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Stephen Mack
#saturdayff I was in Journalism in high school, and it was pretty much wild west. This was 1985, my senior year, and we'd type up the stories in some crazy word processor on Apple IIs, save them to floppy and print them out on our dot matrix printers to edit them, then use the floppies on an Apple III to send the stories to a typesetter that
was the size of a small room. - Stephen Mack
Photographs were developed in a dark room. We'd half tone them, crop with a paper cutter, run them through a machine that added sticky lines to the back, and then lay out the typeset copy and photos by hand. Cutting a story to make it fit on the page meant physically using scissors to remove part of of the story. - Stephen Mack
Being high school students, we'd basically leave most of the work until the last night. And then a couple of dozen of us would stay up until 11pm or midnight to finish. The editor and his girlfriend, Bill and Karen, would drive the proofs over to the printer in San Jose (which was owned by Last Gasp Publishing, an interesting company with a 40 year history as a printer and publisher, well known for several underground comics they distributed). - Stephen Mack
Each year, the last issue of the year was our biggest issue. We'd run advertisements from parents to congratulate their students who were graduating, and students would take out ads to send messages to each other. In addition to whatever stories we had on graduation or summarizing the year, there were other silly traditions, like seniors writing "wills" to leave behind things for the juniors and sophomores and freshman. Laying out that final edition was a huge amount of work. - Stephen Mack
Earlier that year, the movie Terminator had come out. Many of the seniors were really taken by the movie, and in order to take up space and make the layout easier, we'd add in a LOT of ads last-minute written by the people working late on the paper. Some of these last minute ads were just Terminator quotes. - Stephen Mack
One guy, a friend of mine, George J., printed out one that said, "YOU'RE TERMINATED FUCKER." And pasted it on. - Stephen Mack
We debated it internally, because we felt it might be a bit too much. - Stephen Mack
We'd crossed the line several times earlier in the year. We were given a great deal of autonomy. I'd been on the journalism team for three years, each time with a different teacher. And each time the teacher really didn't get involved that much in the actual layout of the paper. They'd give us guidance, grade us, give lectures on journalism and help us assign stories, but 99% of the content and editing -- and certainly all of the late night layout work -- was up to us. - Stephen Mack
George had run an interview with a local artist mid-year that had included the word "shit." Bill, the editor, didn't want to replace it with "s--t" or change it to "crap" or otherwise adulterate it. So despite some (including the teacher, I believe named Mr. Penner that year) editing it, last minute Bill had put "shit" back in the paper and ran it. - Stephen Mack
He got in pretty big trouble with the superintendent, but he was an articulate defender of his decision, and threatened to bring in lawyers to defend his free speech rights. There had been some interesting precedents set in the '80s about high school papers and the first amendment, so at that time the pendulum looked like it was swinging Bill's way, so the administration backed down. - Stephen Mack
(It also helped that the art teacher wrote a letter to the editor supporting the language and calling it a huge milestone in journalistic integrity.) - Stephen Mack
But even Bill felt that "YOU'RE TERMINATED FUCKER" might have been too far over the line. So he and George and several others of us that night settled on "YOU'RE TERMINATED F----R" instead. - Stephen Mack
As it happened, someone changed the page order last minute, and something quite unfortunate occurred, which we didn't notice: The ad fell next to an "In Memoriam" article, about every faculty member, school worker, and student who had passed away that year. - Stephen Mack
I'll digress here about my friend Jim Silberman. Jim was one of the most vivid personalities I have ever met. I'd been close friends with him in 7th and 8th grade, and hung out with him a lot in high school, although we'd drifted apart by our senior year. He was wiry, red-headed, freckled, a geek's geek who could converse about any science fiction author you'd name, athletic, creative, hilarious, and on top of all that, he was an excellent actor -- a natural performer. - Stephen Mack
He would take part in the school plays and variety shows each year, and he always was the most charismatic person on stage. - Stephen Mack
Early in our senior year, while going for a run, Jim had a heart attack and passed away. He'd had an undiagnosed heart condition, and it killed him. - Stephen Mack
I remember his funeral vividly. - Stephen Mack
In particular, I remember our honors English teacher, Mr. Johsens (a tall and imposing man, a strict but gifted teacher), completely lose it at the church, his sobs the loudest I'd ever heard in my life. When I gave him a hug after the service, his grip was iron. - Stephen Mack
George's "YOU'RE TERMINATED F----R" ad was now on the page directly opposite Jim's picture. And no one had noticed. - Stephen Mack
We didn't finish up that deadline night until maybe 2am. Bill drove over the paper to the printer as usual (they knew we were always late), and most of us spent a few more hours at Denney's before catching an hour or two of rest before our senior ditch day trip to Santa Cruz scheduled for the next afternoon after a minimum day. - Stephen Mack
When we came in the next morning, and grabbed the papers from our Journalism class to distribute around the school, we saw Mr. Penner. He didn't say a word. - Stephen Mack
And in fact, he had no words for any of us that day, or for the rest of the week. - Stephen Mack
He had picked up the paper at 6am, and seen what we did. He had then taken a black felt marker and heavily crossed out the "YOU'RE TERMINATED F----R" ad so that it was illegible. And he'd done this by hand, for each of the 1200 or so copies of the newspaper. - Stephen Mack
I honestly can't remember feeling as much shame as what I felt that morning. I don't even know if I (or if any of us) apologized or thanked him for what he'd done. We just realized we'd fucked up, and we thought about it for all that day in school and later on the rides at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. - Stephen Mack
If you're still out there, Mr. Penner: Thank you. And we're sorry. We were a bunch of entitled, privileged, foolish high school kids. We should have known better. - Stephen Mack
Jim, RIP. I think about you often. - Stephen Mack
(Disclaimer: The above happened 30 years ago. My memory is not totally reliable. I may be conflating or confusing some names and dates and the order of events. But I think it's more or less accurate.) - Stephen Mack
Our typesetter was a senior named Dave Borrison, and he was one of only two people who knew how to work the beast of a typesetting machine. There was a note from the year before, from then-editor Karen, listing a style guide that she had wanted each story to end with a symbol that was similar to "ᴥ." We never ended our stories that way. Dave had scrawled a line on the style guide note that said, "great idea maybe next year" and we went on typesetting things without that symbol. - Stephen Mack
I am not sure why this high school memory came to me, but with FriendFeed passing away in 11 days, I am pretty sure my last post here will be, "YOU'RE TERMINATED F----R." - Stephen Mack
ᴥ - Stephen Mack
Thanks for sharing and for keeping the #SaturdayFF tradition alive, Stephen! - Louis Gray
Louis, thanks for starting this tradition. It has grown to mean a lot to me. - Stephen Mack
Hopefully you will continue to post these on frenf.it, Stephen. - Stephan Planken
I'm certain I will, Stephan. - Stephen Mack
I love your stories, Stephen. :) - Jenny H.
Aww, thanks, Jenny. - Stephen Mack
I like these posts about the early days of computing. I was four years old when you were doing this. - Richard A.