Squint with all your might and it’s possible to see a cover of the short-lived Metropolis weekly newspaper (Minneapolis), tacked to the wall at the right of my noggin in this photo taken at City Paper’s rowhouse in Baltimore’s Charles Village decades ago. I thought about Metropolis this week as the financial markets whipsawed, led by the besieged (for now) tech industry, which has far too many AI businesses, leading to a likely winnowing-out and layoffs. Some will rejoice, since AI is mostly reviled; I’m not a fan, but if I lost sleep over every “innovation” in modern American life I’d look like a ravaged, toothless 69-year-old crackhead. (Meanwhile, what a pleasure to read the pied-piper warnings of newly minted economists on social media last Monday: “Do yourself a favor and don’t look at your retirement fund.”)
I first saw Metropolis when working at College Press Service in Denver—two colleagues left to work for the well-funded start-up, which paid very decent wages for such a venture—and was struck by its meticulous design, especially the crisp photography and innovative use of type. (Not easy to pull off back then: in pre-desktop publishing, cold type was pasted on “flats,” exotic fonts—like Shattered—were available only on Letraset sheets and each letter had to be pressed on, and an unsteady hand could waste several dollars. It’s a small accomplishment, but I was a paste-up whiz, slitting columns straight as an Eagle Scout with a razor blade, which I held so tight it often resulted in finger-nicks. “Smith, don’t bleed on the flats,” one co-worker taunted me.”)
The pictured Metropolis cover had a magnificent (and unflattering) shot of Wendell Anderson, Minnesota’s governor who arranged to have himself appointed to the U.S. Senate when a vacancy arose. It wasn’t popular with that state’s voters, and Anderson’s once-promising career was flushed in short order, just like Metropolis. The newspaper was a victim of placing editorial content above business, as the young men and women running it believed that if the stories were smart (they were) readers and advertisers would come on board. A common mistake in publishing of that era—many Metropolis writers and editors parlayed their work there into noteworthy careers—a lesson that as a co-owner of a weekly I’d yet to learn. (Although in contrast to Metropolis, and the great Real Paper in Boston, my partner and I started our paper on fumes, and so had no money to lose.)
Nevertheless, I kept copies of Metropolis and gave them to CP’s art director Joachim Blunck (who might’ve shot the above photo), to study as a model for what I wanted our paper to look like. JB was knocked out, too, although it took only a year for him, on a limited budget, to create designs and photo layouts that surpassed whatever I could show him. (Again, a snappy look guaranteed nothing in the marketplace; especially in Baltimore, where “alternative” papers were dismissed as Communist propaganda by many snarly retailers who zero interest in setting aside a table for “rags.”)
I specifically remember the night this photo was taken: it was around nine, I’d just interviewed a gubernatorial candidate on the phone, and had 90 minutes to decipher the notes jotted down in a notebook and type up (on the portable Olivetti in the pic) an endorsement of the man. He lost the primary, but I completed my article—it took three takes, with whiteout, to get it right, and the idea of composing on a computer wasn’t on my radar, although the primitive rollouts were already occurring on the West Coast. I never liked that ugly green ashtray on my desk, but it was big, functional and added a pleasant aroma to the room.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Roman Polanski skips bail in the U.S. and moves to France; U.S. Senate proceedings are broadcast on radio for the first time; Charlie Chaplin’s remains are stolen in Switzerland; Dallas debuts on CBS; Mavis Hutchinson is the first woman to run across the United States; South Africa’s Margaret Gardiner is crowned Miss Universe; at a concert in Baltimore, Bob Dylan sings “Tangled Up in Blue,” while dressed in Vegas-style sequins; Larry Kramer’s Faggots and Richard Yates’ A Good School are published; John Wayne Gacy is arrested; Ariel Pink is born and Gig Young dies; and Grace Slick leaves Jefferson Starship and the Dead Kennedys play their first show, in San Francisco.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023