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Any old ex-hacks out there?

chordstrangler 20 Jan 01 - 08:49 PM
kendall 20 Jan 01 - 09:00 PM
Inukshuk 20 Jan 01 - 09:01 PM
Allan C. 20 Jan 01 - 09:03 PM
Sorcha 20 Jan 01 - 09:13 PM
catspaw49 20 Jan 01 - 09:22 PM
Peter K (Fionn) 20 Jan 01 - 10:03 PM
flattop 20 Jan 01 - 10:15 PM
Allan C. 20 Jan 01 - 10:27 PM
kendall 20 Jan 01 - 11:29 PM
katlaughing 21 Jan 01 - 12:10 AM
wysiwyg 21 Jan 01 - 12:11 AM
Chocolate Pi 21 Jan 01 - 01:35 PM
McGrath of Harlow 21 Jan 01 - 02:15 PM
chordstrangler 21 Jan 01 - 03:23 PM
Liz the Squeak 21 Jan 01 - 04:48 PM
Giac 21 Jan 01 - 05:01 PM
Cool Beans 21 Jan 01 - 06:12 PM
ddw 21 Jan 01 - 07:10 PM
McGrath of Harlow 21 Jan 01 - 07:50 PM
chordstrangler 21 Jan 01 - 09:35 PM
wysiwyg 22 Jan 01 - 12:38 AM
zonahobo 22 Jan 01 - 01:35 AM
Sourdough 22 Jan 01 - 03:31 AM
chordstrangler 22 Jan 01 - 06:05 PM
wysiwyg 22 Jan 01 - 07:06 PM
Peter K (Fionn) 22 Jan 01 - 07:17 PM
zonahobo 22 Jan 01 - 10:40 PM
GUEST,dick greenhaus 22 Jan 01 - 10:45 PM
ddw 22 Jan 01 - 11:49 PM
Amos 23 Jan 01 - 12:09 AM
Gervase 23 Jan 01 - 05:39 AM
McGrath of Harlow 23 Jan 01 - 05:59 AM
Pinetop Slim 23 Jan 01 - 10:22 AM
chordstrangler 23 Jan 01 - 03:15 PM
wysiwyg 23 Jan 01 - 03:46 PM
Peter K (Fionn) 24 Jan 01 - 07:02 AM
GUEST,Colin Randall 13 May 08 - 01:44 PM
Colin Randall 14 May 08 - 12:30 AM
GUEST,Guest Gweltas1 14 May 08 - 12:36 AM
GUEST,Chicken Charlie 14 May 08 - 08:07 PM
GUEST,.gargoyle 15 May 08 - 05:52 PM
Cool Beans 15 May 08 - 06:42 PM
Teribus 15 May 08 - 08:35 PM
Ebbie 16 May 08 - 12:02 AM
Stilly River Sage 16 May 08 - 12:09 AM
GUEST,.gargoyle 16 May 08 - 12:44 AM
GUEST,.gargoyle 16 May 08 - 12:55 AM
Teribus 16 May 08 - 03:43 AM
Ebbie 16 May 08 - 03:41 PM
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Subject: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: chordstrangler
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 08:49 PM



I hope that this isn't a dumb idea. If it is, or if it has been done before, please forgive me.

As a newcomer to Mudcat I have been lurking in the shadows for a month or two like a blushing young maiden mad to join the party but a bit too shy. Anyway, now I have plucked up my courage and so, here goes.

As an ex-hack having spent over 20 years in daily journalism before fleeing too early and too late to the hills and sea, I cannot escape the conviction that there are more than a few ex-hacks in the ranks of the Mudcat fraternity. As I read the threads I cannot escape the familiar recognition of the haunted hands of hackery. It takes one to know one!

Am I right ? I dunno. I hope that this is not a bad idea. If it is, feel free to consign me to the virtual Coventry where I shall loudly lament and lick my cyber wounds.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: kendall
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 09:00 PM

a hack in the USA is a cab driver, or, a flunky.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Inukshuk
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 09:01 PM

Who are you trying to kid? There's no such thing as an ex-hack. I'm the president of our local Writers' Circle and one of our members, well into her eighties, has just accepted a job with a small town weekly. Just let your eloquence flourish! You must be a mandolin player.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Allan C.
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 09:03 PM

As I get it, a hack can be a commercial writer, a cab driver, or a saddle horse. I fully suspect you will find all three here. I presume you mean the writer variety. I know of one former newspaper editor who is now freelancing, one other freelancer, one former cabby and a number of horses (or, at least, portions thereof). I, myself, have only ever written one news article that was published.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 09:13 PM

(also computer breakers)


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 09:22 PM

Welcome to the 'Cat! One definite hack you'll find who just struck out into some different things is GERVASE in London, and he's really a super guy. You might send him a Personal Message in case he doesn't see this thread.

