Tossing trash affirms the need for change

BY DON MECOY Comments 0
Published: November 4, 2009

I’m moving to a new desk today.

I’ll be performing the same job, just in a different place about 50 feet away from my current seat. In fact, the new desk is adjacent to one I sat in until about a year ago. We’ve been doing a lot of moving around in the newsroom lately, consolidating and trying to work smarter — like a lot of local businesses.

Moving involves sorting through accumulated detritus, and chucking a fair amount into the trash. It also offers reminders of how things have changed.

A search for new storage space uncovered some old — but by no means historic — stuff collected by colleagues through the years. I opened a long-locked file drawer that the most recent addition was a 14-year-old outdoors magazine. In another cabinet, I found an impressive collection of unopened software all on obsolete 5¼-inch disks.

We used to save all kinds of things we no longer need because so much information now is readily available in digital form. Years ago, those now-dusty files and yellowed newspapers often provided vital background for reporters writing on deadline.

Sifting through stacks of old material can prompt feelings of nostalgia. But those feelings are more about the people than the way we used to work.

As someone whose tenure at The Oklahoman is approaching a quarter-century, I sometimes wonder how I’ve been able to last so long. The answer is change. Despite our reluctance sometimes to deal with it, change is necessary.

I’ve held at least a dozen jobs at the newspaper. I started out as a part-time reporter in a tiny Norman office that opened to a hall where parolees waited to meet with probation officers. I lugged around a "portable” computer the size of a suitcase that displayed text on a screen you could cover with one hand. I loved it.

I’ve covered mergers and marriages, courts and cattle, tornadoes and terrorism. I’ve filed stories from scores of desks, death row and every corner of Oklahoma.

Now I regularly post a story online, and then write a different version for tomorrow’s paper. I rarely venture out without a laptop, camera and digital recorder that allow me to become a traveling newsroom. My job is different, but change has allowed me to do it faster and more efficiently.

While the methods and tools have changed, the goal hasn’t — to tell good stories in interesting ways. That is not to say that I’ve always succeeded.

So I’ll pitch a pile of paper into a vast recycling tub, give my new desk the last good cleaning it will get for the next several months, and get back to work.