By WAYNE GREENE Senior Writer on Oct 30, 2008, at 8:31 AM Updated on 10/30 at 8:31 AM
WAYNE'S WORLD
Coworkers have been riding me all day that my American history quiz on Monday’s front page was too hard.
At first, ...
Healing historic injustices – whether they are five years old or 5,000 – starts with acknowledging them, a retired diplomat ...
The number of local homeowners who see their property tax assessments go up 5 percent automatically every year is decreasing, ...
Carter Bradley's memorial service is today in Oklahoma City. Bradley, 89, died Monday. He was a friend when I was starting out in the state capitol press room a long time ago.
He was, as today's generation would put it, old school.
He believed in leg work, line editing and news leads.
Carter, the late Ralph Sewell and the late Howard Wilson ran the Oklahoma Press Association's capitol news bureau back then. They wrote a column for weekly newspapers about what rural legislators were up to and where they stood on the major issues of the day.
In the capitol press room you're always trying to work on the sly. You wanted to get your copy out or the newsroom and into print before your competitors at the next desk figured out what was going on.
When you're working on a weekly product, like Carter was, that's all the more important because if you had anything good, you didn't want it completely stale before you got it published.
This would turn into comedy when Carter, Ralph and Howard – who were all a little hard of hearing – went to editing each other's copy.
They start loud and then go to really loud as they shouted questions at each other. Eventually, one of them would get upset and they would not only be shouting at each other, they'd be SHOUTING at each other.
By the end of the day, there weren't any secrets left in their office, but the rest of the press corps would respect their work because of the number of years they had put into the job.
Only active print or digital subscribers of the Tulsa World are allowed to post comments on stories posted to Tulsaworld.com. After you fill out the form below and click submit, your comment will be published instantly online along with your screen name.
By clicking "Submit" you are agreeing to our terms and conditions.
