Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart: Tales from the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers Told by the Men and Women Who Reported the News [Hardcover]

John H. Tidyman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2009

It was a job unlike any other putting out a daily newspaper for a major city. In this case, Cleveland, where reporters, photographers and editors were envied, threatened, beatified, fooled and thought to be the luckiest s.o.b. s in town.
The office was called the city room, and the doors were wide open to politicians, huffing and puffing and threatening; to beauty queens, inventors, conspiracy theorists, bums, Barnum & Bailey clowns, sore losers and haughty winners . . . It was an amazing parade.
Stories rarely just walked in, though. Reporters wore out shoe leather, jamming dimes into pay phones, pressing their ears to closed doors. Photographers recorded the action, whether a murder victim or a murderer or the Girl Scout who sold the most cookies.
Now, here are the stories behind the stories, told by the men and women who covered them.
Listen in as veteran newspaper men and women talk about life on the job at Cleveland s newspapers during the 1950s, 60s and 70s when fierce competition between the Cleveland Press and the Plain Dealer made daily newspapers the most exciting business in town.
Their stories are funny, tragic, human and sometimes outrageous. Read them and find out why reporters in those days knew they had the world s best job.

Editorial Reviews

Review

For anyone who ever worked for -- or, for that matter, read -- a newspaper, [the book] is an absolute delight. --Morning Journal, November 8, 2009

About the Author

John Tidyman was ordered by his father to take a touch typing class the summer before high school. Tidyman often cites that incident as the reason he became a writer. After graduating from Lakewood High School, he was drafted and fought in the Vietnam War. He returned a 19-year "buck sergeant.
Before he joined the Cleveland Press as a reporter, Tidyman worked as a waiter, a warehouseman, and an air freight agent. He is the author of eight books and has also written for almost every area publication.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Gray & Co., Publishers; 1st ed edition (October 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598510169
• ISBN-13: 978-1598510164
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,434,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stop the presses - this book is a blast, December 28, 2009

By 

Dan Hanson (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart: Tales from the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers Told by the Men and Women Who Reported the News (Hardcover)

If you are too young to remember June 17, 1982 then you probably won't understand what all the fuss is about.

Likewise if you grew up getting your news from the Internet or Cable TV or even the Daily Show on Comedy Central, you can never fully understand what the golden era of newspapers was like.

But if you are a little more, let's say mature, then you will remember that the Cleveland Plain Dealer would be delivered in the morning and later that afternoon, the Cleveland Press would hit your porch. In the 50's, 60's and 70's - the time frame of Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart: Tales from the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers Told by the Men and Women Who Reported the News - Cleveland was certainly big enough for 2 major daily newspapers.

The natural competition between the papers and the timing issues (early morning vs later afternoon) made for some great reporting and, as you read in this book, underhanded, if not downright illegal, strategies to scoop the competition.

Tidyman interviewed dozens of Cleveland reporters, editors and photographers and compiled stories from 54 of them in this book. Many of the names will be familiar: Mike Roberts, Bob Dolgan, Dick Feagler, Dan Coughlin, George Condon and many more.

The book is divided into 19 chapters and each consists of numerous stories and quotes pertaining to that topic. For example, Chapter 1 is 'Screw the Competition' and features stories of the Press vs the Plain Dealer. Cleveland Press Reporter Jim Dudas told how he once bribed a prisoner with a carton of Lucky Strikes so that he would not talk with a reporter from the Plain Dealer.

Other chapters cover interesting glimpses into the process such as The Police Beat, Critics, the Rewrite Desk, and, Stop the Presses, Big Stories. Sportswriters, women reporters and photographers get their own sections. The legendary drinking of news people, at the Headliner and everywhere else in town, merits its own section.

There are some terrific black and white photos in the middle of the book of the old Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer buildings and city rooms, the Press's Louis Seltzer and the PD's Tom Vail and many of the reporters quoted in the book.

The Top Dogs chapter shows how different Louie Seltzer, the unpolished but extremely involved Cleveland Press editor and Thomas Vail, the Ivy League, aloof leader of the Plain Dealer were. Press reporter Bill Tanner tells how Seltzer was the most well-known person in Cleveland and was even dubbed 'Mr. Cleveland' by Life Magazine.

The Such Interesting People chapter is fun because of the name dropping of people like Ted Williams, Richard Nixon, Lorin Maazel and even Tiny Tim. The book ends, fittingly, with the stories of the end of the Cleveland Press, which was the end of an era in Cleveland and duplicated in many cities across the country.

I often found myself intending to just read a few snippets and ending up reading entire chapters at a time. And not just because I delivered both the Press and PD as a paper boy back in the day.

If you are old enough to remember the Cleveland Press, you will enjoy these glimpses of the inner workings of the two daily papers because they remind you of a very different time.

If you are younger, read this book to see what it was like when Cleveland was on top and when the news was gathered via shoe leather, phone calls, martinis and cigarettes and written to the clicking cadence of manual typewriters.