPI 
> circuits, the A and B wires, the New York Times News Service, and the 
> LATimes/Washington Post News Service. We also had two teletype receivers 
> connected to our news bureaus elsewhere in the state, and a Telex 
> machine. A busy and noisy place.
> 
> The wire room attendant/copy boy cut the stories off each machine when 
> they were complete and delivered them to the appropriate desk -- in our 
> case, the local desk, the news desk, the business desk, and the sports 
> department. Incidentally, the paper was color coded for easier 
> identification -- the AP machines uses white paper, UPI and LAT/WP 
> stories were on yellow, the NYT service was pink, and our bureau 
> machines used green paper. On the news desk the wire editor would sort 
> and compile the incoming stories. Until the high-speed wire receivers 
> were introduced in the 1970s most news stories moved in short pieces, 
> usually no longer than 30-40 lines, along with shorter takes for 
> corrections, updates, new ledes, etc. So a major news event would 
> produce a lot of pieces of paper. The news editor in would consult with 
> the wire editor on what stories to run. When a given story was selected, 
> the package would go to a copy editor, with instructions on trimming the 
> story to fit a given hole, and orders for the headline (plus, if 
> needed,  photo captions, index lines, and other matter). The various 
> pieces of the story would be pasted together to make a single take. Once 
> the story was edited, the news editor would take a second read-through 
> and toss it in a basket for a copy boy to send it to the composing room 
> via a pneumatic tube.
> 
> In the composing room the story first went to the copy cutter would sort 
> the incoming copy, sending headlines and captions to the appropriate 
> linecasters. The stories were cut into takes and given a letter-number 
> code -- for example, a 20-inch story might be cut into four takes, 
> labeled JJ-1 through JJ-4. The copy cutter had several galleys of 
> pre-set "sluglines" in 24-point type with those labels, and would send 
> them to the operators along with the copy. When the takes were complete 
> the operators would take them to the "dump bank" where another printer 
> would assemble the takes into order in a galley and pull several proofs 
> -- one for the spike there, one for the news room, and one that 
> accompanied the original copy into the proof-room, where it was read by 
> other printers classified as proofreaders. The marked-up proofs went to 
> a "ring machine" operator to set the corrections, which were inserted by 
> the bank man. Then the galley with the complete story was placed on 
> another bank and taken to the appropriate page.
> 
> All the original copy would remain in the proofroom. At the end of the 
> night, once the paper was on the press, all the copy was rolled up into 
> a cylinder, tied and labeled with the date, and kept there for a month 
> or two.
> 
> At that time -- the mid-1960s -- the only Teletypesetter copy we used 
> was for stock market tables and sports "agate": box scores, racing 
> results, etc. There was no Teletype printer associated with the market 
> tables, although I presume one would have been available had anyone 
> wanted one.
> 
> By the way, the wire services maintained their Teletypes, and supplied 
> the paper and ribbons. I would guess that we had an AP service man in 
> the office at least once a week for routine maintenance; he also handled 
> the NYT and LAT/WP machines. And we had several spares Teletypes and a 
> board with patch cables to route the various circuits to a working 
> machine, to avoid losing any incoming copy when a machine jammed or the 
> ribbon or paper had to be replaced.
> 
> Most of the papers that used Teletypesetter tape for their news stories 
> would have been smaller papers that subscribed to the "pony" wire, which 
> carried a selection of everything -- news, sports, business, weather, 
> etc., with a certain amount of time set aside each hour for state news.
> 
> After the high-speed data circuits became available in the 1970s the AP 
> began running everything but the market tables on a single high-speed 
> printer, at about 1,200 words a minute, or about 20 times the speed of 
> the old machines. These circuits were also run into computerized editing 
> systems, and in most papers, the paper copy disappeared.
>
> W G Tudor


Thanks again to William Tudor for such a detailed account.

Regards,
David M.
===
Dr. David M. MacMillan * dmm at lemur.com * www.lemur.com & www.CircuitousRoot.com

   First do no harm. (Primum non nocere.)
       - possibly Galen; see also Hippocrates (Epidemics, Bk. I, Sect. XI.)
   The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
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