Myth of a clean newsroom?

Apparently movie newsrooms are too clean, or say some folks at the San Francisco Chronicle.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/08/DDG0GOGK7N1.DTL

 

I watched "The Paper" all the way through for the first time last week, and I thought the newsroom was fairly realistically messy.

"Absence of Malice" I especially love, since the perky young 30-ish reporter drove a brand-new 280Z and lived in a luxury penthouse apartment.

And I can attest, from memories of visiting my dad in his newsroom when I was a young kid in the 1960s, that clutter in newsrooms has decreased 95% since that time. Not to mention that smoking in newsroooms has also gone from 98% to 0%, and desks are no longer covered with jars of highly-flammable rubber cement.

Every couple months or so, Dad would come home with a story about how Crusty McCrusty's desk had gone up in flames that day. They used to have fire extinguishers just leaning up against the wall -- they wouldn't bother putting them back in the wall cabinet.

 

I'm a perky, 30-ish journalist who drives a 9-year-old pontiac sunfire brand-new 280 Z and lives in a basic two-bedroom second-floor apartment luxury penthouse apartment.

 

Megan, things are not always as they seem.

 

Fucking modern advances.

 

To me, it's mostly about the sounds I always thought I'd hear: no longer dozens of phones jangling loudly. And no longer the sound of the tappety-tap of a symphony of typewriters.

Our place (we just moved) looks like a life insurance office, cubicle after faceless cubicle.

 

When I started, my newsroom was still using its first computer system. These huge green-screen terminals had big, loud fans in the back. It was replaced with a more modern system with no fans. It was amazing how much gossip you could hear across the newsroom all of a sudden.

This same newsroom was in the basement of the building. It smelled better in there BEFORE smoking was banned.

 

When I first got to my current shop, I was surprised by two things - one, how spread out our department was. In the previous stop, each reporter's desk was like a veal cage, littered with papers and documents and photos and everyone was right next to each other. Two, I was also amazed at how quiet the department was. We aren't necessarily a quiet bunch, but there were times I just felt unusual doing an interview on the phone because I felt as if everyone could hear it.

But I must say, the peace and quiet are nice.

 

Does the rest of it really matter?

 

I'm in the most well-dusted newsroom in America.

There is a gentleman with developmental disabilities who worked in our mail room until a new piece of equipment required fewer people and more specialized skill. But the company didn't want to fire him, so they began thinking of new things for him to do around the building.

The only thing they could come up with was dusting. They bought him a nice feather duster and every day he comes in to dust. Everything. Phones, chairs, stacks of newspapers, coffee pot, everything.

 

Chalk me up for working in a dive. The cleaning crew here is for entertainment value only. Dude is an old stoner who looks like Iggy Pop (hence, his nickname) and spews the most esoteric shit at you if you happen to pause for conversation. Also has the world's loudest vac.

 

I work in a fire trap. Some of it by my own doing, but the news department is on the second floor and the cleaning crew cleans the main office and the advertising (surprise) office.

It's a hell hole, but it's my hell hole.