Dragged Into the Computer Age

On the San Diego Freeway, Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills spotted a truck from “Internet Towing.”

Observed Proctor: “It must have been heading toward another computer crash on the old Information Highway.”

*

CARRION, IF NOT CARRYOUT: Dixon Gayer chanced upon an unusual pizza party on the blacktop of a store parking lot.

Crews of pigeons and crows consumed a large pie with several toppings, eating just about everything except the onions. “They were stacked in a pile at the side,” Gayer said. “Can a crow or pigeon afford to offend?”

*

MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Patty Dixon of Fullerton spotted a restaurant ad (see accompanying) that no doubt prompted some readers to ask, “Steak or what?”

*

ON THE ROAD: A Central California city that has taken the new math one step further caught the eye of Fred Stone of Bakersfield (see photo).

*

NO DISCOUNTS? Sal Lombardo of West L.A. snapped a set of signs in the South Bay area that seemed to warn shoppers that there would be no factory outlet hawking its unsold stuff (see photo).

*

TYPEWRITER DAYS: Some anecdotes from Rob L. Wagner’s colorful new book, “Red Ink/White Lies: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles’ Newspapers, 1920-1962”:

* The first edition of the Illustrated Daily News (no relation to today’s L.A. Daily News) contained a publisher’s note saying it would report only wholesome news. But a news page contained “a graphic sex story about [Charlie] Chaplin” planted by saboteurs. (The page had to be reprinted.)

* A newsman at a big murder trial rushed to a pay phone in the courthouse before the verdict came in, then calmly eavesdropped on the other reporters who arrived soon afterward to phone in their accounts. He pirated their quotes and facts as they dictated them.

* After brash USC student Jack Jones interviewed Mickey Cohen for a Daily Trojan article, one of the mobster’s bodyguards demanded to see the story before it went into print. Jones refused and Cohen waved off the demand.

* Television, the new rival of newspapers in the 1950s, had an embarrassing moment when a KTTV Channel 11 cameraman jokingly took footage of a fireman urinating at the edge of a big fire. The image later appeared on the KTTV news, which had told viewers it was rushing film to the air “unedited.”

*

OLD-STYLE JOURNALISM 101: Wagner’s book got me to reminiscing. I was a rookie sportswriter at the old L.A. Herald Examiner in 1966 where the first lesson I was taught was the proper etiquette for removing the sports section from the rest of the newspaper.

My colleague Dave Kirby kindly demonstrated how you pulled it out with your left hand, then flung the rest of the paper over your shoulder with your right hand.

Hardly anyone in the newsroom used trash cans. You threw everything on the floor, and twice a day the cleanup crew would arrive with giant flat brooms and nudge all the trash into the center of the room. Occasionally they’d nudge a sleeping newsman, but only rarely would he be thrown out with the trash.

miscelLAny:

Steve Mills referred me to a photo on a NASA Web site that is captioned: “Los Angeles Basin and Burbank Valley.”

Burbank Valley?

Mills, a scientist at an aerospace company, wondered if “Burbank is planning to annex the San Fernando Valley when it secedes from L.A.”

*

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.