Bad and sad memories from an alcohol-fuelled age of journalism

Journalists have described it as a lubricant, a marinade, a shield, a solace, and a curse. I’m talking here about alcohol – the demon drink.

The recent death of a former colleague – and one-time drinking companion – called to mind the role that alcohol played in the early decades of my journalistic career. In the three decades following the Second World War, it was an ever-present component of newsroom life…and death.

The colleague who recently died had been a gifted member of the craft. He made highly skilled operations look effortless, and brought judgement and wit to both newspaper and magazine production. He went on to challenging management roles where he was working against the odds.

Throughout much of his adult life he was a drinker. Early on, I tried to keep pace with him in the pub and in the Press Club. While he may not have surpassed me in one or two journalistic skills, he certainly beat me in the drinking stakes.

Later, I had to make a choice between alcohol and the woman I loved (and still do). I had to admit I had a drinking problem, deal with its challenges, and stop drinking alcohol. Admitting I had a problem – and making no bones about it – was an important step.

Years later, I was interviewed by Metro editor Warwick Roger on my appointment as editor of the New Zealand Herald. “I hear,” he said in a slightly accusatory tone, “that you’ve had … ah…a problem with…the drink.” I replied: “Yes, that’s right. What can I tell you about it?” Nothing, he said, and moved on. I always wondered whether he was a little miffed that I had not made a pointless denial.

Broadcaster Patrick Gower has been extraordinarily candid about his own battles with alcohol, and I have admired his fortitude and openness – far more publicly than I had ever done – in dealing with what has seemed to be an occupational hazard.

My recently deceased colleague did not deal with his demons, and I have little doubt that it foreshortened what could have been a stellar career in journalism.

I hesitate to say that he and I were victims of the drinking culture that pervaded our early careers: No-one forced us to spend time in the pub. However, I think it is fair to say that we were (willing) products of an environment in which excessive consumption and inebriation were normalised.

My much-missed friend, the late Gordon McLauchlan, described the pub culture of that time in at least three of his many books. In ‘The Passionless People Revisited’ he refers to journalism as an industry “famous for its heroic drinkers”.

Some of those ‘heroic drinkers’ are recalled in ‘A Life’s Sentences’ (his hand-written note on my copy describes the book as “a memoir that isn’t an autobiography”). People like the senior Manawatu Standard reporter he found passed out in a flower bed in Palmerston North’s Square. Or the Parliamentary Press Gallery reporter who would be found at night unconscious in his office chair but who would be bright as a button the following morning. McLauchlan refers to this as “the daily resurrection”.

In ‘Stop the Clock’ he recounts the story of another resurrectionist journalist who, after a blackout, was told by his doctor to stop drinking for six months. To everyone’s astonishment, he did so. Exactly six months later, he “began his old life anew”.

I recall similar characters. Like the grizzled sub-editor who downed numerous pints of ale at lunchtime and after work. He was told by his doctor to limit himself to one pint a day. He later assured his doctor he was complying. What he didn’t tell the medic was that he had switched tipples and was consuming a pint of sherry a day.

Gordon McLauchlan died at the age of 89 in 2020 after a prolific career as journalist and author. By his own admission he was a drinker but “I never drank as much as they thought I did”. Both he and I, however, saw lives wrecked or brought to premature ends by alcohol.

Part of the reason for this attrition – often inflicted on some of the more talented members of the profession – was the level of acceptance of heavy drinking both within the newsroom and in society in general.

McLauchlan’s books described the pub culture of the fifties, sixties and seventies as did Conrad Bollinger in his 1959 polemic ‘Grog’s Own Country’. Both saw the destructive effects of the Six O’clock Swill that saw manic after-work consumption before the pub closed. It was a phenomenon that existed in New Zealand from the end of the First World war until October 1967.

The one positive McLauchlan took from that culture was that it was a ‘leveller’ that saw journalists drinking with “lawyers to labourers, politicians to unionists”. And I recall that this egalitarian (if male dominated) environment was often an excuse to meet contacts in the pub.

Newsrooms were more than tolerant.

I recall lunchtime sessions where a chief reporter would call – without recrimination – to get a reporter out of the pub to cover a story. Only obvious inebriation was likely to be frowned upon. Many members of the editorial staff could ‘hold their drink’ to an extent that would send less heroic drinkers staggering. Today, we would call such people functioning alcoholics. Only when drunkenness had obvious effects on production or the newsroom’s reputation were steps taken.

I recall (with considerable embarrassment) drinking too much in a lunchtime session at Bellamy’s. I shambled back to the Press Gallery and was simply left to sleep it off in the office chair. No more was said.

Newsroom staff covered for each other, in part because foot soldiers drank with their NCO’s and junior officers after work (and sometimes at lunchtime). McLauchlan recalls one miscreant who drank rather than attend assigned meetings and wrote his stories by talking to contacts after the event. Twice the chief sub-editor covered up mistakes (although the drinker was out on the third strike when the editor found out and fired him).

Absences due to excessive drinking were tolerated. Sometimes implausible excuses for illness were accepted when senior reporters took to their beds to recover. And some took a fatalistic view of their future. My fellow-journalist wife recalls one saying: “If I don’t come back this afternoon, tell them I’ve been taken to the vet to be put down.”

There was even surreptitious drinking within the newsroom by a blighted few.

An old friend recounted a case where a reporter was discovered sipping soft drink that was heavily laced with vodka. He told me: “The chief reporter suspected there was a problem and sampled the drink bottle one day, reeling back from what was essentially straight alcohol”.

And I recall a sub editor whose endless cups of tea-without-milk were actually ale. While driving after one too many of the cups that cheer, he was stopped by Police and told them: “I’ve had lots and lots to drink.”

Then there were those who carried their burden in the shadows. They were not excessive pub-goers but took their problems home and drank alone. I had three colleagues who were what we called ‘closet drinkers’.

A select few, like British journalist Jeffrey Bernard, were able to chronicle – even memorialise – their drinking exploits. Bernard wrote about his feckless lifestyle in the Low Life column in The Spectator. Whenever he was too wasted to submit a column, the magazine ran the line “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell”. That line lent itself to the title of Keith Waterhouse’s play about Bernard’s exploits, in which Peter O’Toole played the title role. Bernard died from alcohol-related illness at the age of 65. His Spectator column was described as “a suicide note in weekly instalments”.

Journalists’ drinking culture had too many sad endings. McLauchlan’s books are peppered with recollections of colleagues who had died prematurely as a result of their unrestrained drinking. I have similar recollections.

I am particularly saddened by the unrealised potential of those who died – many from alcohol-related illnesses, some due to accidents, and a few by suicide. All of the cases were tragic but the ones that bite deepest are those whose obvious talent was blunted by their addiction. They leave behind them an unanswerable question: What might they have contributed to journalism and their communities if alcohol had not ruled their lives? I asked that very question when I saw the notice of my former colleague’s recent death.

Today’s newsrooms are different. They are no longer generously staffed places, as they were in those days. The constant spectre of redundancy brings its own harsh discipline. Daily liquid lunches and after work binges would leave intolerable gaps in the workplace. That is not to say that journalists no longer face the dangers of alcohol (or drugs). They are as susceptible as any other members of society. However, the culture has changed. The profession is no longer defined by what my old friend called “an alarming epidemic of reckless drinking”.