pneumatics in The Post

It happens in the climactic scene. The Washington Post has decided to go ahead and print a story that could potentially ruin them. The articles are typed frantically in the editor's living room, while the editor's daughter sells them lemonade. The articles are rushed to the copy editor, and then, the moment comes, are shot through the pneumatic tube system to the printers.

And so pneumatic tubes appear at a pivotal moment in yet another movie, this time The Post.

The Washington Post review of the film is unsurprisingly favourable:

"Few will be immune to the romance that lies at the center of a movie that takes as much delight in pneumatic tubes, linotype machines and telexes trailing like bridal veils as it does in temperamental opposites finding common purpose in the institution to which they’re both truly, madly and deeply devoted. 'The Post' works on many levels, from polemic and thinly veiled cautionary tale to fun period piece and rip-roaring newspaper yarn. But at its most gratifying, it’s a love story, from the lede to the kicker."

The Post indeed could be read as a romantic eulogy to technologies lost or dying. Although, as we know, pneumatic tubes are alive and well. They just aren't rushing copy to the printers anymore, just as those newspapers are no longer thudding on our doorsteps on Saturday mornings.


Some useful glossary that might help with the above, from inside my recently purchased Field Notes Reporter's Notebook:

Lede: "an attention-grabbing first graf, summarizing the 'who, what, when, where, and why' of an article. Don't 'bury' this!"

Kicker: "a final graf that ties up a piece with wit and flair"

Graf: "abbreviation of 'paragraph'"

Image from the New Zealand Herald Manual of Journalism, first in my blogpost "In the Newsroom". For more on pneumatics in newsrooms, see my other post "Reporting on the Pneus"