Narrative News. Narrative News Laurie Hertzel on growing up in newspapers and what she learned from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Andrea Pitzer. August 18, Share this article. Now books editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Hertzel is also an award-winning reporter and fiction writer and occasional contributor to Nieman Storyboard.
In these excerpts from our chat, she talks about treacherous memories, being denied access to her own clips and the value of being as stubborn as a goat. I say it abashedly because everyone in the world is writing a memoir. What convinced you to record it for posterity? Photo: Joey McLeister. We have an in-house message board here at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And a few years ago, a copy editor posted a message laughing at the lettering on one of the doors that leads to our basement.
There were a whole bunch of words like that they used just to save space. I explained that in a note back on the message board, and he thought I was joking.
He had never heard of this, and I started thinking about all the things about old-time newspapers that people nowadays know nothing about.
Horseshoe-shaped copy desks — those are gone. Cropping photos with a cropping wheel and a pica pole — all of this is gone. I wanted to remember them, and I wanted people to remember them. And at the same time, I was reading a blog written by a guy named Julian Young , who is a British journalist now living in France. He was posting his stories about his early days on Fleet Street, and they were so interesting. So what identity did you choose, and what parts of yourself did you leave out?
