Rachman novel tells story I once lived

Sometimes a book can be valuable because it serves as a kind of time capsule. "Gone With the Wind" reminded us of the planter aristocrat culture of the U.S. South before the Civil War. No dripping sentiment called for there. It was a culture that deserved to die.
But for historical purposes it's nice that books are available to preserve it in our collective consciousness and give us perspective.
The aristocrats themselves didn't leave a big body of written work about their lives or culture. They were too lazy. Slaves did the heavy lifting of that economy.
At present there's a book called "The Imperfectionists." It too is about an institution and its culture that are sliding into obsolescence and irrelevance. It's about the newspaper industry. In its heyday it was so much more than a mere business.
This industry almost had an unfair advantage because it had such limited - nonexistent in many respects - competition. An institution with that kind of power and entitlement develops systems that aren't always subjected to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
Thus it can afford the luxury of missions and agendas that aren't bottom-line motivated. The Washington Post's pursuit of the Watergate truth reflected the power, prestige and entitlement of the "Fourth Estate" more than it reflected the pragmatic goals of a pure business enterprise.
Newspaper people could afford to be arrogant. They could engender fear in their pursuit of the vaunted "public's right to know."
Many newspaper publishers talk like they still have these attributes. They do not. The new communications technology has assaulted traditional newspapering in a rapid and unrelenting way.
Papers have only been able to fight back by cutting. It has worked to a certain extent, but the big question is how the ink-on-paper media can survive many more body blows (which surely are coming).
As this process continues, we can relish a book like "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman. The fictional newspaper in the book is a kind of throwback; it hasn't made many of the austerity moves yet. So it's a little like a time capsule that shows us the cumbersome, yes "imperfect" system for news dissemination that was once deemed necessary but is now "gone with the wind" (or getting there).
"The Imperfectionists" is about an international newspaper based in Rome. But it could be any newspaper from the heyday of that institution. One of the traits is that it employs characters.
Even our little newspaper in Morris, Minnesota, had its share of people with quirky personalities in the days before the corporate scalpel moved in.
Today the processes are all so precise and efficient, not that this is guaranteeing survival of the industry. A war analogy might be extreme but let me cite the German submarine commander in the movie "The Enemy Below." He was a middle-aged man with anxiety about where technological progress was taking us. He was concerned that tech progress had made killing too easy.
It's ironic because war technology has always been geared toward killing. But there was a time when firing a torpedo was like throwing at a row of bottles at a carnival stand. You could hardly be sure of the outcome. Advancing tech made the process more surgical and certain.
There are many "imperfections" in the process of legacy newspapering - layers of work that seem redundant or unnecessary now. But all these layers required people who worked at least a 40-hour week, tried their best, developed a bonding culture and enriched our lives in an albeit "imperfect" way with their product.
Hence "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman. It's a novel about "the quirky, maddening, endearing people who write and read" this fictional paper, according to a web account.
In a sense, I was dealing with those old-fashioned torpedoes when I managed the photography department of the Morris newspaper. That awkward and peril-filled process is truly "gone with the wind," replaced by no-risk digital cameras.
No time spent washing film or hanging it up to dry. No chemicals all of which have a shelf life and deteriorate faster in half-full bottles than in full ones. No more "bulk loading" film with the risk of it getting "fogged" (even in the best of hands).
Even the sharpest operations had photo disasters sometimes. I have read that much important film shot at the D-Day invasion in WWII was actually lost because of a common darkroom error. The primitive processes almost gave this field a special charm. You couldn't take good results for granted, so you felt exhilarated every time something turned out well.
Today people set high standards like they always should, but the tech hurdles are pretty much gone. The darkroom is "gone with the wind," so no more rubber gloves or work apron.
The obituary writer in Rachman's book seems hardly more alive than many of his subjects. Obit writing has faded as a specialty as funeral homes have taken it upon themselves to render a finished product in this regard. I was amazed while at the Morris paper to see funeral homes everywhere, within a short period of time, go from having conservative websites to quite dynamic and fluid ones, with polished obituaries posted in a timely way.
For a while this and other trends made newspaper work "easier." Ha! Yes, there's no more need for many of the tedious and "imperfect" layers of work in the system - layers that always presented the risk of getting things screwed up.
But the very technology that streamlined newspaper work enables the public to pretty much bypass newspapers themselves.
The story in Rachman's book "zooms in and out of the harried lives of newspaper employees who struggle to meet deadlines, break news and balance newsroom budgets as print circulation plummets and advertising dollars shrink," according to the web account.
The newspaper in the book doesn't have a website! How logical.
Newspaper employees historically embraced a certain fatalism in which they know their work is going to have some rough edges. You just rolled up your sleeves, focused, churned through a pile of raw material under deadline pressure and sat back and sighed, confident that you were a capable and efficient wordsmith but that you couldn't possibly bat a thousand.
You assumed the public would accept it. Their channels for feedback were limited too.
There was a "cool of the evening" satisfaction at the end, even with the realization that an "imperfection" or two were possible.
Where else could people find this stuff? Today information is ubiquitous. More of it comes from primary sources - people who can apply tender loving care, not with one eye on the clock. People write about their own specialties which is the way it should be. Why even talk to a newspaper writer who might be approaching a subject "cold?"
No one is under any obligation to talk to a newspaper writer. If you have information or background that would be of use to a broad audience, go online and write it up yourself. Interested people will find it.
Why trust a newspaper writer who may have a perspective or agenda different from yours? And he/she might have an uncomfortable deadline. That's not your problem.
Despite the numerous flaws and inefficiencies in the legacy newspaper model, it cultivated a work culture with unmistakable charm. The people definitely had passion for their work. At the same time they felt entitled. Writing seemed like an exclusive craft. Writers were supposed to hold our institutions accountable.
In many respects they did, but this was with the reinforcement by the paper's monopoly position.
Classified advertising? It's nearly "gone with the wind" due to Craigslist and the like. I read an article on the Poynter Institute website not long ago that talked about how the "swagger" we associated with newspaper writers was gone - "gone with the wind" I might suggest.
The article observed that newsrooms are now scared and meek places. The spectre of layoffs is always there.
Newspapers with no swagger are emasculated. Their talk about the "watchdog" role is empty now.
Community newspapers have strong incentive to kiss butt with local public officials, because they want to keep their legal notices business. Government is already in a position to bypass newspapers with this. And it has begun happening in a creeping sort of way. Eventually the severing will be complete. The biggest hurdle is to get past whining newspaper moguls, who cling to just enough power to intimidate. Time will solve this, plus austere local government budgets.
The slide will accelerate and there will be more newspaper layoffs - more consolidation.
No, newspapers aren't going to die tomorrow. They have become smaller and less relevant. They desperately try to shovel as much advertising (and those awful ad circulars) at us as they can. I wouldn't want to be a party to this.
I wait with anticipation for that weekly pile of ad circulars with our Morris paper to begin shriveling up, to ease the burden on our local waste disposal. Many of the circulars promote shopping outside of Morris. That seems counterproductive.
People who want to shop outside of Morris will do it anyway. It's not rocket science. You hop in the car and drive to Wal-Mart - interesting because Wal-Mart is actually one of the Alexandria businesses that doesn't have a circular with the Morris paper.
People can go online like to Yellowbook to find information they need in their day-to-day commerce. They don't need all this thrust at them one-way from the old, anachronistic newspaper business.
We all ought to be sick and tired of those "imperfectionists."
Can newspapers find the solutions to survive in some form?
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
-Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com