Bridge Writer
In Scandinavia, where the most important lesson anyone can learn is how to make it through a night six months long, bridge is part of the curriculum. It’s not actually a separate subject, syndicated bridge columnist Tannah Hirsch was telling us, but Nordic schools jimmy it into the classroom as a tool for helping kids develop their logical, mathematical, and communications skills.
Which is not to say bridge hands are never published twice. They are. “The bridge hand per se is not copyrightable,” said Hirsch. “You poach on each other–more than that, there’s a camaraderie among bridge writers. We exchange good hands. Bridge writers send good hands into the International Bridge Press Association–it’s a publication that comes out of England for other writers to use. Tournaments turn up hands. If you’re stuck, you can always dig into the files for something.
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Then how do people make a living at it? we wondered.
Well, good. How long have you been writing it? we asked him.
“The word is out that Edward Moskel is going to host Lech Walesa, and that isn’t going to happen,” Augie Sallas of the CTU vowed to us. “That just isn’t going to happen.”
Well, it came. Sure enough, invoking “favored nations,” the Sun-Times this month redefined jobs, shrank the CTU’s jurisdiction, and–with no visible regard for seniority–slashed the salaries of all but 53 of the 140 printers who worked there. The chairman of the unit chapel, Marshall DeGolyer, a Sun-Times printer 40 years, opened his paycheck last Wednesday and saw he’d gone from $634 a week to $323.
