I wonder if times have changed.

No question exponential developments in technology keep pushing us further and faster. Artificial intelligence and robots have eliminated jobs and invaded domains, such as writing stories, which seemingly are dependent on human judgment and ingenuity. While I’ve yet to see it, I’m told there have been algorithms for some time now that can spit out game coverage given the names of players, the plays and the score. And might that not be so different from an election with the background of the candidates and the vote totals?

I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised. When texting, my iPhone always seems to be one and sometimes two words ahead of me. And there have been occasions where I’ll go with the iPhone selection because it’s better than what I’d planned.

All this technology was not part of the game when I got my first reporting job at the Daily Item in Port Chester, New York, nearly 55 years ago. By today’s standards, that was the dark ages. Newspapers didn’t run color photographs. Linotype operators retyped stories written by reporters and edited by copywriters to be set in trays where proofs were run off and proofread before heading to the pressroom and locked into a page layout. From there an impression was made in a cardboard-like flexible material that was used in the casting of a plate for the press.

Today, of course, that’s all been replaced by computer programs, with spell check being one of the greatest advancements from my perspective.

The newsroom of the Daily Item was straight out of the movies. We worked from steel desks with a well in the center for a Royal typewriter. The society editor was the exception. She had a much-envied electric typewriter and a far larger desk. Reporter desks faced each other in separate aisles, leaving a narrow passage down the center. At the head of the aisles sat the editor and copy editors. Phones were on all of our desks, as were phone books, dictionaries, reference books (the Google of the era) and ashtrays. I was one of the few who didn’t smoke. There was a perpetual haze in the newsroom.

The Item was an afternoon paper and the deadline for copy was 11 a.m. Mornings were spent writing copy from the meetings the previous night, running beat checks at the police and fire departments and city offices, and then, often in a frenzy, trying to get it all down before editor Warren Randall, walking down the center aisle, would pull the sheet of paper out of your typewriter. You were expected to feed in another sheet and keep going. Randall stuttered, so he rarely said anything as he scanned the stories and headed back to his desk to put it all together.

In my second year at the paper (the starting pay was $70 a week), there came the day when I actually completed all my work before Randall made his trek down the aisle. I looked around. Everybody was working feverously to make the deadline. The tick click of typewriters and ringing phones filled the room.

I couldn’t leave. What if I was needed to cover a breaking story? Yet, I couldn’t look like I was doing nothing. I leafed through my notepad, thinking I might pick up a lead or an idea for a feature that could run later in the week. Nothing.

Then I wondered, what would be a “super scoop,” a story that would take command of page one? It didn’t take long to conjure a tale involving the police chief from the adjoining town being caught in a raid of a house of ill repute. Of course I knew the name of the police chief, and it wasn’t hard to find an address.

The story came to life. I quoted the chief, the arresting officers and even some of the girls from the imagined house. I was so absorbed in the tale that I had forgotten to look at the clock. Eleven arrived and so did Randall. Furtively, I tried to grab the sheet before he ripped it from the typewriter. He was transfixed, then blurted out “stopppp…stopppp…stoppp.”

The buzz of the newsroom came to an abrupt halt. Everyone was looking up. I sensed what was going to happen next. He was going to divert the attention of the full staff on getting this story to make that afternoon edition.

I quickly confessed I had invented the story. Randall crumpled the paper. We met with the publisher that afternoon and I was nearly fired.

In many ways, the newsrooms of yesterday have been replaced by the smartphone. Written reports, photographs and videos are posted to social media. Everyone can be a reporter. What hasn’t changed is the power of imagination and the willingness of people to believe what they want. And what we need more of are Warren Randalls ready to question it and, better yet, crumple up those stories before they get posted.