It was a couple of years ago, best I recall, that I heard that it would not be long before the Atlanta Journal-Constitution would go digital and that technology would take away my daily walk to the end of the driveway—a ritual that I thought would never end.

The Athens Banner-Herald will still be there, however, and I appreciate that.  I will still find in my mailbox a couple of weeklies and I appreciate that, too. When your way of life changes, you adjust and move on.  But for one who grew up on a manual typewriter, it is not so easy to do.

I remember yesteryear and how it was.  The Atlanta Journal had a slogan, “Covers Dixie like the Dew.”  And if it didn’t, for sure it covered the state of Georgia like the dew without question.

On the weekend, the Sunday AJC was so chock full of news and features that it would take you a half of a day to read it.  It included one of the finest supplements in the business, the AJC Sunday Magazine.

In those days, the Atlanta papers sent sportswriters across the Southeastern Conference to file stories on games that took place in Baton Rouge, Oxford, Starkville, and Nashville.   

By 5:00 a.m., the Sunday paper in your driveway carried the details of the games that were played in those cities and elsewhere.  Columbus, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Austin, Texas; Columbia, Missouri.  

There were no computers in that era, but if Billy Cannon turned an ankle at 9:00 p.m. Central time, there was a story in the Atlanta papers the next morning about how worried his coach, Paul Dietzel, was.

At one point, the AJC would run the scores of all the high school basketball games played on the weekends—I mean every cotton-picking school that fielded a team—and if you had found your way to the newsroom on one of those nights, the phones would be ringing off the hook.  It was important to the families in communities such as Vienna and Roberta to have those scores in the Sunday paper.

This interesting flashback took place in those memorable times.  Jesse Outlar, sports columnist for the Atlanta Constitution, was finishing his column one night when the ringing of the phones reached a deafening cacophony.   He walked out into newsroom and paraphrased Sydney Lanier.

“Out of the hills of Habersham, down the Valleys of Hall,

“Every little s.o.b. and his sister are bouncing a ball.”

How is it that in the era of enduring technology that if a major college football game were to end at 10:30 p.m., there is no final score in the Sunday paper? 

But it really doesn’t matter anymore.  You can find such scores on the internet as soon as a sportswriter can type out the results.

Digital will save publishers considerable money.  But what happens to the newsprint industry?   

There are countless stories about deadlines in the newspaper business, and even though my memory, with the passing of time, is fuzzy, I pass this on for whatever it is worth.

In the early sixties, the Banner Herald was keen on getting the Sunday paper to area settlements such as Hull, Comer, and Elberton. The paper depended on the railroad for delivery.  There were a few subscribers in Colbert and Comer and a handful in Elberton.

Our deadlines were dictated by the railroad schedule, which meant that they were ridiculously early.   One Saturday night, I was writing a story about a big Georgia victory in the Fran Tarkenton era, when I had to pause and compose a headline about a local high school plyer of note, Virgil Yeakey.

His coach at Athens High, Weyman Sellers, was quoted as saying that he was “holding his own in the line.”  I quickly came up with this headline:

“Trojans’ Virgil Yeakey, Holds his Own In Line.” It fit, and I went back to my story on the Georgia game. The composing room crew, who put the paper to bed with a case of tall Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, gave me a most embarrassing moment.  

They scrambled the headline, making it read, “Trojans Virgil in Line, Holds his own Yeakey.” 

Nonetheless, I prefer the old days which brought about colorful scenes which digital won’t allow.