* Wesley Pruden, an ink-stained newspaperman who rose from a teenage
copyboy in Arkansas to pugnacious columnist and editor-in-chief at The Washington Times, where he helped make the newspaper a favorite of conservatives, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his home in Washington.
Though he didn't do well at school, Capote was liked by his classmates for his writing skills, and he eventually managed to get a job while still a teenager for The New Yorker, though it was just as a
copyboy. When he left to pursue his own writing career, Capote had begun working on a novel titled "Summer Crossing"; although he scrapped it for a his collection of short stories that would eventually make him a known name.
In the closing passage, the
copyboy peruses his discarded papers and finds that he wrote about Shumann's crash in a style that was "not only news but the beginning of literature" which states that Shumann's competitor on his last flight was "Death, and Roger Shumann lost" (279).
In Basil, a song from his Tracker album last year, former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, who worked as a
copyboy at the Evening Chronicle (The Journal's sister paper) at the same time as Bunting was a sub-editor, describes him thus: "Ancient blue sweater, too old for the job Bored out of his mind With the Colins and Bobs" This about sums up the Scotswood-born poet's lot at the time.
When he came out in 1946, he went to work for United Press as a
copyboy, applied himself, and over several decades rose through the ranks.
He worked as a
copyboy at the New York Times in New York before moving to Worcester in 1962 to join the staff of the Worcester Telegram.
Painter, then 18, started at the Portland daily in 1958 as a
copyboy and night police reporter.
A 45-year newspaper veteran -- he started as a
copyboy at The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, when he was 14 -- Maas rose to assistant managing editor in Toledo before moving to Virginia's Roanoke Times as assistant sports editor.
After high school he began as a
copyboy and by 22 was a city editor, a career that conjures our country's most heroic phase of print media: dogged muckrakers, The Appeal to Reason, "His Girl Friday" and all the Lee Tracy movies.
Based on the Denise Minah novel, it follows the perspective of Paddy Mehan, a '
copyboy' (she's a girl, but it was the 80s) in a newsroom populated by old sneering hacks riddled with drink and smoking like lums.
The Toronto Star offered me a "
copyboy" apprenticeship (obsolete these days), but I was headed out west--ostensibly to study at Prairie Bible Institute (PBI), in Three Hills, Alberta.