Photo by Inquirer alum
It was at Jane Shoemaker’s suggestion that we gathered – pre-party – some of the “funny and wonderful memories” from the old newsroom. Jane started us off; your comments follow. And it’s not too late to add others. Just use the ‘comments’ box below.
“… Like the graffiti you surely remember from the 5th floor women’s bathroom on the back of a stall door: Why does everyone always charge into the 2nd stall?” To which a copy editor, no doubt, had scratched: “Everyone? Always?” And the newsdesk pastepot races. And Ray stripping wires. And the bulletin board, which had a habit of creating bogus messages (or in the case of Doug, real messages that sounded bogus — “Ed the bed henceforth will be Edward the bedward.”). And when Lovelady hosted MOVE in the glass room and we had to fumigate. Or when Larry Bowa jumped (okay, rose) out of Foreman’s cake. And desktop speeches on Pulitzer day.
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April 30, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Carol Horner
Features dept. moved into 440 – like working in a huge empty swimming pool …
Runners, who took messages back and forth to the tower building …
The clock – wonderful wooden white thing, probably used in promotion at the Shore? Found abandoned somewhere in 440, I think, liberated by Tom Wark and others. Installed in Features with great ceremony, including a review by architectue critic Tom Hine and, of course, a reception with most excellent refreshments…
May 7, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Dick Cooper
Another Roberts item:
The first year that the Main Line Neighbors covered the Devon Horse Show, we had a 50-page issue with a 50-page advertising insert. (Was that another era, or what?) Roberts was wandering around the newsroom as we were laying out the section and I mentioned that we had an “insert in an insert.” He walked away without a comment. Two hours later, as we were up against the deadline, he stopped by my desk and said, “Insert in an insert, huh, how about that?” and walked away shaking his head.
May 14, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Jim Davis
The favorite of many instances of Carol Horner playing her poor ol’ Southern girl routine was when she got Walter Cronkite to agree to an hour-long session his last day on the air. By the time it happened, of course, everyone wanted a piece of Walter and Carol’s promised time was trimmed. Carol went into her routine about how her editor was going to fire her for not getting the promised time and Walter’s helpful secretary started pleading with Carol to let her help. Would a talk with Mrs. Cronkite help? she offered. Carol agreed that it would indeed and got an exclusive on what Walter was permitted to have in the bedroom.
May 25, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Maryanne Conheim
A raucous “frog parade”(green costumes, masks, picket signs) from the Inky to the Roberts homestead on Clinton Street, but I don’t remember why. Did there have to be a reason?
Also, livestock in the elevator, and GREAT Pulitzer parties, year after year.
May 26, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Diane (Bielun) Wallace
The Summertime party at Doug Robinson’s home on the Delaware.
June 5, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Frump
Editorial board session with then Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis. As maritime writer, I was asked to sit in. I see Mike Pakenham begin to nod off as Lewis drones on. Pak’s head is bobbling. He catches himself. Thinks to stay awake by lighting a cigarette. (This was circa ’82) It helps. But halfway through the cigarette, he puts his chin in the hand with the cigarette. He dozes again and the hand with the cigarette slips back to the rear of his neck –suspended over his gaping shirt collar. As the cigarette burns down to Mike’s knuckle, he lapses into a deep sleep, chin still in hand. The cigarette is released and plummets down the back of his shirt.
There is a long three count. Then Pak erupts from his chair arms flung wide beating at his lower back. Lewis’s security springs forward while the secretary recoils. Mike extinguishes the cigarette, says, “Sorry.” Then sits down as if nothing happened. He’s been my hero ever since.
July 2, 2008 at 1:37 am
Jimmie Dan Davis
Another Roberts memory:
One of my fondest starts with a chat between me and Tom Wark, in Wark’s office, about bargains to be had in some $600 suits that apparently fell off a truck while passing through Philadelphia.
In strolls Roberts. Says Wark, “Gene, you ought to get some of these $600 suits!” Replies Gene: “To paraphrase Huey Long, putting a $600 suit on me would be like putting socks on a rooster.”
