This Was His Happening and It Freaked Him Out

"In the 'Front Page' spirit of Ben Hecht’s 'Gaily, Gaily' and Arthur Gelb’s 'City Room,' Ebert offers a rollicking ode to Chicago newspapering, which he paints as the most desirable club in the world. He started at The Sun-Times in the ’60s, back when they still used pica sticks, slugged back blackberry brandies at eye-opener joints (bars that opened early), guzzled peppermint schnapps and Coke at 'recovery drunches' and worked for an editor who sat beneath a sign reading, 'If your mother says she loves you, check it out.'
"'Something was forever lost from newspapers when their buildings stopped trembling,' Ebert observes."

Maureen Dowd in The New York Times reviews Roger Ebert's Life Itself: A Memoir.