To start with we used an old fashioned typewriter where every so often you had to buy new ribbons. We typed onto what was referred to as copy paper and which was cheap offcuts of paper. When you came to the end of a line a little bell sounded and you had to push the carriage back as many of you will remember.
So taking my first post at Lowestoft as an example. I would go out and cover an event or conduct an interview, come back to the office and type the story up on these small pieces of paper. It would usually be one paragraph per sheet and you would give each sheet a name and number as in say Steward 1, Steward 2 etc. You would also put the name of the newspaper it was for on the top. So LJ stood for Lowestoft Journal which was the paper I was working on at the time.
You would then fold the story and ensure all the sheets were in order and put it into a wire basket with all the other stories from other reporters and of course some of your own if you had written more than one.
Then your "copy" would either be sent to head office in Norwich where a team of sub editors (I later joined their ranks) would check them, altering grammar and spelling and re-writing where necessary or, in the case of the LJ, would be "subbed" on site by another member of staff.
If you had an unusual name you would write <correct> after it to tell the sub editor that you had checked the name and were aware of its unusual nature. Then your story would wing its way to Norwich, either by public bus or by newspaper van to be dealt with and typeset before appearing in the newspaper. All stories would be written in duplicate through the use of carbon paper which would be inserted between two pieces of copy paper. You would keep a copy in case the original got lost. After it had appeared in the paper you would put this second copy on what was known as "a spike" and was literally a metal spike set in a wood base. This would be in case there were any comebacks on the story. You would also spike press releases and information coming from outside sources. Every so often you would take stuff from the bottom of the spike and throw it away.
What a convoluted way of doing things that was. But your copy would go through many hands before it appeared in the paper. It would start with you and then be checked by the sub editor who would mark up type sizes and write headlines on it and any other instructions. It would then be typeset on, back in the old days, slugs of hot metal and then later bromide which was special pieces of paper (bromide) that would then be inserted onto giant pages because the bromide was sticky on the backside (oh matron). Before this took place it would be read by the checkers and then passed to the compositors who would do the pasting. Finally the pages would be checked once again by the sub editors before being approved. This process took a lot of effort by a lot of people.
Often a reporter (ie me) would get the dreaded call from a sub editor asking you all kinds of questions about the piece you had written. At Lowestoft of course this would be a face to face enquiry but at other places I worked such as Cromer and Beccles it would come via the telephone.
There was one particular sub editor who shall remain nameless who I hated with a passion. He was sarcastic and everyone winced when they got a call from him because they knew it would be an awkward one. I suffered under his hand at both Cromer and Beccles. I then left Norfolk and returned to take up posts in the Midlands before returning to Norwich as a sub editor and working alongside this man. We became firm friends once he realised I wasn't quite the idiot he thought I was and I realised he wasn't the moron I had painted him out to be.
Going back to Lowestoft and my first job, the sub editor there was a Welshman who could be very caustic. He had a booming Welsh voice along with rather long sideburns. I got on well with him for two reasons. Firstly we shared a love of football and shared the duties of covering Lowestoft Town who at the time were a top amateur team and secondly because there was a massive machine in the basement from which copy could be sent direct to headquarters. This sub editor just couldn't work this machine and I could. So every week I typed in his copy for the Green Un which was the weekly football paper for Ipswich and Suffolk. I sent my copy to the Pink Un which was the football paper for Norwich and Norfolk. Lowestoft FC had followers both in Norfolk and Suffolk. Today this monster machine would be overtaken by what became known as mobile phones!
Because of its length I'm going to split this blog into two - so more tomorrow.