Finley: Wild times and war stories: The newspaper ride of a lifetime

The first person I met at The Detroit News was unmistakably drunk. Our introduction came when he fell across the desk where I was seated waiting to be put to work as a copy boy and hit the floor hard.

Nolan Finley

Red-faced and reeking, he pulled himself to his knees, reached across the desk for the telephone, dialed a number and burst into tears.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he sobbed into the receiver. “I 've been on an undercover assignment for two days and couldn’t call home.”

When he hung up, he wiped his eyes, grinned and stuck out his hand: “Hi, I’m Jim. Welcome to The News.”

As I've written before, I had worried about fitting into a professional setting, having worked only on farms and in factories up to that point. But when Jim stumbled away, I called my mother and said, “I think I’m going to like it here.”

That was 47 years ago. I’m still here, and so is The News. And neither was a sure thing in 1976.

As I join my colleagues past and present in marking the 150th anniversary of The News, the thing I most marvel at is this newspaper’s perseverance.

When I joined, The News and the Detroit Free Press were beating the daylights out of each other in one of the nation’s last great newspaper wars.

The thing about a war, newspaper or otherwise, is winning is all that matters. At my orientation, Bob Nelson, the newspaper’s street-tough publisher, spelled out the mission with absolute clarity: “You’ve got one job — to beat the f---ing Free Press every single day. If you can’t do that, get the hell out.”

With those marching orders, we went at our jobs with the knowledge that anything goes, as long as we got the story — or sold the ads or filled the newspaper boxes — before the Free Press did.  

Those were wild times, fueled by adrenaline and alcohol. Jim was certainly not the only drunk in the newsroom. For a stretch, it seemed like the white rehab van from Brighton Hospital had a permanent parking space in front of the old building on Lafayette. I remember how shocked we were the first time someone got fired for being drunk on the job — we never knew that was a fireable offense.

The war stories are endless. One of my favorites — and forgive me if I have the details fuzzy — involves a Russian sailor who jumped ship in Detroit. Somehow, he made contact with a Free Press reporter, who stashed him in the Fort Shelby hotel to rest up for an interview later in the day.

A News reporter got wind the defector was sleeping at the Shelby, burst into the lobby pretending to be an immigration officer and demanded the desk clerk cough up the sailor. He did the interview, and The News stole the story.

That was the way things were. The belief that Detroit wasn’t big enough for two newspapers pushed the fight for survival to extremes.  

We had our foot on the throat of the Free Press in 1985 when the descendants of our founder, James Scripps, couldn’t keep the family together and The News was sold to Gannett.

Almost immediately, the know-it-alls started arriving from Washington, where Gannett was headquartered, parking their limos along Lafayette in a grating display of arrogance. It quickly became clear our ways weren’t their ways.

The cowboy days were over. The corporate days had begun.

Within a couple of years, an armistice was signed in the form of a Joint Operating Agreement between The News and Free Press, and suddenly the war was over.

I hated it then but have come to realize the JOA did what it promised — kept two competitive newspapers alive in Detroit, with two distinct voices. Not many cities in America have that.

And despite my fears, the intensity of the competition to be first and best lived on.

We’ve had other jolts since then. Our staff went out on a long and damaging strike. The News was sold again, this time to Media News Group, in 2005. We adopted a new circulation model that curtailed home delivery. We moved out of that magnificent building on Lafayette.

Each challenge brought predictions of The News’ imminent demise. We’ve been going out of business, according to the newspaper “experts,” for the past 30 years.

Yet we’re still here, celebrating our 150th birthday, and still serving our readers with a first-rate newspaper delivered on multiple platforms. And I, for one, am still loving every minute of it.

X: @NolanFinleyDN

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