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Sara • •111 Can't go on, Ev'rything I had is gone. Stormy Weather. 11 -Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen Groundbreaking ceremonies for the new building were held on May 8, 1919, with young Ward A. Neff shoveling up the first sod, and on September I, 1920, Jay H. Neff Hall was dedicated. It was a handsome redbrick structure, well situated on a shaded, gentle slope at the northeast comer of the campus quadrangle, and designed with care to integrate the classroom teaching and professional laboratory facilities into a functional, comfortable theater of operations. On the main floor were the dean's office, a large newsroom for the Missourian. an office for the paper's business manager, two faculty offices, and, covering one entire end of the building, the journalism library. Upstairs were the 276-seat auditorium, two large faculty offices, three classrooms, and a small room with a stairway leading to the attic, space that would later be devoted to a laboratory for students interested in the emerging medium of radio. In the basement were darkrooms and photo labs, photoengraving facilities, an advertising layout room, and a complete printing plant, including three Linotypes and a Duplex web-perfecting press capable of producing five thousand eight-page newspapers in an hour.' From now on, the Missourian would be published in School of Journalism quarters, not in a rented building far off the campus. The paper's legal standing, once controversial and murky, was no longer in question. Only hours after the new building was dedicated, a confident Walter Williams personally threw the switch in the basement of Neff Hall cranking up the press for that day's run of the newly redesigned Missourian. If he had ever needed tangible proof that his dream for a School ofJournalism was being fully realized, that moment-bringing to life a roaring newspaper press inside a splendid new building-must have provided it. From the outset, Williams had envisioned the School of Journalism as more than a training ground for students; he believed the school should also provide a I. Sara Lockwood Williams. Twenty Years of Education for Journalism. 36-40. 176 Sara 177 forum for the entire industry. Williams wantedjournalism's big names to know, and be known by, his students, and he thought it essential for the industry's important ideas and trends to be discussed there. But getting journalism's big names to the campus wouldn't be easy. Little money was available for honoraria, or even travel expenses, for the visiting dignitaries. But Williams boldly invited the industry's leaders anyway, and, to a remarkable degree, journalism's best and brightest welcomed the invitations and accepted them. Thus Williams's effortless, almost mystical rapport with newspaper editors, first demonstrated many years previously when he was the youngest-ever president of the state press association, now brilliantly connected him to a national constituency. From across the land, and usually without compensation for doing so, editor after editor trooped into Columbia, Missouri-no easy trip, in most cases-to meet journalism students and to talk shop with Walter Williams and his small faculty. In the process, students developed important contacts in the industry and editors, in return, enjoyed the recognition as well as the opportunity to get an early line on promising young talent. And Walter Williams had a grand time of it as host. After surviving his first year of operating the new school, Williams felt secure enough in 1909 to begin orchestrating a week-long program to climax the spring semester. Calling it Editors Week, Williams laid on an all-star lineup of journalists, headed by the famed editor of Collier s, Will Irwin. Eleven separate speeches were packed into the five-day celebration, and several dozen Missouri editors and high-powered university administrators joined attentive undergraduates in the audience. Each visiting editor was assigned at least one greeter-and-guide, a bright-eyed journalism student who assured the visitor of a warm welcome and an enthusiastic escort. Two or three lecture sessions or panel discussions were presented each day to a crowd that overflowed the College of Agriculture auditorium in Switzler Hall, and Williams presided at every one. From beginning to end, Editors Week proved a solid success, and a tradition was born. The following year Williams arranged a repeat performance, but one even more ambitious-not just an Editors Week, but a Journalism Week. This time the speakers included Oswald Garrison Villard of the New York Post, acknowledged...

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