An anecdote from the time before I made my escape from Gannett's Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Enquirer featured a local columnist named Frank Weikel, a former police reporter who had been given a column on the strength of his supposed sources. It was a column after the manner of Walter Winchell, short items connected by asterisks and spit. For example, it had "Departments of." One of his "Department of Names That Match Their Occupations" items, a urologist named Leake, was killed by the managing editor.
But to our narrative.
One day Bill Trutner is in the copy desk slot (an actual slot in a u-shaped desk), busy on deadline, when the managing editor, Jim Schottelkotte, walks up, trailed by Weikel. "Bill, we have a problem," Schottelkotte says.
Trutner, a mild-mannered bald man who had been a high school English teacher, answers without looking up from his terminal. "What is it, Jim?"
"We have a problem with the Weikel column."
"What's wrong?"
"It's gone. He filed it, but the system seems to have eaten it. We can't find it."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"Well," Schottelkotte says, with a little managing editor banter, "we thought we'd get you to have one of the copy editors write a Weikel column for tomorrow."
"Can't do it, Jim."
"Why not?"
"We don't have anybody dumb enough."
Weikel turns on his heel and stalks away.
