WEEKEND COLUMN: HOW I GOT THE BEST GIG IN JOURNALISM, WRITING FOR WEST SIDE RAG

By Carol Tannenhauser

When I was a child, I played reporter. I would sit at a beat-up child’s, maple secretary – the pull-down desktop missing, the hinges bare – in the basement of the first of my three suburban childhood homes.

I had a gray-metal toy typewriter with a dial in the middle and a lever. You dialed the letter you wanted, pushed the lever, and a key smacked against the page, leaving a smudged imprint. Needless to say, my stories were short.

Beside the typewriter was a red-metal, old-fashioned-looking toy telephone with a green string cord. Heard only by me, it would periodically ring and I’d grab it and bark, “Got a story for me?” I’d take notes on a pad and then begin to type, one letter at a time, an account of the latest fire, theft, accident, or such, in the imaginary town I covered.

Who am I kidding? It was Metropolis and I was Lois Lane – or a secretary-bound version of her. How was I to find a story when I wasn’t allowed to cross the street by myself? I was forced to rely on stringers, presumably in more fertile ground.

I went to a “great” journalism school at a large university, majored in print (who knew?) and didn’t learn a thing in four years, except how to find the building. I do remember one professor named Cathy Covert (good name for an investigative reporter), but nothing else, except that she was hard. I’m flashing on red-circled B minuses.

The closest I got to a newsroom after graduating was the bottom of Time Inc.’s research chain. I was a marker; I, literally, marked Time and The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and, for some reason, the Christian Science Monitor. In prehistoric times, before Google, someone had to fill the research files for the reporters way up on street level. I marked every story in those papers, being provided with 20 copies of every page, according to categories listed in a binder the size of two NYC telephone books. (Remember those?) A story could go in folders for, say, Richard Nixon, Watergate, I am not a crook. Today, they’d be hashtags. (Someone please write in and explain what those are.)

From there, I moved into book publishing, when books were the only available reading platform. Then, I had kids and wanted to stay home with them, but also to work, so I became part-time, then, freelance, not doing badly, writing three nonfiction books and dozens of articles for major national, albeit “women’s” magazines, and one essay for The New York Times. Then, I spent two decades working and writing for a nonprofit, helping homeless men build productive, satisfying lives. Then, my daughter, Emily Tannenhauser, sent me a link to an online newspaper (an oxymoron) called West Side Rag. It had put out a call for writers, saying, “We pay.”

“You should write for it,” Emily said. “All my friends read it.”

Truth is, I wanted to make her proud.

So, now I sit at a very grown-up 19th century French secretary, made of soft cherry wood, brass, and marble, with a green-leather inlay in the pull-down desktop. I type on an iPad, though often still with one finger. The only smudges are on my screen. My phone has no cord. I am out of the basement and the suburbs, living and working high above the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in an iconic building more wonderful than my wildest dreams. (I never forget how lucky I am.) Something interesting usually happens on my way down in the elevator. As for the streets, no more stringers for me, I’m out there now. My stories appear regularly. I love it. I’m a cub reporter at 67. My childhood fantasy has come true.

Editor’s Notes:

1. Carol has broken some of the biggest stories in the Rag, including a piece on artist Aaron Bell’s “censored” sculpture that received national attention.
2. We put out a call last year for writers and got more applications than we’d anticipated (more than 150). Sorry for not getting back to everyone. We’re still looking for people, so if you’re still interested please shoot us an email at westsiderag at gmail dot com.