Spaw


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 10:03 PM

Me too, I'm afraid. No harm saying so - I was "outed" by Brendy months ago.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: flattop
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 10:15 PM

Isn't WyoWoman still in journalism?


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Allan C.
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 10:27 PM

BTW, I wasn't paid for that one article so I guess that eliminates me altogether.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: kendall
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 11:29 PM

What happened to Brendy?


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 12:10 AM

Yeah, Wyo Woman is freelancing, as am I....welcome to the Mudcat...Once A Hack, Always A Hack, eh? No Coventry for you and glad you've joined us!

kat/katlaughing


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 12:11 AM

Copy writer, copy editor, proofreader, print production manager, markup.... technical writing... grants... speeches... then PR. I used to call it being a wordmonger.

(Rant on):

Now, however, I prefer the term Media Slut. A Red Cross press campaign and multiple releases churned out within a half hour of a fatal housefire-- to raise money of course-- and dispatching another caseworker to help the fam instead of going to help them myself-- when your hands get that dirty, you're past hack all the way to sloppy seconds.

(Rant off.) I suppose since I don't talk about this side of my experience it's only fair I get tagged as a pollyanna. Surprise!

~S~


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Chocolate Pi
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 01:35 PM

Sorcha: This is a hotly disputed term in computer-land. "Hack" is a verb, and in its original sense means "to do something clever or unsuspected." MIT's big pranks (i.e. cows/telephone booths/police cars on the big dome, disruptions of Harvard/Yale football games with weather balloons and marching bands) are called hacks. Jargon File: Hack

Malicious attacks compromising the security of systems are called "cracks," and their perpetrators "crackers" or "script kiddies" (the latter is used in the case of those (usually early-teenaged boys) who find and use automated scripts where all they have to do is type go. Jargon File: cracker and script kiddies.



Chocolate Pi


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 02:15 PM

I'm another. Ten years, and then I sidestepped into social work. Which has a lot in common - in both jobs you get paid to poke your nose into other people's affairs, and then go back and write it up, you spend a lot of time talking to people who don't much want to talk to you, and a lot of time on the telephone.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: chordstrangler
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 03:23 PM

Thanks for the response and for not sending me to virtual Coventry. My instincts were proved right.

By the way, since forsaking the newsroom and heading for the hills and sea I have been making a somewhat precarious living as a freelance columnist and singer/songwriter. I have occasionally wondered if the disciplines of a journalistic past have had a positive or negative effect on songwriting.

Coming from a discipline of the five W's (Who, What, Where, Why, When and How Much) must have some effect. Does it? Has anybody else encountered this? I'd love to know.

Yes, I do play the mandolin - badly


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 04:48 PM

Gervase has done a wee bit of hacking in his time......

LTS

The only hacking I've done is the coughing sort....


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Giac
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 05:01 PM

Born into 1940s hot type; flat-bed, hand fed; AP stringer when it meant something; NPPA; daily obit writer to news editor in a few years; editor (which meant I did everything -- write, typeset, pasteup, darkroom, photos, printer's devil, address, take to post office then sweep the floors) of weekly where a war was waged, and won, against a crooked politician.

Woke up one morning and realized I had been doing that for 40 years. Moved to the mountains the next week. Write for my own amusement. The term "hack" was used when I was coming up, but usually meant an itenerant reporter, or one who could churn out volumes of trite phrasing -- hackneyed writing. Don't know which came first, hack or hackneyed.

"It was a bright and sunny day when the elderly man with snow-white hair pulled his aging sedan into the path of the speeding teenagers, and the sun was still shining when two of the children lost their lives..."

He was fired, but rehired two hours later because there was no one else to cover the city council meeting.

