Blathr Wayne Lorentz

Show me a painting of a Mingo County moonshiner, and Iʼll show you a still life.

I just came across this article about the then-new AT&T 6300 in the September, 1984 issue of Microsystems magazine.

This is the computer that West Virginia Radio Corporation made five of us share in the newsroom at WCHS/Charleston in 1995 because the company didnʼt have money for a second computer. The same machine also had to ingest the Associated Press wire feeds in the background.

This was eleven years after the computer was introduced.

I guess WVRC was a worse company than I thought.

Well, I guess Iʼm officially a big time TV producer. No more small markets. No more medium markets. No more large markets. Iʼm officially in a major market and a verifiable employee of Tribune Broadcasting. The official certification came this morning when I arrived at my desk and found a box of business cards with my name and the WGN-TV logo. Aside from an employment contract, it doesnʼt get more official than that.

This is important to me in two ways:

1. I didnʼt have to beg and plead and cajole and worry about how the expense of a box of business cards might wreck the stationʼs finances.
2. It just automatically happened. People in Chicago seem to have an interest in getting things done, rather than inventing excuses for why things canʼt be done.

It wasnʼt that many years ago when I had to go all the way up to the president of the West Virginia Radio Corporation to get permission to have business cards so I could do my job as a reporter. He said it was perfectly fine, and to order them that day. So I did. A week later, they were ready. A week after that I was confronted by the station manager freaking out about the $34 bill for my business cards.

I donʼt know what WGN-TV business cards cost, but I doubt anyone in this building cares.