It’s easy now. Well, relatively easy. Not the writing, but getting your copy to your newspaper’s office. If you’re a sports reporter at ringside for a big fight, like the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao extravaganza on Saturday night, you set up your laptop, type your words into the keyboard, move your mouse on the screen, click-click, hit “send,” and moments later, your article appears on a screen in your office. What a wonderful world.
It wasn’t always this simple.
In the late 1800s, when the heavyweight champions John L. Sullivan and Gentleman Jim Corbett popularized boxing in the United States, most reporters used those newfangled bulky metal typewriters, while others preferred longhand.