Editing puts a crimp in song writing for me, I'm too damn picky about phrasing, syntax, etc. Can't just let it flow, although I've written a couple that aren't too bad.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 06:12 PM

I'm a theater critic, full-time, paid. Formerly a copy editor, assistant city editor, weekly editor, feature writer, reporter, freelance writer. Well, I still freelance a little. Friend of mine who now writes for TV Guide, observing head-shots of herself and three other critics who were all then at the same newspaper, proclaimed it "Mount Hackmore."


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: ddw
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 07:10 PM

Not ex — still at it. Reporter for 10 years (12, if you count the two in broadcast before I switched to print) and an editor for the last 16 or so. Keep hoping to be an ex soon, but can't convince anybody to give me a sufficiently golden handshake, so — unless I win a lottery — still have seven and a half years to go.

david


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 07:50 PM

Songwriting. Maybe for some sings anyway - it does tie in with getting into the story quickly, and recognising whwere you can leave out stuff to make it balance better, and putting in telltale details and so forth.

Hack - short for hackney, and like that word, a term for a run-of-the-mill horse, especially those hired out. It might be linked to the Latin word for horse, equus."a drudge, a hireling".


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: chordstrangler
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 09:35 PM

Giac, I'd love to see one or two. Is that possible ?


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 12:38 AM

Giac can take you with her to anywhen she's been. I prize her e-mails like emeralds and sapphires.

~S~


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: zonahobo
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 01:35 AM

I'll add to this thread because I've managed to be a journalist (air force military journalism 1967-71) learned computer programming on the G.I. Bill (we programmers often refered to ourselves as hackers hijacking any code we could lay our hands on). Raised three kids (if that ain't pretty close to taxi hacking I don't know what is) and am an unreformed smoker (hack hack) .. so I guess that makes me a quadri-hacker... I don't care if the internet glossaries say a hacker is a cracker, I almost never hear cracker used in that context and the context I do hear it used in doesn't need repeating.

I also dabble in song writing and find I am somewhat obsessed with ryme and perfect meter (no real music training just school of Mel Bay). I'm not sure if meter is the right term but the lyrics have to fit the music timing really close or I don't think it's right. So maybe the journalism does tend to 'structure' the song writing fairly tightly.

One thing journalism and music do seem to have in common is that very few really get paid much to do it so you got to love it to stick with it. (Now let's see, have I covered all them W's?)


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Sourdough
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 03:31 AM

Twenty years in broadcasting but now I'm writing for print and researchng full time. My writing was all for the spoken word for years. I think it affected my print writing. The same love of words and appreciation for tight writing that attracts me to the old ballads is what keeps me trying to communicate my thoughts , experiences, and feelings in prose. Never tried songwriting though.

Sourdough


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Subject: Lyr Add: BOYS OF THE BYLINE BRIGADE
From: chordstrangler
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 06:05 PM

I had absolutely no idea that I would encounter so many brothers and sisters in arms when I embarked on this. I would love to hear some of the songs.

This is my own effort at writing a song about working in journalism. I'm sorry that I haven't worked out the clicky things yet and MP3 and Wav files remain one of the glorious mysteries. Shucks, I was always better in the print medium anyway.

BOYS OF THE BYLINE BRIGADE

It's four in the morning, the paper's in bed, the Newsroom's as quiet as the tomb.
When the old man gets up from his seat by the door, another day's nightwork has been done.
Like a greying old shadow he peels on his coat and he knocks off the lights on his floor
And he melts with the darkness into the grey dawn just before the presses start to roar.

CHORUS: And the glass in his hand feeds the pain in his eyes alone, insecure and afraid,
A victim of booze, overwork and old age and the boys of the byline brigade.

That morning the byline brigade will arrive, those bright keen young men about town,
And they'll shout into three different phones at one time and get the whole damn thing written down.
When the country edition's being flogged on the street and the City's being checked on the stone,
That old man who once interviewed princes and kings is quietly drinking alone. CHORUS

And he stands at the bar and remembers the time when he was as good as the best,
In those days when his shorthand was clear-cut and plain and he'd work twenty hours without rest.
In the days when his copy ran just as it stood, lead stories and bylines galore,
The first with the angles, the first to the phone, the first with his foot in the door. CHORUS

If he had only licked more arses and got drunk with the boss, God knows where he might have been today—
Not manning the doomwatch at the dead of the night and curing the shakes half the day.
He had died on the day that his shorthand broke down from too long pushing pen, soul and mind,
And they'll bury his body along with his pride in six lonely lines on page nine. CHORUS


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 07:06 PM

Wow!!!!!

