"BOB" STILL POUNDS TYPEWRITER
"Bob" Still Pounds Typewriter Veteran Editor, Active as Ever, Will Write for LaFollette's; Fearless Exploits of 48 Years Ago Recalled in Review of Busy Life Robert F. Paine will contribute every...
...Scripps gave him a chance...
...Shapley learned that the ant will run 12 times faster when the temperature is around 100 than when it is around 50...
...Fearless Exploits of 48 Years Ago Recalled in Review of Busy Life Robert F. Paine will contribute every month an editorial or some other material to LA FOLLETTE'S Magazine...
...Paine has been a newspaper editorial writer for over forty years...
...There were yells from advertisers, managers, and Scripps papers...
...He laid speed traps and used a stop watch...
...Paine understood...
...Editorial comment is furnished The Press and a chain of newspapers every day...
...Most editors emeritus are mostly of the glass-case museum type-bits of worn-out human machinery thrown on life's scrap heap with a high-sounding name...
...Clean 'em out, no matter who yells, understand...
...I want you to clean the questionable and dirty medical ads out of my papers...
...Paine said: "I don't know the difference between a liner ad and a yard of Roach's Ready Rectifier, prices, space or anything...
...He ferrets out men who exploit weaker ones for profit...
...Someone asked Paine for the story of his life...
...Though time is a gray mouse that gnaws at the fabric of life, time has not impaired the vision nor the mental strength of this giant of the printed page...
...Paine didn't flinch because Scripps didn't like his looks...
...He writes of human things —he couldn't do otherwise—for he knows humanity...
...Recently the Cleveland Press summarized in a short article his life achievement!* as an editorial writer...
...For 20 years he was THE editor of the paper —at least a greater part of Ohio had that opinion...
...Bobbing the hair, and skirts more than six inches from the ground are banned by the divisional officer of the Salvation Army in West artlepool, England...
...He obeyed orders implicitly...
...Fighting—battling for a purpose was earned into his newspaper work...
...Fact, he conducts an editorial service—"Paine's Service"—out on the Pacific coast...
...Quick as a flash, the veteran came back with his "obituary"—which, in newspaper parlance, is the story written after a man's death...
...But the objectionable ads were removed...
...DURING this period Paine acted as editorial secretary of the Scripps papers, president and manager of the Scripps Press Association —now the United Press—president and general manager of the Newspaper Enterprise Association and general manager of foreign advertising for the Scripps papers...
...DAINE has written editorials for nearly a half century...
...Working half a century or more is no uncommon feat, but most men simmer down to a slow pace...
...But in the sanguinary battles that almost daily prevailed on the docks, there was a rugged, crude sense of justice...
...There were bloody fights there—cursing, strong-armed sailors who feared nothing...
...NO STORY was ever too big for him—no job was ever too tough to handle...
...Scripps had faith in Bob and he came back with: "You're just damned fool enough to carry out my orders, regardless of how it hurts...
...When E. W. Scripps, the publisher, left in 1883 for a tour of foreign countries, he left Bob Paine...
...His influence has been felt both in this city and throughout the nation...
...He wasnt that kind...
...Scripps wasn't favorably impressed...
...Speaking of his first impression of the young applicant, Scripps said: "Whatever else I may base my claims on for being an astute and capable judge of men, I must confess they cannot rest upon my ability to distinguish, at first sight the man who became a great editor of a great newspaper...
...He accepts the name and honor—but he still works...
...in complete charge of The Press...
...Harlow Shapley, Harvard astronomer, found that the speed of an ant depends on the temperature...
...He assigned him to the "river beat...
...He simply gave the news...
...It's .snappy copy—chuck full of life—.bristling with keen observation -caustic at times and then again mellowed by a mind experienced in vhe whims and vagaries of life...
...He sid: "Bob Paine has passed on—he was damned well entitled to it...
...Fearless, grous, unaaunted he will fight and write until the Great Copy Reader will write "30" on a life that has been given to the service of his fellow men...
...I'll certainly ruin your foreign business...
...They fly in enormous flocks...
...His pugnacious spirit brought early- reward -he was soon made city editor of The Press...
...And young Bob quickly learned the lesson that anything worth fighting for is worth having...
...He did not persecute nor publish unsavory stories for the sensation they might create...
...Well, they are down on the gulf coast and already enjoy-the berries of the holly and mistletoe, which ing Christmas—because their principal food is grow in great quantities in that country...
...And down to the "river beat" young Paine went...
...He sees the sunshine in a child's smile —he weaves the cheer of childhood into his newspapers...
...THE THOUGHT struck home—in his after life he never forgot it...
...FORTY-SEVEN years a newspaper man and still punching a typewriter...
...To Paine the arrest of a dock walloper was a news story—the arrest of a prominent citizen was a better story...
...That was in the day of rough sailors—the water front wasn't a place of high ideals—it was a spot where men were men...
...One man watched one flock pass over his place, without a break, from noon to nightfall and, roughly counting those that flew by in one minute, he estimated that there were nearly a million in the flock...
...Bright-eyed, eager for a chance to take a fling at journalism, Paine insisted he could fill the bill...
...But not Bob Paine...
...Others may totter and fall by the wayside...
...He was told to print the news without fear or favor...
...Those 12 words tell bis life story...
...It is a laconic, terse "close-up" of the man...
...The young fellow was Paine...
...Louisiana is the winter home of more than half the northern robins...
...Then again his sharp eyes detect the counterfeits of life...
...WHERE ROBINS SPENDS CHRISTMAS "IT THERE is that pair of robins that nested on your place last summer...
...He played no favorites —no argument or "pull" went with him...
...In the name of justice he demands reform...
...He still peppers away with the crackle and spark of youth...
...Yet, it would require volumes to relate his life-achievement—a career that is interwoven with all the romance and thrill that comes only to a man who day after day feels the throb of the world through the arteries of news...
...When Scripps named Paine as general manager of foreign advertising the young executive registered a protest...
...That's Bob Paine—editor emeritus of The Press...
...But not Bob Paine...
...BACK in the spring of 1879 a lean youth of 23 approached E. W. JD Scripps, founder of The Press, for a job...
...But not Bob-Paine...
...LA FOLLETTE'S Magazine reprints by permission the article from the Cleveland Press.—Editor's Note...
Vol. 18 • December 1926 • No. 12
