On The Night Beat: Brake Lights, Flash Lights, And Media Lite

When there were newspapers, and we worked for them, we called the graveyard shifts “The Lobster” or “Nightside.” The journalist gypsies who populated the shifts went by a variety of names: “Nighthawkers,” “Ghouls,” “Darksiders.”

For some, it was a desirable gig. Little management oversight (most reporters are independent cusses to begin with), we had our pick of nightside stories while our colleagues were asleep in their beds and, last but not least – we came to believe we owned the city we covered.

Cover a “breaker” – a four-alarm pier fire, gang shooting, a socialite drama usually involving small guns and a random Viscount, and you were off to the races, making the early editions and The M&M or Le Cumbre for a burrito and a read-through with equally sleep-deprived cops, cabbies and the recently divorced.

“Another night on the beat.” News24/680 Photo

In our heyday you could count on someone from “the competition” – the Chronicle, Associated Press, UPI, The Trib – swinging by to stand you to a drink or three or regale you with stories of the latest management atrocity while you attacked the best 4a.m. meal money and a press badge could buy.

Borrowing from “Goodfellas”  – it was a glorious time. We were young, knew our way around and we enjoyed the camaraderie of other leather-clad rebels who knew they were in a dying profession but were determined to stick it out.

Why the trip down memory lane, you ask, Dear Reader? Well, when we made the jump from ink to digital we brought many of the Old Ways with us – including Nightside coverage – and while that thrills the Sigma Male personality type who filtered into this most unusual of roles it can be lonely these days.

“Where is everybody?” one of our Nightsiders bleated last night after a full shift of crashes and a fire or two. “All the press is gone. The cops are cool but where are the reporters?”

Gone, baby, gone. The cops’re cutting off their radios and “No Comment” has become the de facto response of minor officials hiding behind boilerplate language crafted by their lawyers. But take comfort in the fact that there are still stories to be found and the ones you get will be yours and yours alone.

It was a glorious time while it lasted.