I was about 30 seconds from chucking a typewriter out of the window when my phone buzzed with the arrival of a new text message. I looked at the screen and read the text message from Jessica Keesee, The Minaret’s assistant opinion editor. “We’re alive,” it read. “Be back soon.” I heaved a sigh of relief. I sent her out to the middle of nowhere to find typewriter ribbon. After all, this wasn’t just a job.
Let me back up.
This past weekend, a group of Minaret editors accepted the challenge that is “All On Paper,” a journalism program in which we developed a special section for this week’s issue without the use of modern technology. No computers, no digital cameras, no voice recorders.
Our best weapons were a pen and pad of paper. A trio of student journalists from Florida Atlantic University traveled to UT to help us out with this seemingly impossible endeavor. When they arrived on Friday, I realized we might have gotten in over our heads.
After setting up the equipment and transforming the second-floor women’s restroom in Vaughn into a makeshift darkroom, we began to type up our handwritten stories on typewriters that, by the looks of things, may have been used by my great grandfather.
After the grueling process of copy editing by hand and retyping every story again and again until it was perfect, we put each story into columns. Now, when I’ve done this before, it’s been a very simple process: Click the box tool, drag it out, copy, paste and voila! Columns.
But that’s not how it worked in the olden days. So for the special section, we had to measure the space on the page (yes, with a ruler.) Then create the correct column size and make sure that the story was the correct length to fit across the page equally. Isn’t this why they invented computers?
Saturday arrived with worry and stress. After a rough night’s sleep, I came into the office and went over everything we had left to do in the next eight hours. That’s when the nervous breakdown came. Photos needed to be taken and developed, content had to be edited and a typewriter had broken.
I looked at Jess Keesee and asked her, “Can we actually pull this off?” She didn’t respond.
The second mental breakdown came when Samantha Battersby, our photo editor, called me into the bathroom, I mean, darkroom. When I walked in, the room smelled of chemicals and stress. Scattered across the floor were developed photos. Well, some of them were photos. Others were just blotches of black and white, including the group photo that was supposed to go on the front page. I could make out my nose, Shivani Kanji’s ear, Natalie Hicks’ arm, but that’s it. The only sound in the room was my final hope flying out the window. I had no plan B, no back up. But the day wasn’t over yet.
I walked back into the office with a new fuel in my fire. This wasn’t over until I said it was over. Together, Jess and I looked through the archives of old Minarets and Moroccans ready to find whatever it was we would need to fix the front page. After poring over pages, and yelling curses at my scanner that hadn’t even been invented yet, every page was designed on paper and ready to be printed and glued to the pages. We had done it. What seemed impossible 24 hours ago was practically finished.
Overall, “All On Paper” was an experience that has made me a better journalist. I learned about a process that most people don’t even remember. The weekend was an experience I wasn’t prepared for. Most of the time I was mad. I wanted to yell. I was stressed to the point where I wanted to pull my hair out in chunks. And I loved every second of it.
But I don’t plan on not using my computer anytime soon.
Chelsea Daubar can be reached at cdaubar@gmail.com.
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