This week many Nebraska newspapers will be printing stories toting all the awards they won as part of the Nebraska Press Association’s annual Better Newspaper Contest. The honorees were recognized as part of the 150th annual Nebraska Newspaper Association meeting held Thursday night through Saturday at Lincoln’s Cornhusker Hotel.

While I haven’t gone to all, I have been attending those meetings since April of 1971. Much has changed since the first meeting in the Lincoln Hotel.

In the early years, my primary reason for attending was the opportunity to visit the trade shows. There were large rooms filled with the latest and greatest hardware. It was common for the vendors to offer show specials and some years those specials were my primary motivation for attending. I often went with a shopping list with the anticipation of negotiating a good deal.

I also entered the contests and was honored to be recognized with an award. But now that I am older, I no longer enter the contests.

But the contests are still popular. The news release I received Monday listing all the winners is 18 pages long.

It was fun to be sitting with a younger couple from the North Platte Telegraph and see the joy on their faces and the bounce in their steps when they were called onto the stage to accept an award. I believe this year was the third year in a row they had won the same public service award.

Workshop topics have changed. Fifty years ago AI was not discussed but this year it was a topic in at least two of the workshops.

One of those sessions opened with the question “What is AI?” I was slow responding and didn’t get the laughter that rumbled through the room when the representative of a rural paper said, “Where I come from, AI means artificial insemination.” Had I thought quicker, that would have been my response. As an agricultural journalism major in the 1960s, AI was a classroom topic and I attended workshops in the KABSU bull barn located west of the Kansas State campus.

The Express print shop has served customers who have AI businesses. The folks at the University of Nebraska had another definition for AI.

According to the workshop speakers, AI means artificial intelligence It is a subject causing considerable problems on the university campus.

Today there are computer programs that use AI (artificial intelligence) to generate both pictures and stories. Sometimes students inappropriately used artificial intelligence programs to generate class papers.

In an effort to keep the UNL reporting students from relying on AI, in some classes they are now required to handwrite their stories and submit the notes and recordings used to gather and assemble the information. Contact information for the information sources must be given and instructors spot check to see if the calls and interviews actually happened.

In my student days, we were required to type our stories in pica size, double spaced. We were encouraged to speedily produce the stories. Once approved for publication, our stories were sent to a Linotype operator who converted them into lead type. The corrections were to be legible but we were taught to think and write fast. Instructors would not accept handwritten submissions. If a mistake was made, we crossed it out and went on. If we wanted to change a section, we didn’t have to retype from the beginning. We simply cut out the unwanted section and pasted in the corrected section.

My university newsroom maintained a clipping file that we could check for background information. One weekend I returned to the university campus and found a stack of frantic messages from the student newsroom. While I was no longer on the newspaper staff, the assignment editor wanted me to report to the newsroom ASAP. He had learned the university had been picked as the host site for an agriculture program being funded by the federal government. The non-ag folks manning the newsroom that Sunday night didn’t know who to call to gather the needed information.

I boned up on the subject by reading through the clippings and though it was after 10 p.m., I began calling ag school staff members in my quest for a story. Before the night was out, a front page story had been prepared for Monday morning’s paper.

Had an AI system been available that night, I may have sought its help. But I doubt such a system would have provided the localized, human content I got with a few late night phone calls.

AI isn’t the only changes I observed in Lincoln. As a youngster going with my parents and grandparents to visit relatives in Lincoln, we usually included a visit to the downtown shopping district. We parked in the lot south of the Gold’s Department Store and agreed upon a time when we would finish our shopping and return to the parking lot.

If we were downtown at lunch time, we always had a chicken pot pie at the Miller & Paine cafeteria which was near the east end of the shopping district. And we visited the Gold’s lingerie department hoping to visit with an uncle’s mother who was one of the clerk’s in that department.

Though the Gold’s store closed several years ago, the store’s big sign has remained a landmark on the west end of “O” Street. As we drove into Lincoln Thursday night, I was pleased to see sign and used to get my bearings. It probably won’t be there the next time I visit the capital city. I observed wrecking crews were chewing away on the back side of the building. Before long, there will be a big hole where the store used to be.

Reaching the convention hotel, I followed instructions and checked in before parking.

As we were preparing to depart for Lincoln, I received a late email from the press association, which advised “When you arrive at the hotel, it’s best to check in before you park...”

I reread the message and wondered if the writer thought I had a self-driving Telesa that I could instruct to just circle the block while I got the plastic card that allowed free parking in the adjoining city owned garage.

My room on the hotel’s top floor gave a great view of the capitol building. When a small thunderstorm rolled past, Rita tried to get a picture of the lightning behind the capitol building. The picture wasn’t as great as we envisioned, but it reminded me of a time about 50 years ago when I was Lincoln attending a photography workshop on the UNL campus and staying in the original Cornhusker Hotel.

Earlier that day, the instructor had talked about special tricks that could be used to take pictures at night. About 11 o’clock, I had mounted my camera on a tripod and gone to the capitol. As I was preparing to take the picture, I observed a man come out of the capitol. I didn’t recognize him but wanted him in the picture. As I waited for him to get into proper position he called me by name and asked what I was doing taking picture that time of night. I hadn’t recognized him but he was our state senator.

The night I wasn’t afraid to walk the streets carrying a camera. This time I noted the hotel has signs on the doors reporting they are locked at night. I suppose that is an effort to keep undesirables from getting into the building.

We made more memories this week. Rita thought we could save time in the mornings if we took our own breakfast fixings and used the in-room refrigerator. She made a dozen of my favorite whole grain muffins and packed a container of crushed pineapple and vanilla yogurt. Or she thought she did. When we opened the yogurt container it contained the drainings from a batch of frozen tomatoes she had cooked earlier in the week. The water off the tomatoes contains nutrients and is saved to add to soup but it didn’t make for a good breakfast drink.

Fortunately, it was about dark and there was little traffic in downtown Lincoln when arrived and we got away with our attempt to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. With no other cars in sight when we discovered our error, we quickly reversed direction and continued to the next street which was one-way our way.