Two interesting bits from the NYT:
1. I noticed this yesterday, and Lawrence emailed me about it as well: Rudolph Stocker retired from the Times on May 18th at the age of 78.
Who?
Rudolph Stocker was the last printer at The Times working under a guaranteed lifetime contract; the last Times employee who knew how to operate a Linotype casting machine; the last journeyman of the old International Typographical Union and its New York local, No. 6, a bargaining unit that was once so powerful and important that everyone in the newspaper business knew it simply as “Big Six.”
When the Times went over to computer typesetting, part of their agreement with the union guaranteed job security to the existing printers (“…1,785 situation-holders and full-time substitutes, 810 of whom were at The Times”).
Did he sit on his butt after the paper phased out the Linotype?
“Rudy was an expert proofreader,” his colleague Barbara Natusch recalled, “and transferred his skills from operating a Linotype machine to producing ads for the paper on a Mac, using InDesign and Photoshop.”
Sounds like a hell of a guy. I hope he has a happy retirement.
Through his colleagues, he made it known that he was not interested in a valedictory interview.
2. The Times Insider talks about the process of getting Ali’s obit into the paper, including a literal “stop the presses”.
It’s always kind of nice to know these people are human, too:
“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking,” Mr. Coffey said, imitating Lloyd Bridges in the disaster spoof “Airplane!”
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