The Last Hot-Metal Edition
Who made it across
Not the fastest hands
Changes in newspaper composing-room jobs through the 1970s and 1980s
Why some people came through the same shock. What the ones who stayed were actually holding, rather than luck.
What actually happened?
Photocomposition, and computer setting after it, did not leave newspapers without people. It changed which people. The job moved from setting metal fast and clean to knowing why this page is laid out this way. Someone who understood type sizes, which line must not break, what an editor's one-sentence change pulls along with it, could do the work on any tool. Someone whose whole skill lived in hand speed had very little to show once the new equipment arrived.
Say why, and changing tools costs you nothing
In any job, how it is done belongs to the tool and why it is done that way belongs to judgement. The first expires with the equipment; the second travels with the person. Most people train only the first, because it shows results the same day.
Operating the software and knowing why it is set up that way are two skills with very different retirement dates.
Get the tacit part into words first
The most valuable thing in an old hand is often the part they cannot state: they see instantly that something is wrong and cannot say why. Tools match the half that can be stated. The unstated half needs stating even more urgently, or it cannot be handed on at all.
That looks wrong has to break down into three specific reasons before it is portable.
The ones who crossed had started half a step early
Learning on the day the new equipment is installed is a different starting line from having played with it for a year. Half a step is not much. Touching the new thing while the old work still pays is far cheaper than after it stops.
Trying the new tool while the old job still feeds you costs less than learning it from scratch unemployed.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the tools in your trade are turning over and you want to know which group you are in.
Ask first: which part of this work can I explain the reasons for? For the part I cannot, how many specific reasons can I write down this month?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as experience keeps you safe. The people who were replaced had plenty of experience. The line runs between experience that lives in the hands and experience that lives in the judgement.
Lines to keep
How it is done is the tool. Why is judgement.
Tools match the half of a craft that can be stated.
Touch the new tool while the old work still pays.
Same situation, other people are asking
The bar moves every week. I don't know what to train.What used to work doesn't count for anything now.The more useful the task, the sooner it got taken.I can't beat it. So what am I practicing for?I don't know what to practice anymore · all 8 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.