The Newspaper You Have Dialed Is No Longer In Service
“Please enter the first four letters of your party’s last name.”
I heard the same message again. While I wondered what to do, the recorded voice broke in again. “Please enter the remaining digits of your party’s last name, followed by the pound sign.” So I did that.
I hung up. I pictured someone at a pay phone trying to reach the only Sun-Times reporter he trusted with a tip on a big story but getting nowhere and just about out of change. I, however, was sitting at a desk and change was not an issue. I called the main number again.
“If you are calling for arts and entertainment please press one. For sports press two . . .”
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Phone numbers–and e-mail addresses–are rarely easy to find on newspaper Web sites. Operators knock off at 5 or 5:30, and they’re not around at all on weekends. Yet there was a time not many years ago when an operator was always on duty at a serious newspaper and the newsroom was always easy to reach. A time when the people who published newspapers and the people who read them thought of each other as confederates. A time when journalists didn’t scratch their heads and wonder why the public despised them.
