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Homage to George Dickel

For all of us old newspaper wretches, this will drive you to the liquor cabinet.

During the afternoon budget meeting, the photo chief mentions a story about George Dickel distillery trying to reduce its inventory.

Faces around the room went blank. Finally, someone asked "Who's George Dickel?"

More than half the people in the room hadn't heard of the Tennessee whisky, forcing me to pull a bottle out of my desk drawer to show them.*

The daily news about the digital revolution doesn't signal a new media world the way that story does.

For some reason it reminded me of this George Thorogood lyric:

Now, the other night I lay sleeping,
And I woke from a terrible dream.
So I called up my pal, Jack Daniels,
And his partner Jimmy Beam.

And we drank alone, yeah, with nobody else.
We drank alone, yeah, with nobody else.
Yeah, you know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself.

* For my friends in Human Resources, that actually didn't happen.

Comments (6)

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I thought every journalist was automatically issued a desk bottle of bourbon along with a press pass and a wrinkled jacket.

What's the world coming to? Newspapering really IS in its death throes.

Bourbon, but not necessarily Dickel, which is high end. We don't pay much...you think we're going to pay much for whisky?

Fred Gregory said:

If these moronic bureaucrats go through with this they should be WATERBOARDED

100 Year Old Jack Daniel's To Be Destroyed

Oh, got it. And I guess Dickel isn't really bourbon, anyway.

Heaven Hill for the junior staffers?

Dickle is in-fact my favorite.... Always has been.

Steve said:

Years ago a television cabinet gathered dust in the old Press Room at City Hall in Chicago. No one ever watched the TV; in fact, the doors were always closed and locked. The late, legendary Harry Golden Jr. of the Sun-Times and the Tribune's senior City Hall reporter shared custody of the key. When young reporters earned the regulars' trust, Golden would reveal the cabinet's secret stash: bottles of bourbon, scotch, vodka and other booze donated by aldermen and other city officials to the ever-thirsty gentlemen of the press. The supply never seemed to run out. Whenever anyone in City Hall asked how many reporters worked in the press room, Golden would name all the regulars (eight in the 1970s, as I recall) and then add 10 or 12 names of reporters who occasionally, but rarely, showed up at City Hall. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the TV cabinet is still there.

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