Tools Of The (Old) Trade

Behold the Rolodex, one of the most important tools I used when I was a print reporter.

As far as technology is concerned, it is as low-tech as you can get - cards that can be attached to a drum attached to legs allowing it to sit on a reporter's desk. Contacts are put on the provided blank cards. Some of the cards I used had business cards attached. On others I wrote the names, titles, organizations and phone numbers of people I might need to contact for future stories.

The Rolodex was so important the name became a thing, like Kleenex, Xerox and Band-aid.

But like print journalism, the Rolodex is a fading thing of the past.

What modern reporter uses paper cards? Now everything is digital - your phone likely contains more contacts than I ever kept in a Rolodex. Or as one article I read put it, 

The Rolodex was commonly found in offices and businesses from the 1950s to the 1980s. You can still find Rolodexes available for sale online, but most individuals and organizations have transitioned to an electronic contact list or a digital Rolodex for their contact information.  

The article then goes on to detail the various digital apps one can use to create an electronic Rolodex.

I use technology - you wouldn't see this blog post if I didn't - but I prefer flipping cards in a Rolodex or pages in a book to using an e-reader or online Rolodex. Unless someone took the Rolodex off my desk my contacts were a lot safer than if I had put them online.

Here's another important item from my journalism career - the article portfolio.

I would shlep this larger version of a photo album around with me when I went on job interviews. It contained - and still contains - articles from my time on a five-day daily business newspaper where I wrote news stories, features and columns from an insurance and banking perspective. Now you can create an online clip portfolio using any of a number of apps, such as Adobe. 

After I switched from reporting to copy editing to maintain employment at this newspaper the portfolio didn't really help much, particularly when jobs I applied for wanted to see my online copy editing portfolio. 

My what?

I'm not a Luddite. I use technology every day. I use my phone. I use my computer to answer email and write a nature blog as well as this one. But too much technology is not a good thing and I wonder at the reporters who are now so plugged in they forget to be human.

Comments

  1. ARBMarch 22, 2026 at 10:57 AM

    I inherited TWO Rolodex carousels from my in-laws. I guess they were his & hers. I have 964 Gmail contacts. The most-used are my doctors and pizzerias. I do have a few sample articles and links online somewhere on my web site. My Advertising Clips portfolio was 2' x 3' with Bamberger's ad clips! Those were the days. If I only knew.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Favorite Boss

Image
I have worked for a lot of jerks in my time in journalism, most of them men, most of those white and most older than me.  There was my first job out of college with the sadist who used to bring his leather-boy friends to the office. When he allowed me to take the day after Thanksgiving off and then rescinded that after I had made family plans, he said I could take the day off but don't come back. I didn't. There was the editor of a weekly community paper who kept the police scanner on all the time, loud. When I turned it down he came out screaming. When I came back from getting a story from the police blotter about an elderly woman mugged in her building's elevator I wrote it, he read it and then called the woman as I sat across from him. Through a combination of fake sympathy, gile and pressure he got her to give him details, including of how she felt going through that frightening experience. I learned two things that day: Speaking to a person is better than getting a rep...
Read more

Saying Goodbye

Image
Ten minutes after you're gone scavengers raid your old desk. Who takes the stapler? Who takes the tape? Who splits with the Post-its and who grabs the letter opener?  So begins the poem "Ten Minutes" by my friend Anthony Buccino from his book of poems, "Canned". I have been through this many times over the years, on both sides. At the wire service where I worked for 12 years as a copy editor I took the stapler from the now-vacant desk of a departed colleague because every time I'd look for a stapler at the supply closet there were none. I still have the stapler. At this same wire service the boss - another in a line of jerks who were mainly white men who had trouble dealing with my "attitude," whatever that was at the time - was looking for a way to get rid of me and I provided it by accidentally putting the wrong time on an embargoed story that ran 24 hours too early.  First, I was busted down to copy reader, meaning I could edit but not publish...
Read more

Looking Through The Past

Image
It is now about a month since I removed several bags' worth of newspaper clippings from a closet in my home. I had intended to go through the bags and file the articles in a more coherent system. But when you work for a five-day business newspaper you are expected to write a story a day, every day. It quickly became clear there was no way I could go through eight years of newspapers in anything less than a year. So I started culling. I decided to save the columns I once wrote for the newspaper. But as I went through the newspapers I started to more clearly remember things I hadn't thought about in over 25 years. When my favorite boss  sold the insurance trade magazine to a person who moved it from Manhattan to Westchester, I started working for the business newspaper. My beat continued to be insurance. Every day I had to write something , including briefs, the more the better. Insurance took up only one page of the newspaper, which was focused mainly on trade and transportatio...
Read more