Works in progress: Jack Clark

 

Sun-Times delivery truck, 1961 (Photo courtesy of John Chuckman)

     This was a bad week for newspaper fans, with the Washington Post cutting a third of its staff so Jeff Bezos can firehose more money at Donald Trump. Though honestly, the place is supposedly losing $100 million a year, which even for Bezos starts to add up. Today's offering is from our periodic correspondent Jack Clark. I've just begun reading his new memoir, "Honest Labor: Writing & Moving Furniture" — great title, right?

     I’m a newspaper junkie. Every morning I take a walk to my local Walgreens to pick up the Sun-Times and the New York Times. Six dollars. It’s a small price to pay for my daily fix.
     I read the Sun-Times with breakfast but I save the New York Times for late at night, usually just before bed. I got into this habit back in the days of old when you could pick up the early edition of both morning papers the night before.
     When I was a kid, my father would sometimes send me to the local newsstand around 10 p.m. to pick up one or both papers. So, like a lot of other addicts, I blame it all on my upbringing.
     Sometimes, the papers would be late, and a line would form, usually me and a bunch of old guys waiting for those speedy trucks to arrive. Remember those posters on the side promoting Royko or Ann Landers, or some other newspaper star. Neil must have got there a time or two.* The Tribune trucks were white, the Sun-Times blue. (I think the late, great, Daily News trucks were red, but I’m not certain anymore.)
     When I was a teenager, up to no good in the middle of the night, I used to love to watch the newspaper trucks as they came west down Madison Street, hopping from one side of the street to the other, paying no attention to traffic laws as they made their deliveries. They’d drive for blocks on the wrong side of the street if that’s how the stops worked out. The cops never bothered them, except to get a free paper or two to help while away those slow overnight hours.
     As years went on, the papers came out later and later, 11 o’clock, midnight, one in the morning, and then they stopped coming until dawn. I was not happy about this, but I had no one to blame but myself.
     One day the Tribune called. No. They didn’t want to hire me. They’d already explained that they didn’t hire guys like me anymore — guys without a college education. The days of Ben Hecht and Mike Royko were gone. Instead, they wanted to talk to me about subscribing.
      I’d been getting these calls regularly for decades. I was always polite when I declined their offer. If they pushed, I’d give them various reasons: I like to get a little exercise in the morning or I pick up the paper on the way home. I made it a point to tell them I read the Trib every day, and I did until the Zell years came along. (I had friends who’d read the New York Times but not the Chicago papers. I could never understand it. Didn’t they want to know who died?)
     But this one day, the Tribune would not take no for an answer. “Do you know how much money you could save with a subscription?” the guy asked. This was always their biggest selling point, that I was needlessly throwing my money away.
     I explained that I’d been needlessly throwing my money away my entire life. It was now well past the point where saving a couple of bucks a month on newspaper consumption was going to make any difference to my standard of living.
     “Okay, I’ll throw — in Sundays free for the first month,” he said.
     “Look, I’m out of town a lot. I don’t want the papers piling up on the porch.”
     “You just call. We’ll hold the deliveries until you get back.”
     “Yeah. But all I have to do is forget to call one time and every thief in the neighborhood will know nobody’s home.”
     “Look, what can I do to get you onboard here?”
     “Nothing.”
     “If I gave you the paper for free, you wouldn’t subscribe?”
     “That’s right.” And then I made my mistake. I decided to show him how smart I was and explain the real reason I would never subscribe. “Look, why would I want to read the home edition?” This was the one you got with your subscription. It was the very first printing. “It doesn’t come until six in the morning. I can pick up the late edition at one?”
     There was dead silence on the line for a while. I thought he’d actually given up. My genius had won the day.
     “Would you say that again?” he said very slowly, and I had a sudden feeling of nausea.
     I knew I was compounding my mistake but I couldn’t stop myself. I said it all over again.
     I’ve never admitted this publicly before. So before we go on, I’d like to apologize to all the old-timers who liked to read the paper before bed, to all the insomniacs waiting for the sun to come up so they can finally get a bit of sleep, to the newspaper truck drivers, to the cops and cab drivers, to the doormen and security guards, and late-night waitresses and short-order cooks, all those night owls trying to kill a little time before dawn. I’m truly sorry.
     I done it. I confess. I’m the guy.
     Within a week, the Tribune stopped sending the late edition out overnight.
     I was driving cabs at the time and hanging around a White Hen Pantry on Lincoln Avenue. It was a good stop for fresh coffee, a friendly place where they’d let you use the washroom. You could hang around and take a bit of a break and talk to the cops, fellow cabbies, and the newspaper-truck drivers who were all doing the same thing.
     “Where’s the Tribune?” Everybody wanted to know.
     The Sun-Times drivers didn’t know but they knew something was going on, and they looked worried.
     A couple of days later, a Sun-Times driver told me the Tribune was now waiting to deliver the late edition until after the home edition was out. The drivers were still starting at their regular time, but the Tribune was holding the trucks at the loading docks. Nobody knew why and I didn’t say a word. A week later, the Sun-Times trucks disappeared too.
