To the editor:
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Read the Hot Type column on northwest Indiana [June 7] with interest. Back in 1973, I moved from California to Gary to work on the paper Compass, which grew out of the printers’ strike at then-Hammond Times. It lasted for three years and it remains the single most important, fun, and educational experience I’ve had in journalism (our normal workweek was about 60-70 hours, so we were allowed to drink beer in the newsroom as a perk). One of our reporters, Walt Bogdanich, went on to win a Pulitzer and now is heading an investigative unit at the New York Times.
It’s significant, too, that, in the 80s, both local papers abandoned their former homes of Hammond and Gary, in search of outer-county readers. Beyond the obvious commercial considerations, it’s safe to say that racism–in its purest corporate form–played a role in their decisions, as the publishers felt that just because their mostly blue-collar workers didn’t want to read about crack dealers and issues dealing with Hispanics and blacks, they shouldn’t have to. School lunch menus and real estate listings became more important than series on the roots of unfettered crime and the disintegration of the steel industry.
