1 of Mike Allen's favorite Richmond memories
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Photo illustration: Allie Carl/Axios. Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Axios co-founder Mike Allen was a city desk reporter for the Times-Dispatch from 1987-1997. He lived on West Grace Street in the Fan and covered everything from parades to graduations to elections.
As part of Axios Richmond's one-year celebration, we asked him for a tale:
I toiled at the T-D back when the paper was printed a few floors below the newsroom at Third and Grace streets. If you were in the newsroom at exactly 10:50pm, a copy messenger would breeze through and toss you an extra-inky copy of the first edition to proofread.
- These were the quirky days when the religion reporter was reputed to have a liquor bottle in his bottom drawer. The library filed the clippings for the Apollo space program in envelopes labeled, "Missiles, Guided."
In any local newsroom, no story is bigger than a monster snow forecast, when people rush out to buy milk and toilet paper. I covered lots of those. But there's one occasion that comes close: when the Powerball gets big.
- One night, a few of us had filed our stories and were goofing off while the longtime courts reporter — the late, great Tom Campbell — pecked away on his cathode-ray Atex terminal. We were debating whether we'd quit if we hit the jackpot.
We didn't know Tom was listening. But he stopped typing, looked up and said:
- "If I won the Powerball, I'd still work here. But I'd take a lot less s---."
- Then he went back to banging out his story.
I'm so grateful to the reporters and editors who believed in (or at least put up with) an intern and later reporter who knew a lot less than he thought he did ... to the neighbors all over town who indulged my years of nosy, sometimes dumb questions ... and for all the good times at Third Street Diner, Strawberry Street Café and — if someone fancy was visiting — Millie's.
- A tip of the R-Braves cap to Karri and Ned for pioneering something that really matters — trustworthy, distinctive, delicious coverage for one of the world's most colorful and consequential cities. Happy Axios-versary!