10 Ways to Write Like the 90’s

My dad told me that his step-father, [Robert Matsyk](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-winnipeg-sun-robert-thomas-matsyk/145517302/), was a news editor at the *Winnipeg Free Press* decades ago. He’s proud of me for getting into this line of work—for sinking my teeth into literary journalism. For the fact I’m writing good work that people read.

And I can’t help but think of what Bob was doing—what his daily workflow looked like and what journalism really *meant* to him. The entire field and industry of journalism decades ago intrigues me. It’s a ghost now, isn’t it?

Indulge me for a moment. Let’s get romantic about a problematic time period, fully aware of its systemic flaws and horrors. As a nonfiction writer, I admit I often fantasize about being born a few decades earlier, to a time when journalism was still a stable, impressive industry.

<figure> <img src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*za1lP9Rpj6h-sosKYxkkrA.jpeg" alt="Office of The Cornell Daily Sun, Ithaca, New York via Flickr"> <figcaption>Office of The Cornell Daily Sun, Ithaca, New York via Flickr</figcaption> </figure>

## Newsroom Symphony

Imagine [the cacophony of perhaps ten Teletype printers chattering away](https://jacklimpert.com/2014/08/icymi-noise-fun-old-newsrooms/), their mechanical fingers tap-tap-tapping out bulletins from distant bureaus. Five bells meant something somewhat important. Ten bells, *a flash!*, and the entire newsroom would freeze, every head turning toward the machine like sunflowers to sudden light. The sound of [manual typewriters clacking in rhythm](https://www.evocativesound.com/2023/10/13/typewriters/), each keystroke a percussion. The satisfying *ding!* of the carriage return bell, the metallic *zip!* as reporters yanked paper from their machines and tore it against a ruler’s edge.

[Chemical smells drifted from darkrooms](https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/article_1a3cffac-704e-5c7b-80f1-ecb1e5705bf2.html). Police scanners squawked urgent codes. Phones rang. Actual corded landlines which couldn’t be silenced or ignored. Bells as insistent as alarm clocks. Reporters shouted across desks, booming voices competing with [the low rumble that started deep in the basement as the printing presses awakened](https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/article_1a3cffac-704e-5c7b-80f1-ecb1e5705bf2.html). The entire building to tremble as deadlines approached.

There was never dead silence in those newsrooms. I’m not the only one romantic about this, [*The London Times* tried piping in typewriter sounds through speakers in 2014](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/murdoch-typewriter-london-times-newspaper-speakers_n_5717491.html), hoping to recapture that lost energy and electric urgency that came from dozens of people simultan