Notebook: Where everybody knows your byline.
By Greg Campbell
1:05 a.m. MT Mar 26, 2008
I ran across a link to a video on MarketWatch.com the other day that detailed a disturbing trend in journalism that, once again, is being attributed to the rise of the Internet as a primary news source. I’m not talking about the death of the daily newspaper, I’m talking about the death of the newspaperman’s watering hole. It seems that the days of the besotted city desk editor who’s already deep in his cups by the noontime budget meeting is going the way of the inverted pyramid because taverns that cater to these red-nosed copy hounds are going out of business. Sure, cirrhosis of the liver is responsible for thinning the ranks of their patrons, but the more dastardly culprit is the Internet. Apparently, there’s no such thing anymore as going out for a few stiff ones after deadline, because there are no deadlines; news happens around the clock and the new generation of journalists damned well better be sober enough to rewrite a press release in under 85 seconds no matter what time it comes in.
Of course, I’d argue that most press releases would benefit from a six-pack rewrite, as would most round-the-clock news Web sites. And I’d further argue that the information age actually benefits the habits of a modern working journalist with a taste for Johnny Walker throughout the day. You can post stories from the bar on your Blackberry, after all, even though the tiny keys get pretty tricky once you get too deeply into Happy Hour.
Regardless, it seems my profession is turning teetotaler on me despite my own best personal attempts to buck the tide. At FC Now we have a standing happy hour once a week, but so far we’ve developed no real loyalty to any one establishment. If we’re going to christen an unofficial Fort Collins Press Club, it’s got to have just the right atmosphere. No “family dining” where we have to put up with people visiting their college kids at Homecoming. No live music to drown out our conflated tales of past assignments. And no college-night drinks specials to dilute the concentration of professional drinkers we can bring to bear on such a place.
And like any club, it will have rules, albeit loose and informal ones. The primary one is that all conversations and activities will be strictly off the record to encourage a convivial atmosphere amongst competitors. Anyone who violates that rule will be banned to drinking at Bennigan’s. We’ll also have to have some sort of deal with the bartenders who will be with it enough to tell editors calling for their court reporters at deadline that they haven’t seen them all day.
Of course, if it were left to me, I’d immediately nominate the Town Pump as the official freefire zone for the local press corps. It’s just the right size, it’s never too crowded that you can’t find a few seats side by side to bitch and moan about sources or editors, and I’ve already spent a few years priming the staff for the sort of oddball conversations they’re likely to overhear from media people. And since more often than not I end up sitting at the bar with Mayor Billy, they’re also nicely versed in the sort of excessive consumption that can break out from time to time. Best of all, they open at 3 p.m., the perfect hour to either breeze out of the office early for an “interview” that will last awhile, or to have a few strong belts before the deadline crunch. It also gives unlucky City Council reporters three solid hours of drinking before covering meetings ... remember what I said about six-pack rewrites? Imagine the color that can be injected into those stories.
Not wanting to speak for the entire press corps, however, I took the liberty of emailing a dozen or so friends in print, TV and radio for their input. The speed and enthusiasm with which some responded made me think I’d underestimated the need for such a place. I’ll let you know how the voting goes in a future column, but according to the response so far, rest assured that time-honored journalistic traditions seem to be alive and well in Fort Collins, the Internet be damned.
