Ned Cronin, left, at the Daily News. Note the headset with his candlestick phone and the wire service ticker.

I was cleaning out my basement and came across the box that contained the things that my dad had in his office at our house.

Bob Hebert’s tips for betting at the track, 1976.

As newspapers are struggling to survive because we can now bypass traditional media and acquire information ourselves on the Internet, it is interesting to observe the process of news dissemination years ago.

I remember going with my dad to his office and hearing the constant chattering of the teletype machine delivering news from a news wire service. The writers would tear off the paper from the machine and take it to their desks and compose their stories. The photographs on my father’s desk were taken with old Speed Graphic cameras with removable plates in the back with the negative. Compare this with the digital cameras we have now.

It was the Daily News and I am 99% certain that the other man is Bob Hebert, who was the Daily News’ horse racing expert. Notice the picture of the horse on my dad’s desk. Bob went on to the L.A. Times with my dad after the Daily News folded. Don’t ask me how I remembered that because I usually can’t remember where I put my car keys.

In 1954, Aileen Eaton organized a testimonial dinner in honor of my father working 25 years at the Daily News. As I was going through a box on Sunday, I found something that is incredible. They didn’t use audiotape in those days, so the event was recorded in some manner and then the audio was placed on records with the label of a local radio station. I have to find an old record player to hear it. I imagine it was pretty raunchy because it was like a Friar’s Club Roast.

Keep up the great work of preserving journalistic history in Los Angeles.

Jerry