P.S. A Column On Things

By PAUL E. SCHINDLER JR. I am from Portland, Oregon, Beaumont ’66, Benson High ’70, MIT ’74. Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things.

Writing too long? (1)

February 23, 2025

Who, me? Writing too long? Well yes, for most of my professional career. (see item above, with regard to writing songs too long)

There were a couple of exceptions. I cannot for the life of me remember whether, at The Tech, I called myself a “rotary shit-spewing machine” or whether that sobriquet was planted on me by someone else. One thing I know for sure, it came in handy when a new advertisement came in on production night. The number of news pages was always determined by the number of ad pages. We need to fill a page in the next hour or two. A tabloid newspaper page contains 80 inches of copy, 20 pages double-spaced with one inch margins. I filled the page in 90 minutes. I wrote as fast as I could type.

Posted at 9:15 pm Permalink 1 Comment

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A decade later, advertisers who wanted to make a given issue had to have copy in by 6pm (I think) the day before production night. The Night Editor would then get the ads poop (and copy for the prodstaff to paste up) and lay out the issue, announcing whether it was 8, 12, 16, 20 or more pages (mine was the Reagan Era of "baby-killer" ads plus the explosion of hi-tech, so we put out some giant, ad-dense issues).

Posted by: Robert E. MalchmanFebruary 24, 2025 at 07:17 AM

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Paul E. Schindler Jr.

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