Full disclosure: When I broke into the media, there was no Twitter. There was no sportsnet.ca, for that matter.

How could that be, you ask? Well, because there was no Internet.

When I broke in back in 1987, writers routinely smoked cigarettes at their desks while crafting a piece on a monitor with a black background and green type, oblivious to the retinal damage being inflicted.

Facebook? That was over in the cop room, where police reporters kept a folder of the grizzliest mug shots from over the years.

In Sports, we had walls of reference books. Media guides for every team in every sport, dating back into the '70s, the organizing of which was a convenient assignment for the "cub reporter" on a slow news day.

There was one opinion in the department, and it belonged to the columnist. The rest of us reported the news - straight up - because that was the accepted way of running a newspaper.

And if a reader took issue with something you had written - or wanted to compliment you on the piece - they would phone the Sports department. Or sometimes even craft a letter in longhand.

Considering that it cost the price of a stamp and several minutes of actual writing and mailing, it was a pain in your #@*& to call me an #@*& back in those days. As such, interaction between reader and writer was almost nonexistent.

Then, one day, a tech set up a couple of "computer stations" in one corner of the newsroom, and announced that those two monitors had been equipped with "the internet." The youngest reporters flocked to those screens and…

Well, you know how the rest of the story unfolds.

Today you can blast through my column with a half an eye while scrolling uninterrupted to the comments section. There you can deconstruct my argument plank by plank, an exercise that is most effective, of course, if you actually take the time to read the column in the first place. But it's also the best fact and spelling checker a writer ever had - as a group, you people miss nothing.

But while the comments section has replaced letter writing, Twitter has emerged as the king of all interaction. Twitter grips this business like a mighty Python, bringing you the reader, and me the writer, closer than we've ever been before.

From where I sit, Twitter is a less hostile environment than the comments section. Perhaps because you and I can go back and forth on a point: the writer can explain himself further, and even the most distracted reader can stay with him for 140 characters or less.

Perhaps because a writer can block the most ignorant Twitter follower, and engage only the more insightful, polite sports fan. We're happy to discuss a column, and in 25 years I've not seen a forum better for that exercise than Twitter. But just because we don't agree on whether or not the Canucks should trade Cory Schneider, it does not make either of us an idiot.

It simply means we don't share the same opinion, which is not cause for you to wonder aloud "How Spector keeps his job," or for me to wonder back if you had a bad workday over that deep fryer at your local burger joint.

We can chat now, you and I, where before it was a one-way street. Those were the newspaper days, when my column landed on your doorstep, you read it (hopefully) and the interaction ended right there.

Today a writer routinely tweets his intentions before he writes, tweets the URL after the piece is posted, and checks back for Twitter reaction during the evening. It is a level of reader interaction that none of us signed up for, but one that keep us honest, to be sure.

The irony?

As I tapped out this piece today, tossing a thought or two out on Twitter to tease the readership, messages poured in from colleagues recalling all the crazy, unacceptable-by-today's-standards shenanigans that sportswriters of the '70s and '80s did all the time.

That bottle of Scotch in the lower, left hand drawer; the Skywriters CFL tours, boozy training camp junkets that were wholly sponsored by breweries and distilleries; filing stories at the local CN train station, using National Press Rate collect; the ol' waxer down in the composing room.

Friends from Ottawa, Toronto, Atlanta, Vancouver - we shared some fun memories Friday morning that left me smiling. It would have been one hell of a phone bill back in the day, but not anymore.

Twitter. We're starting to like this thing.

Who knew?