(The Times never went as far as Cary Grant’s editor did in “His Girl Friday,” putting a pickpocket on the payroll.)įorty years later, when I began working in the Times newsroom, it was still electric and full of eccentric characters.

The legendary percussive soundtrack of a paper’s newsroom in the 1940s was best described by the Times culture czar Arthur Gelb in his memoir, “City Room”: “There was an overwhelming sense of purpose, fire and life: the clacking rhythm of typewriters, the throbbing of great machines in the composing room on the floor above, reporters shouting for copy boys to pick up their stories.” There was also the pungent aroma of vice: a carpet of cigarette butts, clerks who were part-time bookies, dice games, brass spittoons and a glamorous movie-star mistress wandering about. With journalists swarming around Washington for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner and cascade of parties, it seems like a good time to write the final obituary for the American newspaper newsroom. “This is Robert Pear of The Washington Star.” Isikoff still recalls how excited he was when he heard his seatmate at The Star, Robert Pear, the late, great reporter who later worked at The Times, track down the fugitive financier Robert Vesco in Cuba. When Leibovich got his first newspaper job answering phones and sorting mail at The Boston Phoenix, he soon learned that “the best journalism school is overhearing journalists doing their jobs.”

Nothing dribbles out afterward, and you can really learn things from the little meetings after the meetings.” “At the end of a Zoom call, nobody says, ‘Hey, do you want to get a drink?’ There’s just a click at the end of the meetings. Now, Leibovich said, he does most meetings from home. You don’t want a tour of your local H&R Block office.” “There’s a reason people get tours of newsrooms.

Going down home with daddy