Desk is not ready for prime time

My old friend Paul Stevens made a request the other day, and I still haven’t been able to fulfill it.

Paul, who is retired now and lives in Kansas City with his wife of, I think, 50 years, was at one point Indianapolis Bureau Chief for The Associated Press. That’s how I got to know him.

Back in the day — we’re talking the late 1970s and early 1980s — the newspaper environment in Indiana and the strength of the AP report were both vastly healthier than they are today.

And because it was — then — a cooperative, the AP had a great leveling effect.

A small town editor from a little burg on the edge of Indiana would find himself on an equal footing with editors and newspaper execs from South Bend and Indianapolis immediately. It was simultaneously humbling and invigorating.

Thanks to Paul, that sense of fraternity and collegiality continues today on the internet.

Just about 9 a.m. nearly every day, I’ll get an email from Connecting, an electronically connected bunch of old news hounds. And in it I’ll find out who has passed away, who has a new book out, who wants to mark an anniversary and who simply wants to say hello.

Old newsies — most from the AP, but many from newspapers and other news outlets — share stories, post pictures and occasionally sound off.

For that small town editor, now somewhat retired, from a little burg on the edge of Indiana, it’s a chance to rub elbows with some of the preeminent journalists of the past century.

And that’s pretty cool.

I am in awe of some of my Connecting colleagues.

•Walter Mears, who covered the White House during the Reagan Administration.

•Nick Ut, the Vietnamese photographer who took the “napalm girl” picture that probably helped end the war in his country.

•Mort Rosenblum, a foreign correspondent curmudgeon whose opinions are still inflammatory.

And plenty more, including reporters and photographers who covered the American Civil Rights movement, chronicling and documenting some of the most important events in this country’s history.

But sometimes, as with every daily deadline, Paul finds his pickings a little slim.

So he’ll put out a request for submissions. Some are compelling: Share a moment in your journalism career when you felt your life or safety were threatened.

Even a small town editor, somewhat retired, on the edge of Indiana has had moments like that. But any anecdote I might have offered would have looked silly next to the ones that came in to Connecting.

What should have been easier was Paul’s request for a photo of Connecting colleagues’ home offices, the desks they work from in retirement.

My first reaction was, I can do that.

Then I took a long, hard look at my home workspace.

It’s a mess.

Maybe, if I can get things cleaned up, I can send Paul a photo.

Maybe. But I doubt it.

By the time I get around to the necessary housekeeping, Paul and Connecting will have moved on.

That’s the way it goes in the news business, even in retirement.