What is the world coming to?

[Archive]

Posted By: RobertS

I, too, picked this up at the National. It should be renamed as a guide to News Service Photos. It does not touch seriously on cabinets, CDVs, tintypes, ambrotypes, etc., etc.

The examples of the different back stamps to news service photos are very helpful (identifying the ages of the respective stamps), and, as Bill said, the bios on the photographers are nice.

However, if you are looking for an overview of baseball photos of all types, you should also pick up one of David Rudd's different self-published books along with Mark Rucker's Base Ball Cartes book.

Also, the writers of the new Mastro book were an interesting choice: Marshall definitely knows vintage baseball and has an amazing collection of photos; Oser was an English Major who knows the language and presumably was responsible for the text; and Henry Yee certainly has handled his share of baseball photos (both originals and later prints as many here know).

However, no first-hand or detailed knowledge of the newspaper business is displayed.

As such, one minor (yet glaring) example of grappling with the subject matter is the repeated reference to the paper captions affixed to news photos as being printed on "brown paper bag" type paper.

Anyone familiar with newsrooms prior to the computer age knows that that paper is referred to as "copy paper." You would type your story on your typewriter and a Copy Boy would then move it along the chain to be edited, laid-out, typeset, etc. (Rip it out of the old typewriter and yell "Copy!" for the Copy Boy to whisk it away). The stuff came in a variety of not-so-pleasant colors like yellow and light brown.

I don't know of any reporters running down to the corner grocery store, grabbing a bag and beginning to type away...

All-in-all, however, the book is definitely worth picking up for the back stamps and photographer photos alone, not to mention a plethora of great baseball images (regardless of whether or not liberties were taken with copyrights).