I love movies about the old days when newspapers were the main element for people who wanted to keep in touch with a world outside of their neighborhood.

I used to chat with Jerry Nachman, one of the smartest people I was lucky enough to meet, and a great newspaperman, a great broadcaster too. He could do just about anything. His résumé in his short life (he died at 57) was astonishing. He was a star police reporter at Channel 2, the CBS TV station in New York, and then became the editor of the New York Post and the general manager at WRC, the NBC affiliate in Washington D.C. When he died of complications from liver cancer, he was in charge of MSNBC. He had his own talk show. He was an insurgent. He scared enough people to let him have his own way – which, in my estimation, was the right way.

But I knew Jerry when CBS in New York decided to reward him by making him news director of KCBS in San Francisco. That was in 1980.

One of Jerry’s great talents was to connect with people. If there was a crisis in the newsroom, he’d be there himself to supervise. None of that “hide in the office and pretend you are important” stuff. Jerry wanted to be with the troops. Everyone knew he’d paid his dues. Carole Vernier said to me the other day, “It’s called street cred.”

Jerry drafted me from the mailroom to the newsroom. I never know if it’s a Horatio Alger story or an Alger Hiss story. I tend to mix them up.

Now, what does this have to do with Paris?

I can explain. Jerry and I agreed that the best movie about the newspaper world is Deadline U.S.A. It starred Humphrey Bogart. If you have Netflix or access to the Film Yard, go find it.

The death of a newspaper is a terrible thing, whether it’s big or small. In the film, Bogart – the boss at a daily – has to deal with the family that owns the paper and wants to sell it. Ethel Barrymore, fighting the family, protests. The prospective new owner – a competitor – wants to buy The Day and put it to sleep. This is a prescient story if you recall how the Hearst Corporation wanted to buy the old Examiner in order to rule the San Francisco marketplace. The Ethel Barrymore character could be Nan McEvoy.

There’s a wake for the death-bound daily. It’s in a newspaper bar – not unlike Hanno’s or the M&M near 5th and Mission, both now gone. Amid the giddy gloom comes a speech from a well-seasoned woman reporter. It goes something like this: “Here’s to The Day. I worked for her for 17 years. What do I have to show for it? Forty-nine dollars in my savings account, two dead husbands, flat feet – and I’ve never been to Paris.”

There’s a description of sacrifice for one’s craft. Perhaps self-immolation. So why do newspaper writers do all this today in an age of electronic media?

“It’s because you have to be in touch with people,” says Svetlana Shirinova. “Meet them face to face. People have to know that you are still here. It’s a vehicle of expression. It’s required. You have to touch them.”

Some people like to touch things to make sure they are real. Not that everything printed in a newspaper is real or accurate. It’s the turning of the page with one’s fingers that counts.

This reminds me of the wonderful photographs by Eugene Atget of Paris before World War I – images of a lost Paris. Perhaps newspapers may become Atget’s pictures – pictures of the gone world. Yes, that’s Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s line. The lines on the printed page are as real to me as anything else in this gone world. But the world is not gone. I confess: I’ve never been to Paris, either. Paris is still there. The people who are patient enough to read these words are still here. I can see Paris from a distance – on the web. But any decent reporter can tell you, distance is not good enough. Svetlana will tell you that being out of touch – in one sense or another -- is a fatal mistake. I guess some of us have to catch up, before it really is a gone world.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of Bellingham by the Bay. He also writes for Northside San Francisco. Before he is gone, find him at [email protected].