Wonderful end-- the rest too, but POW'ful end.

~S~


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 07:17 PM

Ah, Chordstrangler, I can smell the hot metal, and feel the building shake!

The first daily I worked on had a steel-reinforced top floor. A crane hoisted the metal to a loading platform at that level, so that its subsequent progression towards the presses was always downwards. I still fantasize about Linotype machines. Heath Robinson, or what?


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: zonahobo
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:40 PM

That's some fine verse there CS ... well done!! I'l bet if he had the chance to kiss that arse again, he still wouldn't. It just doesn't mix with the jounalistic call. You have to wonder what will happen to print journalism in this profit driven information revolution. Sound bytes and video clips. Will all the fish go unwrapped? (what fish you say?)


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,dick greenhaus
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:45 PM

Still hacking, but on a monthly. Less pressure. It's hard for an ink-stained wretch to get out of the ink-stained wretching business.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: ddw
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 11:49 PM

CS — Great stuff. The first paper I worked for was in hot metal, so a lot of your imagry is nostalgia for me. I used to love to go into the press room to check galley proofs and watch the Linotype operators set type. Only lasted about a year, then we went to an offset press and the Linos went to the scrap yard. I managed to salvage a few of the old photo plates — have 'em framed in my study.

Also loved my first 20 years in the business. The adrenalin rush of a breaking story, working 20 hours and not even noticing until things slowed down — sometimes days. Listening to the stories of the oldtimers in the Press Club, putting names and faces and places to lots of things that seemed to matter and lots of others that didn't.

I couldn't play the game either. Biggest lie my ol' daddy ever told me was that if you're good at something, you'll get ahead. Only got as far as copy desk chief, then ran into spell-check technology and a whole bunch of younguns who don't understand the importance of precise language and punctuation to understanding. They eliminated my job, made me a copy editor again and I gave up caring much about the business. Now I just want to play my music as much as I can and retire as soon as possible.

Passed my torch to my daughter, who a couple of years ago won both of the major writing prizes that the Gannett Newspaper chain hands out and looks like she may be on her way to more this year.

It's a young person's game, for sure.

cheers,

david


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 12:09 AM

Get it to the Goddess, man! She'll flip. You want to see some of our hacks, try following the Quick Links to the Mudcat Songbook. Don't start if you haven't got the evening free, though.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Gervase
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 05:39 AM

Bloody fine song there, chordstrangler. As Liz said, I spent 20-odd years in the trade, the last 13 of them in what's still known as Fleet Street. It could be the best and worst of jobs - the best for those times when you find yourself in situations the like of which you would never have encountered in any other job. The worst for the same reasons - particularly if there's too much slivovica and an AK involved! I don't know about the song-writing side, though. Your song, I have to say, knocked my socks off; a really powerful piece. Yet I've tried and failed to come up with anything that isn't pastiche or parody. It's as if years of churning out copy have almost numbed the creative and critical faculties - or maybe it's just the gargle that's dimmed the brain! In fact, now tht I've been out of the trade for the best part of six months, I'm beginning to feel as though I'm detoxing; that I don't have to write paragraphs of no more than two sentences and that English doesn't always have to be of the "lite" variety. I miss the adrenalin, the travel and the sheer lunacy of the job, it has to be said. Nevertheless, greyer as the world is outside the Street, I don't miss the politics, the liver damage or the way relationships are subordinated to the job. Now, what do I want to do when I grow up...?


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 05:59 AM

I really like that chordstrangler. It could be Henry Lawson, another old hack in his time.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Pinetop Slim
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 10:22 AM

Count me as an unreconstructed hack, in news business since 1967.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: chordstrangler
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 03:15 PM

Amos, as a newcomer to the Cat I'm unsure about the rituals involved in getting it to the Goddess.. Is this wise ? Does it require ritual purification or a deep knowledge of the blue clickey things ?

Also, is it wise to be responsible either morally or ethically for a Flippin' Goddess? I was once mildly flipant to what I took to be a minor Goddess and lived to rue the day. Please advise?


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 03:46 PM

CS--

Oh, THAT goddess is always flipping. She's just really bouncy, is all. Toujours Gae.

