I am now engaged to be married to Joni Morter, I've spent some time considering things other than beverages (I know, hard to believe, ain't it?), and I'm about 17,000 words into a novel project that has been in the works for some time, now. All in all, I'd say things are as good as they can be.
In the spirit of posting things online that are actually worth reading, I offer my most recent piece of short non-fiction. Keep your eyes peeled here to find the latest updates on new short fiction, non-fiction essays, and, of course, Stull. Now, for your viewing pleasure, please enjoy a free reading of my experience at the Lawrence Journal-World in the following unpublished article, The Day the World Moved. Please note that this was not published anywhere, so the names of the innocent have not been changed to protect anyone or anything. Hope you enjoy.
The Day the World Moved
By Jonathan Tipton
When I first started working in the
mailroom for the Journal-World in 2012, I met a man by the name of Arthur
Polk. In his 60’s, Art was a
man of few words; even fewer printable ones.
Blue-collar to his core, Art had worked off and on for the Journal-World
for over 15 years delivering, driving, manufacturing, and doing all of the
things that get the news directly to people’s front steps. I worked with this guy three or four times
before he started to call in due to shoulder pain. After a couple of months, we found out Art
had been diagnosed with cancer. Indeed,
Art’s story ended shortly following the news, and the next time we
saw anything about him was in the obituary section of the Journal-World. To
make matters worse, we learned that his family was not his biggest fan. They
arranged for no burial plot, no viewing, not even a funeral service. It was
sad. There were the feelings that somehow things just weren’t
fair.
In the 1890’s, when the
Journal-World first began to print in Lawrence, an industry was born. Still reeling from the social and political
backlash of the Civil War, the Journal-World represented to Kansas an
independent voice standing as an incarnate example of the freedoms our founding
fathers fought so hard to earn. It was
also the beginning of something exciting and new for Lawrence, a thing that
would build character for the people of our fair city for generations. Now, since mid-January, the printing presses
of the Journal-World have shut their doors, leaving the pressman and mailroom
staff to fend for ourselves. To me, and
to the 37 other full-time employed pressman and mailroom workers and managers,
it, again, almost seems unfair. Here we
are, having developed the craft of newspaper-making, having learned the
intricacies of operating a press and industrial inserting machines, having
honed all the skills of manufacturing newspapers, only to find that we would be
the last generation of workers to do so.
When I first heard the news, I couldn’t help but think what colorful remarks
Art would have had, had he been around long enough to hear it.
During the overnight shift, I once
found myself weighing out individual papers to calculate shipping when I
noticed an award sitting on a columnist's desk. I took a closer look at the
title of the article, heavily conscious of the new developments in the
industry. The article, an inspirational call to attention about 9/11, was
titled The Day the World Moved. I don’t disagree with the statements that
article had to make. I do, however, feel
that this may be the most appropriate time to borrow the title. I suggest to you that perhaps the World did
not, in fact, move that day. But it did,
for all of us, in mid-January. So…
is it over?
Of course not. There will always be news, and in this modern
age of the Twitter-sphere and Facebook, news is not only available, but in high
demand; higher demand than ever, in fact. The staff writers will still tell us all
where the Best Bets are, people will still struggle to scratch out the
incorrect answers in the crossword puzzle, and recipes for bacon-wrapped items
will still fill the pages of our beloved newspaper. We, the pressman and mailroom workers, will
all find our new places in this new world.
The manufacturing sector will still employ the hard-willed,
hard-working, hard-scrabble ruffians who need some character-building. It will be sad to know that the rhythmic hiss
and pump of the press won’t be heard in the streets of Mass at
midnight, but it will be a chapter in the Journal-World’s life that
will be just as exciting as it was when the press fired up to turn metal on the
first early editions in the 1890’s.
In the movie Ghostbusters,
Jeannine, the secretary, strikes up a conversation with Dr. Egon Spenglar about
what kinds of books he’s reading, Spenglar’s
response is, “Print is dead.”
How prophetic, given that the film was made almost 30 years ago, and
printed media all over the world steadily declines today. Underqualified though I may be, I
respectfully submit that I disagree with Dr. Spenglar. Print will always exist, whether it’s
on paper, or it’s on an iPad. That is
the freedom that our founding fathers sought to protect, and that’s
the freedom the Journal-World will still employ in its daily journey to feed
hungry Lawrencian masses starving for information. In fact, I'd go so far as to
say that print is less dead, now, than is Dr. Egon Spenglar.
This story is not about the death
of print, or of Art Polk, or of any of us in the press and mailroom. This story is about the day the World
moved. Indeed, it is not over. It’s just moving. It always has, and it always will. We lament
those who have fallen. We are moved by
these stories, we are moving forward with our own new stories, and we will
continue to move forward as long as there are stories worth telling and people
who find them worth reading. This brings
me to my final point.
You, the people of Lawrence, have
all been a part of this journey, and we have taken it together with you. I, for one, know that there’s
nothing more fulfilling than knowing that you’ve done a job well and getting the
recognition for having done so. After
122 years, you still read the Journal-World's printed words on your tablets, on
your smart phones, on your computer screens, or even on your hard-copy porch
drops. The World's stories are worth
telling because the people make them happen. The World writes them. We just
printed them. Even though we can no longer print the news, we can all still be
a part of it like we all are. Thank you for giving us news to print (however it
was/is printed). Thank you for trusting
us to create and distribute the premier news source in our fair city for twelve
decades. Thank you for letting us deliver the news to you as we all adapt to
the 21st century. We are
eternally grateful to the World, as we know the World was to us.
