Harry Graham

This review by Vance Durgin appeared in the Sunday, July 24, 2005, edition of The Orange County Register: Veteran Register newsman Harry L. Graham, who worked in various editing capacities at this newspaper for 40 years, captures the experience in "Stop the Damned Presses!" Graham signed on here for $100 a week in 1962 after 20 years in the Air Force and a stint as news editor at the Orange Daily News. On his first day, the big story was astronaut Wally Schirra orbiting the Earth in his Sigma 7 spacecraft. Schirra was going for a record six orbits. Imagine. Schirra is still around today, but the Register newsroom that Graham writes about for most of the book's length is as dead as ancient Egypt. In 1962, the now-long-extinct afternoon edition - not the morning edition - was the circulation leader. Middle-age white men ran the newsroom. The workweek was five 10-hour days. Women were expected to fetch coffee. Job qualifications were what you might call flexible. Words like "public schools" and "educator" were verboten in Register stories (the preferred terms were "tax-supported schools" and "school man," "school woman"). Alcoholism was not uncommon among the staff. Ethical policies prohibiting gifts from those seeking favorable coverage were nonexistent. Freebies from big advertisers were a way of life. And newsroom people were, well, characters. In Graham's telling, the Register newsroom of the early '60s sounds like something out of an old Hollywood movie. You can almost picture Jimmy Cagney as an upstart reporter looking to make good and Ralph Bellamy as the city editor who goes to bat for him - when he's not taking a swig or two from the bottle stashed in his bottom desk drawer. There actually is such a movie ("Picture Snatcher," Warner Bros., 1933) and judging from Graham's account, Hollywood's version of the business wasn't all that far off. Apparently, newspapering hadn't changed much between 1933 and 1962, and the Register reflected that. There are some silver screen-worthy people here, to be sure, none more so than publisher R.C. Hoiles, a larger-than-life figure worthy of a movie all to himself. Graham's encounters with the feisty Register owner add a few more details to the legend. And Graham has a few things to recount about other Hoiles family members as well. It's rare to get this personal a look at the operation of a newspaper over such a long period of time, as the book goes from Graham's 1962 hiring to the finish of his Register career in 2002 at age 85. Thanks to his acute memory (and the recollections of co-workers) and anecdotal writing style, the years come alive with Register history. It's a personal account, though, a detailed look at the Register life as Graham lived it. As such, it includes what was going on with him outside the paper as he dealt with the day-to-day issues of raising a family, including a daughter with Down syndrome, and his wife's many health problems. Does that make it too personal? Perhaps. But where else can you get the story of the Page One that went out with a huge blob of black ink instead of a photo? Of the copy boy who became a millionaire? Of the reporter who took LSD in order to describe its effects in a story (the drug wasn't illegal then)? Of the time a group of Hells Angels walked into the paper's library and walked out with the thick file of stories written about them? Of the paper's in-house loan shark? It was a different world, all right. A wild and colorful one that's worth recalling to show how far the business has come, true, but also to reflect on what's been lost. Because you just don't find characters like these in a newsroom anymore. Maybe Hollywood should have a look. Sweetheart, get me rewrite.