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Origins: One of my favorite stories was related by the legendary pre-World War II Denver and New York editor Gene Fowler. I have told it before and it goes like this: The editorial writers for a Hearst newspaper had finished their day and toddled out to the neighborhood bar to trade with colleagues what they really would like to have said. About 6 p.m., the copy desk, closing in on a first-edition deadline, discovered that there was no lead editorial — each of the three editorial writers thinking the other had penned it. Panic set in. A copy boy (now called newsroom assistant) was dispatched to the nearby bar to fetch an editorial writer, hopefully sober enough to crank out the next morning's opening sermon. The runner dragged one writer back to the newsroom 15 minutes before deadline and positioned him before a typewriter loaded with blank paper. The guy simply stared at the typewriter for several minutes while desk editors held their breaths. Finally, the tipsy editorial writer started typing — furiously. With two minutes to spare, he yanked the copy from his typewriter and bellowed, Boy! The copy boy rushed the editorial to the copy desk where editors grabbed it. Typed over and over the full length of the paper was the word nevertheless.1Sightings: On the first episode of the British television comedy Red Dwarf (The End, original air date 15 February 1988), Rimmer is ridiculed for having loaded up with amphetamines, writing I am a fish across the exam paper 400 times, then passing out.
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