Progress Doesn't Want Me to Do My Job

As I say in my blog "profile," I make a living as a writer. A goodly part of that living is in the field of journalism. And a good deal of that is feature articles. Which means interviews. Phone interviews. In-person interviews. But interviews. And I don't know any reporter that takes shorthand anymore, or remembers quotes from memory, so interviews mean a tape recorder.

Progress does not appear to favor my line of work—and I'm not talking about the long, slow death of print news—though that is a worrisome fact of my life. I mean the disappearance of the apparatus that allows me to do my job. A year of so again, my old Sony cassette recorder which I use on interviews finally gave out. I had had it for 15 years. Nice piece of machinery. I went to a Best Buy to purchase another. After questioning a few clerks as to where I might find tape recorders (and who all thought I was talking about video recorders), a wiser worker led me to an obscure corner of the basement level where a couple cassette recorders, encased in plastic, hung on a wall. They could have been phonograph needles, so remote was their location, so un-sought-after were they.

Lately, meanwhile, I have had some trouble finding cassette tapes to put in that tape recorder. Some locations of the big chains, like Duane Reade and Rite Aid, don't carry them (thought Staples dependably stocks them). In the past, such tapes could always be found in the school/office supplies section. Often then were displayed in the racks by the cash register. Moreover, many corner bodegas could be counted on to have one or two on the shelf. No more. People don't make tapes anymore—voice, music or otherwise. And again, people think I'm asking for video cassette tapes when I ask for audio tapes. Everyone, it seems, owns a video recorder. Nobody owns an audio recorder.

And it gets more difficult. For phone interviews, one needs a small, rubber suction-cup device. The cup is applied to the phone receiver and the attached cord is plugged into a specific hole in the tape recorder. By this method, an interview is recorded for later transcribing. Used to be, Radio Shack always had these in stock. Last week, however, I went in search of one (they cost about $4) and went away empty-handed from three Radio Shack outlets. Each of the stores' clerks spoke doubtfully about whether the gizmos would ever be stocked again.

Next I'll be told that pencils and notepads are being phased out. What is going on? Is the paraphernalia of journalism doomed to go the way of the tools of bookbinding and blacksmithing? Is this a vast plot by conservative corporations to defang the Fourth Estate by depriving them of basic equipment? Anybody know where rubber suction cup thingies can be found out there? I think I better take a case.