     That persistent salesman probably got promoted to Vice President.
     In my defense, I’d like to say, shouldn’t they have known this without me telling them? How could they not know what time the various editions of their own newspaper went out? Well, that salesman probably didn’t read the paper, only the balance sheets.
     I’ve often wondered how many new subscriptions they got and how many readers they lost in the process. Was it really worth it?
     It was a bad couple of years for me. I finally solved the problem by buying both papers in the morning and saving one for night. That didn’t alleviate my guilt, of course. But with enough time you can get over almost anything.
     And then there was a wonderful period, which I obviously didn’t deserve, when I could pick up the next morning’s New York Times at my local 24-hour Walgreens as early as midnight. This was especially wonderful because it was printed at Freedom Center, the Tribune’s printing plant. This was so funny, that I could get a New York paper hours before any Chicago paper, that I thought of writing about it. I managed to stop myself. Too late I’d learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes you’re better off not showing people just how smart you think you are.
      Some of my favorite memories of my North Side neighborhood were walking out of the great Monday night jazz jam at the old Serbian Village and walking across to the Walgreen’s to get the New York Times on the way home.
     I got to be friendly with the driver. I’m pretty sure he worked for Chas. Levy Circulating Company. If he saw me crossing the street, sometimes he’d hand me a free paper and I wouldn’t even have to go into the store.
     Those days are long gone now, and my crime hardly matters with all the other crimes that have beaten the newspaper business into the ground.
     I haven’t seen a newspaper delivery truck in years. At the Walgreens, which is no longer 24 hours, the newspapers now arrive in ordinary cars.
     The other morning it was two degrees. I was bundled up in layers under a down jacket, with a hat and two hoods on my head. When I got to the Walgreens there was no New York Times. This happens now and then with both papers. Personal cars break down, delivery people get sick, or somebody steals the papers from where they were left in front of the closed store.
      It’s not a big deal. I don’t need my NYT fix until night. So I try to remember to pick one up in my travels that day. But at two degrees, I wasn’t planning to do any traveling, so I picked up the Tribune instead.
     This is something I almost never do. It’s not because I don’t like the Tribune. It’s a pretty decent newspaper again and I do have a dirt-cheap online subscription for when I’m out of town. It’s not even the price. Four-dollar is twice what the Sun-Times cost. It’s the same price as the New York Times.
     And there’s the rub. Later that night, when I turned to section two of the Tribune, there was a story about Trump’s deportations. Not only had I already read it the day before in the New York Times where it originated, I’d already paid four dollars to read it.
     The New York Times is worth four dollars even on their worst days. They have reporters all over the country and all over the world. They don’t rely on other newspapers or wire services to fill their pages, and that comes with a cost.
     And then, to top it off, when I got to the sports section, the Trib didn’t have any coverage of the Bear’s game the night before. You want four bucks and you can’t even stay up a little late for the most important Bear’s game in years? And I’m supposed to give you four dollars. Dream on.
     And the Sun-Times has had its own problems with pricing. I don’t usually buy the Sunday paper. The New York Times is six dollars that day, and that’s really about as much as this junkie wants to spend. I’ll take a quick look at the Sun-Times headline and if it’s something especially interesting, I might pick up a copy.
     The last time I did this, the Walgreens tried to charge me six dollars. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. There’s no arts section. No book section. The comics are a joke. Bring back Willy ‘n Ethel and I might give you a few extra dollars. The way the paper is now, it’s no different than a normal daily edition. It’s only a bit thicker because it’s stuffed full of advertising inserts. I wondered if those advertisers realized how many readers they were going to lose with the new price.
     I took a closer look at the front page and then pointed to the price on the cover. $5 Chicago. $6 elsewhere. “I think this is still Chicago,” I said to the clerk.
     “But that’s how it rings up,” the girl said, and she had this helpless look on her face. Here was another geezer talking in some incomprehensible language. I knew it was a hopeless battle and told her to keep the paper.
     I was going to complain to the Sun-Times about their new price but I knew I wouldn’t have to. Many other people would do the work for me, and the price has since gone back to the more reasonable three dollars.
     I could write on and on about my love affair with newspapers, but this is probably enough for now.
     I know I’m lucky to have the Walgreens so close. It’s only a block from home. And it’s more luck that they carry the New York Times. Some Days they only get one or two copies. I’m pretty sure I’m their steadiest customer at least some of the time. I’m out of town for months on end and I know that one of these days, I’ll come back and the New York Times won’t be there waiting for me.
     Of course, before long, it will all be gone. The age of the newspaper will be over. The only real question is, who dies first?

* Editor's note: Never. Who do you think I am? Jay Mariotti?