During that first semester on the air, doing news at seven o'clock in the morning and pretending to enjoy now being a morning person, I was under the direction of the station's news director. Like most other station leadership positions, a student filled the role of news director; that semester it was Troy Meadows. I don't remember much now about Troy all these years later except that he took the news business fairly serious. That is, he expected something newsworthy to come from our brief newscast but wasn't gung-ho enough to require us going out and delving into anything local. And he was tall – sort of looked like Jim Gaffigan. I don't think it was the same guy. (It wasn’t. Sorry.)
The "newsroom" was the term usually used to refer to one of two rooms in the building. One room was mainly geared toward putting together the newscasts for the television station, but radio staff was allowed to work there. Even all these years later that seems like a trivial point – that students from two different mediums were permitted to use a common room for a common purpose – but I recall during my sophomore stint in news that the television people were a bit touchy about non-television people using the room. Arrogance was at fault, mostly, as was stupidity – seeing how it was often the same students.
There was nothing really newsworthy about this room, except that it still had an AP wire machine in a back closet (frankly, that isn't newsworthy either). The closet was large enough to house the printer (on an ugly faux-Victorian stand without a doily) and that was it – maybe a box of paper could be edged in the back if you propped it just so. During my freshman year the closet was unlocked and the wire service was used; in my later years the door was always locked and was the topic of occasional conversation. I remember getting some strange looks once when I told some people what was in there. At another point, a student was all but sure there was a ghost haunting that end of the building, near the newsroom and by Ms. Ganslape’s office. Perhaps it was just the AP machine, long empty of ink and paper but still able to receive the day's news.
I don't know what purpose the room had been created for – it was too small to act as a classroom, and was too large to be an office for one person. Perhaps in the original plans it was designated as a true "newsroom." It looked more like the surplus room, as excess full-size desks and file cabinets (none matching anything else) were dropped off over the years, leaving certain (television) students to appropriate their "area." There was also a beat-up, yet usable, television in the room that usually was able to only receive the stations you didn’t want to watch at that moment (someone once called it a “Zenith knock-off” but I can’t say).
In my later years, after those students who felt they had sole ownership of the room graduated (or had at least disappeared through other means), the room was used by radio and television staff without incident and almost became sort of a pseudo-lounge for students. During the day you could often find someone catching up on reading, studying, or picking apart something for lunch; after hours, when students reserved video bays for overnight editing, the “newsroom” truly became a place to relax, take a break, and catch some sort of late night television (Tom Snyder being a frequent choice).
There was another room in the building dubbed the “newsroom,” but it’s down the hall and I don’t want to walk that far right now. We’ll hit it up later. I’m goin’ to crash here – catch some ESPN or somethin’.
Later.
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The Newsroom 7:00 P.M.
(Newman)
Randy Newman
From the original motion picture soundtrack Paper
1994