The News Journal ends Saturday printed edition as e-edition offerings expand

My first visits to a newsroom came back in the 1970s when I would deliver lunch to my dad. He was the editor of The Times-Herald in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and I can still recall many of the sights and sounds.

Cigarette and cigar smoke filled the room. Stories from the Associated Press and United Press International came over automated typewriter-like machines that rang an occasional bell announcing a major story.

The language in the room was, shall we say, more colorful than modern-day workplaces might allow.

It was through these sights, sounds and smells that I would make my way to the back of the room to deliver his sandwich.

I recall on one of those visits the first time I saw a computer monitor on his desk just before he died in 1980. It wasn’t hooked up to anything at that point, and he would allow me to play with it. The machine, he said, was going to change his business forever.

Obviously, he was right. What he couldn’t have known at that time was the internet wasn’t too far behind. And the dramatic shift of news consumption would soon follow.

I’ve been around newspapers all my life – from those early visits to my father through the past 35 years in the business myself.