Last time I ended with the day-to-day trials of trying to put out our weekly issue of the East Side Herald. Our first sales manager found a better job and moved on. They brought in a sales manager who I had worked with at the Star. Nice man, but his ideas were so small town and sweet that they really were not very realistic. Luckily he took criticism well and a few times I just had to tell him, that is not going to work or that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
My supervisor up at the Topics had me list an Editor-in-Chief on our masthead that worked at the Topics, but who we only met once and who never contributed one thing to our issue. She was like a ghost employee — I don’t know if that meant part of her salary was taken out of our budget or what. I was never privy to any of the financial issues. All I knew was that our sales were never enough and we should do better. We were very frugal and used both sides of every piece of copy paper (still do) and I never bought anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. We had “old” everything and that was fine — at least we knew it was broken in.
I continued to work at least six days a week and many late nights. The advertising department down at the Star insisted that I let them paginate the paper and have me put all the ads into their system. I fought the process, but lost. What it meant was that I had to decide by Friday evening where every ad in the paper was going and send them a layout so they could electronically give me back a layout page with blank boxes for ads and holes left for me to fill with content. Sounds reasonable until you realize that if on Monday or Tuesday I ended up with extra content in one area and would like to move an ad to another space or even another page, I had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get it updated and new layouts issued. The ads all had to be put in this elaborate computer bank and re-released every week, which added a lot of time to my production schedule. For the Star it’s the only way they could work with so many artists putting ads together, but I was the only one touching my pages. Because I only saw the content on my end and not the total page, I always went down to the Star and looked at the proofs before the paper was printed. No matter how late it was on Tuesday night (sometimes I barely made it down before the second shift left at midnight), I always checked the proofs. I know the bosses in Advertising thought I was crazy for doing it, but I didn’t want any errors. If I could have consistently not found something on my part or theirs that was not right, I would have stopped going. I became good friends with the night crew and they all cared as much as I did about putting out a good product. That poor Star department is down to a skeleton crew now and I don’t know how they ever get a newspaper out nowadays.
I told you before that I couldn’t really get any help from my supervisor and I’m sure a lot of it was that he just didn’t understand my production work nor did he care. I’ll never forget that one meeting, where I was discussing my long hours and stress, he said “It doesn’t have to be that good” and I told him I don’t know how to do that — I guess he just wanted me to throw it together. Well, I never lowered my own personal standards and I never will.
We did hire an extra lady part time to take classified ads. She was young and attractive and did tame a few of our unruly clients, who could be obnoxious.
I’ll never forget one Monday evening, when editor Ethel disparately said she had nothing for the northeast cover feature story (we did 3 different fronts and backs and the same content inside). Well I called my husband and told him we were going to go get a front page feature by eating our way up Pendleton Pike. We decided on 3 restaurants, who all had been open for at least 30 years and do a review of their food and story of their beginnings. We picked Cafe Heidelberg, Papa’s Pancake House and The Sandwich Machine all just a few blocks apart. We enjoyed all the food and were stuffed by the time we were through, but we had a story and that was the beginning idea for our Dining Out section. The only one still in business (2023) is the Cafe Heidelberg (7625 Pendleton Pike) and I personally drop off the Weekly View in their foyer to this day. If you’ve never been, you need to stop by some time— wonderful bakery, authentic German food, and huge gift shop.
We leased the old building on Michigan St., so when the owner sold it, the Star had to look for a new location. They found a very narrow (17 ft. wide) space right next to Marsh in Irvington Plaza. The Star building services crew put up drywall, painted it and made it home for us.
The Star didn’t even use a truck for the move, they just lashed all our stuff down to a flatbed trailer. I followed behind in my car down a very chuck-holed alley making sure the chair tied on didn’t fly off. It looked liked the Beverly Hillbillies were moving!
Except for a couple dozen or so bound volumes of the East Side Herald, the rest of the old issues were in the basement of the old building. The supervisor didn’t want to go to the expense of getting the papers out of the basement to archive and I was frantic, not wanting to leave them. How could 70 years of a community newspaper just be left? I called the only person I knew who would take this loss as personally as I did — Steve Barnett (Irvington Historical Society – and today also Marion County Historian). He was over in a flash and we decided that we’d take the papers after the move on Wednesday — we had until Saturday, when I turned in the keys. The basement was wet and the papers were musty, but luckily so well packed that after we cut off the soggy boxes, we laid them out to air out. Steve hauled the boxes up all by himself — my hero! My son had just moved back home to go back to college, so I informed him that we had a job to do. Steve and his wife Sue took the day shift and my son and I the night shift and we managed to dry out and organize all those papers (we laid them out in order on the floor of that 3,000 sq. ft. building). We kept 3 copies and he kept 3 copies— Steve has them all in safe keeping at the Bona Thompson and we recycled the rest. Of course as we laid out these papers we would see front page stories that brought back memories and then we’d stop to reminisce and lose time.
Another major issue was that my supervisor would not allow any columnists, except for the sports guy. Rose Mary Clark contacted me and told me she had written years before for the Herald and would like to contribute again. She sent samples and I passed them on to my supervisor, who passed it on to his editor who took weeks to answer. She said NO, we are not backsliding (whatever that meant). I knew Rose Mary’s column would be perfect for our senior section, so I called her and asked when could she start! I knew the supervisor would never notice and he didn’t.
Al Hunter had been doing his Ghost Tours in Irvington for six years at that time. After ending his ghost tours that Halloween, he sent us an article about what inspired him to start the Ghost Tours. After reading it and agreeing to start a weekly column, I knew he needed to be on the front cover (our readers would really enjoy his columns). So on November 6th, 2008 I ran the first column of “Bumps in The Night” by Al Hunter — “The Lincoln Ghost Train.” He’s been writing for us ever since.
We managed to put out some darn good newspapers despite all the roadblocks.
The new place next to Marsh was not much better than the old building on Michigan. My desk was at the back of the main front room. It was noisy and hectic every day. I remember one night working late as usual, down the baseboard of the long room a mouse came scurrying. I picked up my stapler and threw it at him and he ran back. The mouse waited a little while and tried it again and again I threw something at him and he retreated. I even threw my shoe at one point. Finally I had to leave my desk (which was up against the wall) to go the restroom and when I got back no mouse running — he was under my desk somewhere!
The supervisor, who thought he was going to get a big promotion, was let go in August of 2008 and I knew the end was near for us too. The rest of the staff didn’t think a big corporation would close such a well-loved community newspaper, but I knew all they cared about was the bottom line. The staff was devastated when the axe came down (early December 2008), but I knew it was coming. Gannett closed down all the community papers they owned in Indy (The Eastside Herald, The Topics and the Spotlight).
They had us stay for 6 weeks and try and transition all the advertisers into the Star. The clients were furious and our sales staff, who couldn’t talk anyone into advertising in the Star, was let go in 8 days with only 40 minutes to pack up their stuff and get out.
We four ladies, who had put our blood, sweat and tears into our community newspaper were not going to let it die, so out of that awful experience, the natural birth of our Eastside Voice came about. NO epidural, NO C-section — just good hard labor!
Next next time – the birth of the Eastside Voice.
