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Pete Hamill, A Reporter’s Editor
William Peter Hamill Jr, Brooklyn-born of Northern Irish Catholic parents, was a journalist, novelist, essayist and editor. Suffering from heart and kidney failure, he died on August 5 at the New...
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Not So Tough: Why Journalism is Dying
Yesterday someone posted one of the later versions of Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter on a New Zealand journalists’ Facebook group. It was addressed to “those who think that better ‘music’ was made on...
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A Tribute to Peter Tytell, Son of The Typewriter Man
Peter at Riverdale Country School, New York, in 1963, aged 18New York typewriter forensics expert Peter Van Tytell passed away at his home in Manhattan on August 11, two days before his 75th birthday*....
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Raising a Storm in a Typewriter: Flannery O'Connor and Racism
Flannery O'Connor's Remington Noiseless portable typewriter at her former home,Andalusia Farm, Milledgeville, Georgia.Even from the distance of 7597 miles from Canberra to California, it’s not...
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"I always felt a little sorry for people who didn’t work for newspapers”
This video is the best depiction of a typewriter-laden newspaper newsroom that I have seen. It's also a suitable adornment for Sam Roberts's article about newsrooms, which appeared in the US on the...
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10-Year-Old's Covid Newspaper typed on a Brother Portable Typewriter
Great story on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report in Australia last evening about Suzy Pollard, a 10-year-old North Melbourne Primary School student who is using a Brother 750 TR portable manual typewriter to...
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Seven Degrees of Separation: Seven People, Seven Typewriters
How are all these people connected?1. Pauline Elisabeth Ottilie Luise of Wied (1843-1916), the Queen of Romania as the wife of King Carol I, and was widely known by her literary name of Carmen Sylva....
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The Demise of Spikus vulgaris
I don’t get my news from Facebook, so its threat to Australia won’t bother me. One reason I look elsewhere for news is that what appears on Facebook is usually what we old print newspaper hacks call...
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Martin Tytell: 'A Man Who Loved Typewriters'
Last month I posted a tribute to the late Peter Tytell, and since it has had 1200 pages views I can safely assume there is a lot of interest in the Tytell family (of whom Peter's mother Pearl is the...
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Spot the Portable Typewriters: Ringside at Muhammad Ali v Cleveland Williams,...
I counted 22 portable typewriters being used by ringside reporters working before a then world record indoor crowd of 35,460 - four Olivetti Lettera 32s, three Olivetti Lettera 22s, three Olympias, two...
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Tytell Collection Goes to Internet Archive
One could easily sense in the comment from Richard Polt that a great wave of relief had swept across the world of typewriter historians and collectors when Jason Scott revealed last month that the...
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The Hite Report and the Lies About the Olivetti Typewriter Ads
Shere Hite appeared in "Olivetti Girls" ads to help her pay college feeswhile at Columbia University in 1971.Now that Shere Hite, sex educator and feminist and author of 1976’s The Hite Report: A...
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How Joe Namath Came to Replace Shere Hite in the Olivetti Typewriter Ads (By...
While writing my last post, I suspected there would be some reaction suggesting Shere Hite’s subsequent criticism of 1972’s stereotypical “Olivetti Girl” advertising campaign was fair and reasonable....
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FuNkOmaTiC Typewriter in Dum Dumville
Once the pandemic is completely under control – at least in this part of the world – I’m looking forward to receiving word that New Zealand screenwriter and film director Taika Watiti is planning a...
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‘The Bruce Who Walks’: When The Phantom Came to Australia (and Diana Palmer...
Jim Blair at his Underwood 5 at The Bulletin in Sydney.Tarcoola is a goldrush ghost town named after a racehorse. It sits in hot desert air in the Far North of South Australia and is a junction for...
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What a Wonderful World With Typewriters
‘Man, I'm a two-fingered blip on my portable typewriter.’ - Louis Armstrong to a radio interviewer.In January 1952 US newspapers headlined the story, “That Satchmo Saga – Literary Field Is Invaded by...
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LIFE in Lockdown: Hemingway and Extra Slow Snail Mail
For we Australians, the Dangerous Summer quite possibly still lies ahead. Things have been bad enough as it is. And Covid-19 isolation is all the more excruciating when one is cooped up without a...
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A New Old Typewriter Market?
Coronavirus has caused things to change drastically this year, and hopefully there are many more changes to come. In Australia, the privatisation of aged-care facilities by the conservative government...
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He Jettisoned His Car But Kept His Hermes Baby Portable Typewriter: The...
Last Out Before the Rape of Nanjing, First Into Singapore and Last Out Before the Fall‘The sky over Singapore is black with the smoke of a dozen huge fires … The roar and crash of cannonade and the...
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