{"id":418,"date":"2021-06-17T20:21:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-17T20:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2021-06-17T20:24:38","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T20:24:38","slug":"pin-stripe-suits-and-fedoras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/pin-stripe-suits-and-fedoras\/","title":{"rendered":"Pin-Stripe Suits and Fedoras"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
There is an old saying in journalism that goes like this: \u201cIf your mother says she loves you, check it out.\u201d This is amusing to journalists because it is precisely what we are trained to do\u2014be skeptical and double check everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re supposed to look with a jaundiced eye at every story we have been told and every fact we think we have unearthed. An unsettling experience I had in the mid-1980s, though, tested the skeptic in me\u2014and still does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, some background\u2014 My maternal grandfather was a crusading newspaperman who published a chain of weekly newspapers in the downriver area of Detroit from 1933 until 1969. His name was William S. Mellus, but to me and his other five grandchildren, he was Grandpa Bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was about 13, Grandpa Bill suggested I might like to work at his newspaper office during my summer vacations. I thought this was a splendid idea, and over the years, he proceeded to teach me the news business. Short and rotund, with a cigar usually clamped between his teeth, I\u2019d watch him pound away on his typewriter, edit mercilessly his reporters\u2019 copy (including mine), and argue minute points of grammar as though the world depended on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grandpa Bill\u2019s newspapers won hundreds of awards for excellence over the years, and I loved him dearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n