Pull down the Quicklinks menu at the top of the page to find Aine's Mudcat Songbook. (Don't forget to come back out of there and talk with us once in awhile!) There will be some clues there on how to submit entries. She also keeps an eye on the threads, often, and finds posted songs like yours to invite into the songbook.

Amos isn't at Mudcat as much as he used to be, so I will take this opportunity to speak about him behind his back. I don't know how he was christened Five Minutes Flat, but he is a really gifted songwriter and a few of his pieces are actually pretty good (just kidding, Big Guy!). A CD he made at home was played on one of the Mudcat radio episodes, I think in February of 2000.

Why do you need to know this? Because if you will see the quality of his work, you will get embarrassingly puffed up about the fact that he complimented you. He's awful good. To have gotten his accolade... well it was a big one. Not that he ain't generous with them when due. He is. But what I am TRYING to say is that if I got a note from him like you did, I'd be doing a LOT MORE songwriting, and I hope you will.

Your piece was THAT GOOD.

Enjoy the songbook!

~Susan

PS-- Also BOLO for Aine's "Song Challenge!" threads. Since they are based on funny news stories, they all start from hacks!!!

LOL!!!

~LOL


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 07:02 AM

Kevin, just a long shot, but if you really aare of Harlow, did you ever meet an old hack called Les Mitchell? The Three Horseshoes was his local, I think.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,Colin Randall
Date: 13 May 08 - 01:44 PM

I love the way ancient Mudcat threads sometimes spring back into life.

Mickey's excellent words quoted above - I have never heard them sung -are not the only ones to bear the same song title. My friend Geoff Lakeman, another newsman as well as being dad of the assorted Lakeman brothers, father-in-law of Cara Dillon etc etc, wrote one too.
I have traced the background to this in an article at at Salut! Live but would be grateful if anyone could convey the link to Mickey, who I have so far been unable to contact.

in an article at


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Colin Randall
Date: 14 May 08 - 12:30 AM

I have just re-read the thread and realised that I half outed Chordstrangler, author of the original song called Boys of the Byline Brigade, since nowhere else among these old messages was he identified. But there's no secret - Chordstrangler is, as Gervase (also up there somewhere) says at my site, Mickey MacConnell. I do not know how good a journalist Mickey was, but he's a mightily good songwriter. Tinkerman's Daughter, Only Our Rivers Run Free........Gervase would add Peter Pan and Me, which I have never heard
So thanks to Gervase for alerting me to this, albeit seven years late, (and also for his beautifully written summing up of the highs and lows of daily journalism, and the life beyond it that I, too, hope to sample again)
And finally, another singer, Anne Truscott Kennedy, has popped up at Salut! Live (link in previous message) to tell us that Mickey is still making great music over in Kerry. She has also added some YouTube links to Mickey live.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,Guest Gweltas1
Date: 14 May 08 - 12:36 AM

Colin,
I have copied your "Bylines" article and emailed it to Mickey MacConnell some hours ago and I have also responded to your article on your website. I will e-mail you Mickey's current e-mail address, if you wish to contact him.
Best regards,
Anne (Gweltas1)


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 14 May 08 - 08:07 PM

Hello, Chordstrangler--

I wrote a local history column for an LA Times subsidiary for about three years before the bean-counters in Chicago closed the whole operation down.

I am not conscious of that having any effect on my prose style. When I went to work, I said, "What do you want, style wise?" They said, "Read Fidleydee; we like her." Three years passed. I never read any of Fidleydee's stuff. As John Pryne once wrote,

"Disgusted, Disgusted, you have no complaint;
You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't."

As for an effect on writing music, well, I wrote a song once. Check that off. I'm happy to re-work traditional stuff, and actually I figure the odds are on my side. Singer-songwriters can knock themselves out for years and never get a real winner. I play stuff that's been around for a century and a half, I figure it must have something going for it or it wouldn't have lasted, and pretty much, the audience proves me right.

The only effect I can readily see in myself is to become rabidly, excitably, lividly outraged at the MANY distortions of history laid upon us by newspapers and politicians. I'm trying to engage a local editor right now over a matter of historical accuracy. I say trying, because the paper isn't dialoging with me at this point; I believe they are hoping I will just go away. Marx was wrong about a lot of stuff; he was right on with, "History is a pack of tricks we play on the dead."

