My history in publishing
The “newspaper” I produced when I was 11 had simpler economics than the Century does.
My first introduction to editing and publishing came when I was 11. It was an inauspicious beginning, to be sure. Short-lived. Ill-conceived. Driven by a combination of ambition, immaturity, and fun.
My brothers and I produced a modest one-page, biweekly “newspaper” called the Crocodile Report. Modest is probably too generous a word. Newspaper is appropriately inside quotation marks. The name derived from the fact that I could draw a reasonably good crocodile, which landed on the masthead, and because I thought some clever writing would emerge from all the words that rhymed or nearly rhymed with croc and dile.
If truth be told, the writing was lousy. We printed inane weather reports, corny jokes, made-up stories, pitiful limericks, and recipes that consisted of whatever foods preteen boys thought would taste funny when mixed together. Stanley, an exchange student brother pictured with me, and another brother contributed free copy. I pounded out the three-column design on a green Olivetti typewriter, typographically justifying the margins wherever I could by counting out spaces for the individual letters.
