Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

An empty page strikes fear in journalists

Back in the antediluvian days when newspaper copy was composed on typewriters, a sagacious columnist opined that there is nothing more terrifying than a blank sheet of paper.

He was referring, of course, to the space that had to be filled under deadline pressure, and if the words didn't flow, someone was going to be in trouble. Now, in the information age, a blank screen on a computer terminal can inspire the same emotions as its fibrous counterpart. Blank is blank, paper-wise, computer-wise or mind-wise.

I can't help but wonder if my dad, Llewellyn B. Peck, ever was confronted with the blank-page syndrome when it came to filling the columns of the weekly Saratoga Star, after he took over publication in 1922. He had started his newspaper career in 1909 as a reporter on the old Fresno Republican, which, for a lifelong Democrat, might seem a bit incongruous. Even in his later years here--he died in 1979--confessed Democrats were about as rare in Saratoga as they are today.

But the Fresno Republican was edited and published by Chester Rowell, a prominent figure in California journalism who later became editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and my dad always took pride in having worked on his staff. At other times in his newspaper career, my dad worked on the San Francisco Morning Call and later as assistant editor of the Berkeley Gazette. It was while he was on the latter paper that he got interested in Saratoga and bought out the Star, which had begun publication in 1917.

Looking back at some of those early issues, I can't help but think that he found it a real challenge to dig up enough in the way of local goings-on to make an interesting front page. Influenced, no doubt, by his experience on city dailies, he used the same typographical approach in his country weekly. In the issue of Jan. 10, 1929, for example, the headline "Senior Play To Be 'Baldpate' " was emblazoned across all six columns in 96-point type, a size suggestive of what is known in the trade as "second coming" type. Below it, also across six columns and in 48-point type, were "Flynn Tells Airport Details" and "Saratoga Asks Wider Street."

By this time, my dad had moved his whole operation to Los Gatos, where he established the Los Gatos Star. The two Stars not only were in the same journalistic constellation, they were, for all practical purposes, the same newspaper, with the nameplate or flag changed to suit the circulation area.

Since the two towns shared a community of interests--Saratoga students, for instance, attended Los Gatos High School--stories such as the choice of a senior play were of relevance in both papers. The wider street that was being asked for in Saratoga was "the Mountain View Road between Williams Street and the park and the Los Gatos Road between Oak Way and Aloha Avenue." Thirty-six years later, in 1965, that first segment would be widened with a vengeance, wiping out most of "the park" but leaving the other highway segment at two lanes. The "airport details" were recounted by Frank Flynn, superintendent of Mills Field, now San Francisco International Airport, at a meeting in Mountain View of a group called Santa Clara County Consolidated. It seems that folks hereabout were interested in having a "union airport." As it turned out, San Jose picked up the ball and ran with it.

For sheer poignancy, it would be hard to match an interview in the issue of Aug. 15, 1929, with James J. Gill, drama instructor at St. Ignatius College, San Francisco, who was staying at the Rex Hotel, just a few doors down from the Star office.

The burden of his message was that, although the talkies have a great future, "silent moving pictures will never be improved on for epic themes.

"The talking pictures, if they will avoid the unsavory themes to which so many theatrical producers have become addicted, will find an ever increasing popularity," he declared. "They will appeal more and more to the great American family, but only so long as they maintain the morals reverenced by family people."

Let us hope that a benevolent providence intervened before the good professor ever had to watch television.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]