The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Paper
Route
Journalists recall their days (and nights)
working at the student newspaper
By hris
Smith
osters, papers and photos adorn the walls.
Computers, textbooks and stacks of papers cover
the desks. The sounds of clinking computer key-
ards, ringing telephones and sotto voce conversations
e anate from the area.
hat could this be but a campus newsroom?
t's' :45 p.m. Near quitting time for most, but for 1997
rth Texas Daily Editor Julie Elliott and staff, the last
perbf he spring semester is far rom being put to bed.
ate hours and a demanding acadenic schedule arguably
take this one of the toughest student jobs on campus.
So ivhy do it? Where do all the long hours, political
tensions and tight deadlines lead?
Blistered ears
To find out, turn back the yellowing pages of time, about
four decades. The Eisenhower period. Penny loafers and
bobby socks. The scene changes. This newsroom has no air
conditioning. A horseshoe-shaped table sits in the middle.
Sounds emanating here are the loud clanking of 50-pound
manual typewriters, the resonant ringing of rotary-dial
telephones and louder voices.
In this newsroom, editors rip reporter-submitted copy,
crumple it into a ball and throw it across the room. Here,
an editor thinks nothing of shouting at a Campus Chat
(now called NT Daily) staff member.
Ray Moseley, 1952 Chat editor and current chief
European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, reflects
about those times and newspaper adviser C.E. "Pop"
, Shuford, now deceased.
"For a special issue, I was lax about assigning stories,"
Moseley recalls from his London office. "When Shuford
asked me #bout it, I confessed I hadn't really started on it.
He then blistered my ears in a way I'll never forget." He
pause& "I've never had an experience like that since."
4~i :T
- L
if
I'
a,
1] igiIt
i ii
Burle Pettit served as
editor of the Campus
Chat in 1960 during
a time of national
transition. Pettit is now
a UNT regent and
editor-in-chief of the
Lubbock Avalanche
Journal.
Summer 1997 IS
r I-,_
4. j~
J
,,-~k
~, -"~,"~
-
.C ,. I)
,q1~
I
z
P/
p
&
