Noblesville, Ind.

My editor in college printed up this factoid and put in on the wall in the newsroom. I think he thought it would boost morale or something.

Pulitzer also made famous the term “Yellow Journalism” with the political cartoon in the New York World newspaper called “Yellow Boy”.

My facts:
Many people are familiar with “agate” — the tiny sports statistics printed in newspapers. Agate actually refers to the size of the type, not the content. Before the adoption of the point system for type, different sizes had such creative names as “brilliant”, “pearl”, “emerald”, and “diamond”.

The Hartford (Conn.) Courant is the longest continuously published paper in the country, having been printed since 1764.

Journalists frequently misspell words in notes within stories. Examples are “hedline” for “headline”, “folo” for “follow” or “foto” for “photo”. The purpose is so the note can be included and passed along with the story, but serve as a flag to remove the note before the story is printed.

ETAOIN SHRDLU is a combination of the 12 most-commonly used letters in English, in descending order. Linotype machine keyboards used them in columns, ETAOIN as the first column on the left, SHRDLU as the next to the right. When a typesetter made an error, he would quickly run his hand down the columns to type “ETAOIN SHRDLU”, to serve as a flag to discard that line of type. The phrase did, of course, occasionally make it into print.

An easy way to figure out which two pages of a newspaper will be printed side-by-side on the same sheet of paper is to take the number of pages in the section and add one. Each set of two numbers that adds to this total will be printed side-by-side. Example: In a 24-page section, pages 7 and 18 will be located next to each other.

Seemingly in support of the old stereotype of journalists being drunkards, many newspapers allowed drinking of alcohol during office hours. The Sacramento (CA) Union at one time had a bar right next to the newsroom for its employees.

Larger newspapers and agencies routinely write obituaries of famous people long before they die. In a “celebrity death game” like activity, they prepare for the inevitable day a celebrity dies.

The Hearst family mausoleum (where William Randolph Hearst is buried) is still unmarked and the cemetery office (Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, CA) will not identify its location when asked. I spent a lot of time in the cemeteries around San Francisco, but could never get the skinny on why William’s burial spot is unmarked.

Moving? Visit a newspaper with a printing press (if you can still find one) and ask for a trunk load of “end rolls.” They usually give them out for free. Newspapers print on massive rolls of paper, but replace the rolls on the press well before the paper runs out. As a result, “end rolls” have a good 100 feet of paper left on them and are great for wrapping dished, glasses, etc.