Nor are newsrooms smoke-filled, grimy, noisy places with the sound of typewriters adding to the cacophony of reporters yelling into phones. These days production facilities are usually not located near newsrooms. I landed my first newspaper job in the 60s (okay late 60s, very late 60s.) It was an internship at The Birmingham Post where the presses rumbled in the basement, and newspaper trucks sped away from the building’s loading dock in the early morning hours. I also love –and love to read about - newspapers. I love to read anything about that decade ( Summer of 69 by Elinor Hildebrand is also in my Kindle queue.)
It was the decade of hippies and of protests and marches for changing the world, fighting for civil rights, women’s lib, and for ending the Vietnam war. I love that I was an almost adult in that era - so much ground-breaking so many old rules and ways cast aside.
I don’t know Baltimore except from watching The Wire (which incidentally was created by Lippman’s husband, David Simon) but I do know the 1960s. The novel is set in Baltimore which is where Lippman worked as a newspaper reporter before turning her talent to writing novels. She follows a story that no-one else is interested in after the discovery of the body of a young black woman in a city park fountain. It is the story of a 36-year old unfulfilled wife and mother who leaves her husband so that she can become a newspaper reporter. Lady in the Lake is the title of Lippman’s latest novel, published last week.
Bestselling author, Laura Lippman took me back this week to that era before computers, before everything in newspapers was produced electronically, soundlessly and remotely - and when newspapers themselves were not threatened by extinction. If there is one magical sound that is unfortunately disappearing off the planet forever it is the rumble of presses churning out printed copies of the day’s news in the bowels of a newspaper office building.
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