TUMULT IN THE NEWSROOM.(New York Times)

Not long after I graduated from college, I went to work at the Times as a copyboy, or, in more enlightened terms, copy person. The job title was left over from the days of typewriters, when stories were filed on sheaves of carbon paper known as ten-part books, but by the time I got to the newsroom, in the mid-nineteen-eighties, the process had been computerized, and copy persons mostly just answered the phones and sorted the mail. Whenever we could, we shirked these responsibilities to write our own stories, which were usually printed, without a byline, deep inside the Sunday paper. Working at the Times in this way was a heady experience--yes, that was my piece on the ...