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Ronald Farrar: Reporters all wore coats and ties. Nobody ever told us to, and I could have easily not worn one over in North Little Rock. But I felt like that this was a certain mark of respect. . . . The copy desk didn’t. It didn’t matter. Nelson wore a starched, white shirt, brown suit, brown shoes every day. Like a preacher. Clark: Under the Pattersons we would have Christmas parties with alcohol. Farris: In the newsroom? Clark: Yes, in the newsroom. That stopped when Gannett took over. There was no more alcohol then . . . They banned smoking too in the newsroom, I think. . . . When I got there in the early 1980s, there were more than several smokers in the newsroom. Reporters played pranks on each other during slack periods. Copy editors wrote verse. Some of the limericks were saved by Julia Jones Drury. The authors are anonymous: There once was a Harv from the Bronx Who ate cheeses that smelled worse than skonx. His friends held him at bay, Then sent him away, And now he is living with monx. There once was a looney named Bradley Whose demeanor was that of Boo Radley. Too blank was his stare, Too listless his air, And his headlines were always writ badly. There once was a lady named Mazy Whose knowledge of style was quite hazy. She used whichs for thats, And ins for ats, And claimed nations were driving her crazy. Julia Jones also remembered the way staffers treated the office bulletin board. When Hariett Aldridge, the food editor, posted a note asking for favorite recipes to use in a food feature, reporters and editors flooded the board with suggestions. Typical was one from Jerry Jones, a jazz enthusiast, with a recipe for “Hot Suet Ralston,” to be eaten sitting on the rillarah, calling up a nonsense ballad by Sammy Kaye. Doug Smith’s in its entirety read, “Remove hot dog from package, heat, The Newsroom 117 place on bun, eat.” Julia said, “Harriet was so pissed, she didn’t even collect them.” Bill Lewis: The newsroom was a jumble of papers stacked on desks. I did all of my work on an old Underwood [typewriter], which I didn’t realize took so much physical effort until we got computers. I’d pound on that thing all day long and come home absolutely exhausted! I didn’t realize that it was just the physical effort of pounding on those keys all day. It started out quietly. In the morning, when I got in, there were rarely ever more than two people there . . . But, then, as the day went on, it got noisier and noisier and more busy and so forth, and when the capitol crew came in, that’s when it got to be fun to me. One of the things that I loved about newspapering was that it was so unpredictable. I mean, it was a new world every day. You go down there, and I usually had no idea what I’d be doing the next day except for those leftover things that I was still working on. That was just great fun. I really, really enjoyed that aspect of it . . .As everybody else came in, it just seemed to liven the place up with everyone sharing stories and that sort of thing, tales about what went on that weren’t news stories. Fire was a newsroom hazard, but it never spread far. Reed: Do you remember the night that your wastebasket caught fire? Tom Davis: I don’t particularly remember it. I think the story was that I continued to take care of the copy and took care of the fire later. Reed: You didn’t have a thing to do with putting out the fire. Some copy boy got some water and put on it. I took it to be testimony to your power of concentration . How did it catch fire? Davis: Everybody smoked then. Cigarettes—three or four packs a day. There was occasional violence in the newsroom. There was the night when the copy desk chief slugged a star reporter, Ray Moseley, while Moseley was sitting in for an editor on the city desk.. Douglas: Tom Swint kind of had it in for Ray, and some said it was because Ray was going to New York and he resented that. I don’t know whether that is true or not, but it was silly, the whole argument. You couldn’t even call it an...

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