Chicken Charlie


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 15 May 08 - 05:52 PM

WELCOME StangleChorder

Nice to see you the floor.
Your desk is over there - you will be sharing will Marion the librarian. (He only comes in T,Th)
Patience - I've been here over a decade and still do not have a window desk.
CARDINAL RULES - If you are the last to drink from the coffee pot - start a new one.
Grounds go in the trashcan not the sink.
Pick up after yourself - your mother doesn't work here.

Newspaper Editor's Prayer

I pray, thee, God,
Send us for tomorrow's copy
Some great flood or earthquake or disastrously erupting volcano
Or picturesquely havoc-bearing storm
Or other natural calamity such as we
In Piety
Call "acts of God."

Or may there transpire some big new step towards greater global malice
Or may the peaceful work of the U.M.
Be disrupted by a new flare-up, with corresponding walk-out.

Or may some admiral or general
Blowhorn about the ever-mounting power
To spread misery.
Or if there is to be no true disaster for this day
Then I pray thee
Send us at least conditions for some rumor
That we may flaunt it before the antion
In foot-high front-page headlines
(Being to truth dedicated
We can deny it later,
In a small item well hidden).

Give us, I pray thee,
Some such monstrosity
As a way of drawing gaper to market
That our merchants may the better peddle their wares.

And then happily
Many thousands more acres of stately trees
(Such as young Keats called "solemn Senators")
Trees that make a Cathedral of the forest
Will have been successfully processed.
Transformed into the printed yellow matter of journalism
By the rules of hygiene
To use once and throw away...

Burke, Kenneth Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, PARTII, Chapter Two - "The Thinking of the Body (Comments on the Imagery of Catharsis in Literature)," University of California Press, Berkeley, 1966, p 330-331.

Kenneth Burke (famous for "The Burkian Pentad" of rhetoricial analysis )

Sincerely,
Gargoyle


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:42 PM

It's seven years since my original post to this thread and I am proud to say I am now an ex-hack, having taken a buyout last November. I am now teaching at a university, training a new generation of future ex-hacks.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Teribus
Date: 15 May 08 - 08:35 PM

Well chaps just to piss a little on your parade

"Any old ex-hacks out there?"

Journalists - one step slightly above child-molesters

Politically motivated shysters who had their stories dictated to them and written before you even left the office.

I wouldn't even piss on you if you were on fire.

You collectively have done more harm to western civilisation than Hitler, all in the name of the God of circulation.

Many threads in this Forum attribute "spin" to politicians that in all honesty belongs fair and square at the door of the "popular press" or its cousin "Main Stream Media" - the name Ober-something-or-other springs to mind.

Rather than patting each other on the back the lot of you need horse-whipping. Take a bloody good look at this country (The UK) this is where you and you alone have brought us.

Utterly contemptible the lot of you. Best let on to family and friends that instead of being an "old ex-hack" you tell them that you were all piano players in a brothel - far more honourable profession IMHO.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 May 08 - 12:02 AM

I gather from your post, T, that you are familiar with the brothel? I didn't know you play piano.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 May 08 - 12:09 AM

You collectively have done more harm to western civilisation than Hitler, all in the name of the God of circulation. . . Utterly contemptible the lot of you.

Thank god the fair and balanced voice of teribus is there to set the world straight. NOT.

SRS


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 16 May 08 - 12:44 AM

Well done Teribus !!!!

RE: Journalists - one step slightly above child-molesters.

No problem with that positioning slightly above:
Catholic Priests
Politicians
Pubic/Privy School Teachers

If there is a spill to make a thrill - a debauchery to make a mockery - a liar's song to pluck like a lyre...

The "Fifth Estate" is waiting... lean, hungry and mean... in the wings....waiting to feed upon the incorruptable Host.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 16 May 08 - 12:55 AM

Holy Molly!!

I PROMISE to try my best, to do my duty, to not venture (for six weeks) "Below the Line."

There are true daemons (and I thought I was the best) down here. Mr. Duhgil is one thing...jOhn is another... but I have met my match with "Teribus." Reminds me of my conversations with Mr. Lewis regarding The Screwtape Letters....did I invite you here Mr. Teribus ?:?:? I feel a kindred spirit.

Sincerely,
Gargoylr


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Teribus
Date: 16 May 08 - 03:43 AM

Eh No Ebbie, neither but I do, however, know "Journalists" at first hand.


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Subject: RE: Any old ex-hacks out there?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 May 08 - 03:41 PM

Every one of them?


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