Manual typewriters.

That's the way Rick Hindley wanted this story to start.

He wants this story to be about the changes in journalism he's seen in his more than 40 years as an editor at The Tribune.

And it will. A little.

But this story is really about Hindley, a man who can speak, quite capably, on subjects as diverse as World War II, Middle East affairs and Civil War weaponry.

And yet, Hindley is the same man who also knows what Lindsay Lohan is doing this Saturday night. He's keeping tabs on Britney Spears' meteoric meltdown. And he'll be the first to know if Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' marriage falls to pieces. After all, he was all over the Nicole Kidman thing.

Rick Hindley is the very embodiment of encyclopedic knowledge. But more than that: In a business that's transforming with every new news cycle, and at a newspaper that has lost its battle against that change, he stands like a looming oak, a tangible vestige of the old way. The right way.

"The key to doing this job is two things," Hindley says. "Experience, having done it enough times. The corollary to that is organization."

He's good at his job, a long human chain of colleagues would attest, because he has those two items down.

Hindley started at The Trib in 1967 as a copy editor, but it wasn't long before he moved to sports, a desk he would occupy for 10 years.

When he left he was sports editor, but he moved on to do a job that would help define The Tribune — and, in many ways, define the man.

Hindley says that job, wire editor, has allowed him to meld his love of facts with his knack for knowing what readers really care about — be it celebutante mischief or Persian Gulf mayhem. And it's been there that Hindley has helped shape the way The Tribune delivers its news.

Hindley, 64, is at his desk every morning at a time that is less pre-dawn than it is post-midnight. He's there, scouring the wires for the biggest news of the day. Could be a war. Could be a mine disaster. Could be a science marvel.

For Hindley, the job has been about finding the right story. The right way to tell it. The full truth. The best writing.

He delivers his front-page news ideas at o'-dark-30 morning meetings with the conviction of a statesman. And to those whippersnappers and editors who didn't exactly share his enthusiasm for news out of Pyongyang, well, he had words for them.

"You're making a big mistake," he'd scold, drawing out that last word and raising his eyebrows to make his point. "A big mistake."

• • •

Hindley, as newspaper people used to say, has ink in his blood.

His father, Richard, came to New Mexico from Ohio to be editor and publisher of the Clovis News Journal, and later the Tucumcari Daily News.

Hindley crafted homemade newspapers as a kid, but he wasn't locked into the career until shortly after college.

Although the business was in his blood, it also was on the periphery. He thought he'd be a teacher.

He earned his master's degree in history from the University of New Mexico. It was 1967, two years after he finished his bachelor's degree in journalism and history.

He hadn't yet decided whether to pursue his doctorate and become a college professor. He wasn't yet certain whether he'd prefer to pace the floor — his left hand typically clutching his right wrist behind his back — of a classroom or a newsroom.

But when he made himself at home at The Tribune's copy desk in November that year, his visions of chalkboards faded away.

The lectures and textbooks, however, would not.

"You can actually get more things across to people doing what I do than a teacher," Hindley says now, explaining his decision to make the newsroom his home. "You potentially have a bigger audience than a classroom of 30 kids, half of whom are asleep."

Ask Hindley why he chose to be a newspaperman instead of a professor, and he won't say much.

"I just liked what I was doing," he says.

Hindley, a Trib co-worker once said, is a vault. He knows more than one might think about his colleagues' lives, but he doesn't dare share them.

He won't share details of his own, either.

What we know about Hindley comes mostly by way of observation.

He was very close to his mother, Mary. Before her death in 2001, he called every morning to check on her.

He keeps a fairly thorough archive of Air Force magazines on his desk, which has little else on it, except for rings of tea stains. Unlike most of his peers, Hindley does not drink coffee.

He was The Trib's employee of the year in 1989. He owns a 1967 Chevy Camaro with a 327 V-8 engine. He served in the New Mexico Army National Guard from 1967 to '73.

During an interview for this story, Hindley did divulge one detail.

"I wouldn't have minded being a pilot," he said. "But nobody will be interested in that."

• • •

The job of a newspaper wire editor, a job Hindley's held since 1979, is measured in minutes but remembered in moments.

Shuttle explosions. Assassinations. Wars and tyranny. Homecomings. Walls coming down. Planes shattering buildings.

Hindley remembers them all, in detail. He has, on countless days, assembled packages that told the stories so readers in Albuquerque would have as much information as he could give them.

Then there were the special projects. Hindley remembers those, too.

The one he's most proud of, worked the hardest on, was for the 50th anniversary of World War II. The project ran from 1989-95.

"That was my project," he says, sitting up straight. "I wrote some of the stories. I went and ordered the photographs from the National Archives."

For six years, Hindley gathered stories and photos and helped his city remember.

"That was obviously my history degree kicking in there," he says with a laugh. "I did use it. It didn't go to waste."

No, it didn't. Instead, it helped a man shape The Tribune. And it helped The Tribune tell the world's stories, whether by manual typewriter, Linotype machine, keyboard or RSS feed.

The medium has changed, but the man hasn't. He still wants to tell the story, the best way.