The bottom half of my white dress shirt was covered with black toner ink. Less than a month into my stint in the typing pool at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I was earning my reputation as the paper’s worst clerk EVER!
It was some time in December 1988, and my first son was a few months away from being born. I was still on probation in the newsroom, so I knew that walking around with an untucked, sopping wet shirt now smeared gray after a trip to the bathroom to wipe and wring it out was a bad look.
No one made eye contact with me. It was as if my failure to fit in to the city desk’s ecosystem was so obvious, thanks to my oppositional disorder, that keeping me around for even another day was an act of cruelty for them and me.
The phone rang at my desk. I glowered at it. It was probably another stringer calling to dictate copy after some borough meeting. My job was to type what was reported without complaining or comment, but the prose was often so bad, I thought I would lose my mind from the monotony of it all.
But I needed that job or it was back to telemarketing, so …
Publisher Bill Block Sr.’s secretary was on the line. She told me to come back to Mr. Block’s office immediately. Still dripping wet, I slowly walked to Mr. Block’s office suite at the far end of our fourth floor newsroom.
His secretary was not happy to see me. She stood up, walked to Mr. Block’s inner office to tell him I had arrived. I felt my receding hairline receding even faster in the 15 seconds it took to be escorted into his surprisingly spare and low-key inner sanctum.
He stood, smiled and extended his hand for a very firm shake. He made no comment about my messy clothes, and I didn’t offer an explanation. I thought he was going to fire me, so it made no sense to give up every shred of dignity at that moment.
“I hear some interesting things about you, Tony,” he said with characteristic understatement and a winking smile. He said he tried to meet all of the new employees and apologized for getting around to me so many weeks after I started. With that out of the way, he got down to business.
He asked me what I wanted and why I was at the PG. What did I hope to accomplish? Was I happy? What did I see myself doing in five years? I rambled and said I wanted to be a reporter, preferably on the arts desk, and that I was already a better writer than all of the stringers and a good chunk of the staff I had to answer phones for. “All I need is training,” I said.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being a clerk,” he said, “but it probably isn’t the best fit for you.” He then told me that I was welcome to remain a clerk “until I got it right,” or I could “move on to another position in the newsroom” that required writing. He said Executive Editor John G. Craig would make it happen, and he wished me luck.
Shortly after that conversation, I was covering rock concerts and rap shows after my shift and interviewing musicians. I learned to write quickly on deadline and acquired a newfound respect for my colleagues, including the stringers.
A year later, I was promoted to full-time pop music/pop culture critic. Mr. Block was my biggest cheerleader, followed by John Craig, features editor George Anderson and editorial writer Clarke Thomas, who had been instrumental in getting me the clerk’s job in the first place.
“You were a terrible clerk, the worst,” John said with his playful cackle one day. “Glad to see you were able to redeem yourself.”
Landing at the PG or anywhere in journalism was not a foregone conclusion. I’d been turned down for a job at the New Pittsburgh Courier in early ’88 and New York Newsday a year or two earlier. When Clarke Thomas, whom I knew from church, asked me to submit opinion pieces to the PG for a feature called “Black on Black” that ran on the editorial page, I submitted three columns. The paper bought two of the three for $100 each.
A few months later, I was offered a clerk’s position that had suddenly opened. It paid more than double what I was making calling people at dinner and guilt-tripping them into doubling their usual gift to the World Wildlife Fund.
Looking back on those early days, I consider every step and misstep a minor miracle. I got every break imaginable, even from colleagues I was convinced didn’t like me.
When staff writers Erv Dyer, Carmen Lee and Don Hammonds invited me to participate in a massive Black History Month project about the history of one family’s journey from the South to Pittsburgh during the Great Migration, that was huge for me. It meant I had the respect of these talented, veteran writers.
Sitting next to Erv as he shaped my purple prose into something usable was a masterclass in itself. He explained the importance of word choice, pacing and foreshadowing. Because he was such an honest broker, he was minimal in his praise until the end, when he said: “These (two installments) are very good overall, Tony.”
I was on a cloud after that. Sitting in the Mag department every day was the equivalent of a graduate school education. I sat next to Sally Kalson, who was only a year or two from beginning her stint as a pathbreaking columnist. Even without a column, Sally was the conscience of the PG, thanks to her hard-hitting reporting.
I was in awe of the critics and reporters around me: Barb Vancheri, Chris Rawson, Ron Weiskind, Diana Nelson Jones, Barry Paris, Robert Croan. There were so many unusual characters in that department it felt like a pirate ship full of misfits and nonconformists, especially when Barry came around. Named or not, there wasn’t anyone in that department I didn’t learn something from everyday.
When I made the transition from culture/music critic to general columnist in the mid-‘90s, another period of growth kicked in.
Veteran columnist Peter Leo, the paper’s writing coach, spent many an hour reacting to those early efforts as first reader. He prodded me and encouraged me to sharpen my words and thoughts so that I was saying what I actually wanted to say in print. His mentoring was crucial during that period when I was full of doubt about whether I was a good columnist or not.
Over the years, I had the good fortune of working with many great editors, but John Allison turned out to be the best. He was constantly saving me from my excesses before they made it into print. Maybe it’s because we’re only a month apart in age, he seemed to “get me” without fail. I didn’t have to explain obscure references to him, so he let them stay more times than not.
I could list dozens of colleagues who contributed to my DNA as a journalist over the years, but I would inevitably forget someone crucial. In recent years, Steve Mellon, who I consider one of the three best journalists I’ve ever met, has come to epitomize the best of the PG and someone I will always aspire to be as good as.
I know this is burying the lede, but it’s not like folks don’t already know or suspect after reading this far — this will be my last column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. After 34 years, I’m leaving the PG to do a column for NEXTpittsburgh, an online publication. I’ll also be doing a podcast with former SEEN editor Natalie Bencivenga in the fall.
I’m leaving the PG at a time it is in terrific hands. I’m a big fan of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski, who turned a rudderless, badly listing PG into a newspaper people can respect again. My biggest regret is that I’ll no longer be a part of his effort to turn things around. If the PG’s union can also hammer out a fair contract with the publisher, it will truly become “one of America’s great newspapers."
Editorial Page Editor Jeff Gerritt is hands down the coolest editor I’ve ever had and the most interesting by a factor of 10. I wish we’d had more time to work together, but this guy is serious about restoring the honor, independence and integrity of the editorial page. He has a great team, but he’s determined to build a better, more diverse team to better represent the region’s readers.
I will always love the PG and defend it against naysayers with my dying breath. I became a journalist at the PG and, I hope, a better human being. When no paper wanted me, the PG took me in, cleaned me up and made me presentable to the masses.
When I wasn’t working to my potential, old friends like LA Johnson and Ann Belser would say, “You suck, Tony Norman,” and mean it even as they laughed. I’d laugh, too, and wonder if the joke was on me.
Still, all things considered, it was way better than “worst. clerk. ever.”
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