July 7, 2008 at 1:17 am
Gary Haynes
Let us not forget our copyboy, Ray Wall, wearing his “Ogontz Fire Company” jacket as he stepped from the family limousine that brought him to work. After covering a “pigeon shoot” at City Hall, a pair of dead birds were brought back to the office as a joke, and quickly went into Ray’s desk in the “wireroom.” To make sure he’d look in the drawer, his “copycutters” – steel rules he used to strip copy from the wire services – were removed. Ray, in his usual swivet, came sweeping into the newsroom, arms waving, frantic that he could not locate his copycutters. Someone suggested he check his desk drawers. “I DID!” he exclaimed. “Nothing in there but a couple of dead pigeons!”
July 22, 2008 at 3:02 am
Joe DiStefano
Two rambling Roberts stories: 1) In 1989, I was Saturday clerk on the City Desk. Mark Bowden, Dan Meyers, Dick Cooper would alternate as Saturday city editors. The clerk’s duties included screening crazies from possible news on the phones, which rang all day. We’d field calls from traffic cops pitching photo ops, Gypsy kings demanding a reporter pay for their life stories, old men asking if their 1920 Public Ledger copy was valuable. One morning Gene Roberts called. He wanted whoever was city editor. “Oh boy,” said Mark. “He’s never called before. Maybe this is it.” Picked up his line. “Hello, sir…Yes, sir…Right…I’ll write that down.” Scribbled on a pink message pad. Hung up, stared into space. I asked, “What’s he need?” “You know the stores down Broad Street next to Traffic Court? He needs his dry cleaning. Get it to this address on Clinton Street. His house. He’s got a formal dinner tonight.” So I walked Gene’s fancy jacket down to Clinton Street, in the rain…2) Years later, when Knight Ridder was falling apart, our soon-to-be new boss Brian Tierney told me he’d spent an hour on the phone listening to Gene Roberts. I called Gene to ask what he’d told Tierney, and he said he’d stressed the importance of editorial independence from ownership and advertising. I had lately been talking to one of our few remaining outside correspondents, who was curious about Tierney’s plans in that direction, so I asked Gene about why he used to field a dozen and more national and foreign correspondents, and he told me how the Inquirer had first pulled ahead of the Bulletin, by sending a team of reporters to cover the Yom Kippur War, because it was a lot easier and more effective to cover a big story, really cover it, than to try to cover town news from Pennsauken for people in Gladwyne, and vice versa, and everywhere in between, Pennsylvania and New Jersey having way too much government for any one paper, and so. Did you tell Tierney that? I asked him. It didn’t come up, he said. Soon after, Tierney told the world he needed reporters in Exton, not Jerusalem, and called in the last of our correspondents …
The news industry booms and busts, it rose and fell with department stores, embraced telegraph wires and out-reported TV news, and now struggles with Internet free riders. Still a fun place to work; with the video and online overlay, plenty to do, and fun to do it.
July 25, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Mary Walton
Around 1975 or so, after I had written a story called “Tommy Tomato” about the life of a N.J. tomato from seed to salad, which was was [in]famous in some circles, I received a call from the Chicago Tribune. They were interested in hiring me. Perhaps I could do for corn what I had done for tomatoes. In Chicago, when I went for the job interview, it was winter and it was cold. Also on the negative side, I would be working for the “Tempo” section. The name gave me the creeps, but more significant, it seemed that my stories would never again appear on a front page. I finally decided against leaving the Inquirer. A short time afterward, I was called up to the front office. “Great!” I thought, “Here come the raise I get for loyalty.” Gene Roberts was waiting for me in a tuxedo. Wow, he didn’t have to do that! Then he handed me a box. I opened it and found–a trophy! A hand holding a quill and a plaque that read: “To MARY WALTON from the editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer for superb writing, for persistent reporting and for staying.”
I hope Gene enjoyed that black tie dinner.
Not long ago my grandson Spencer spotted the trophy, my only one. “What is it for?” he asked. Well, Spencer, let me tell you a story.