04.11.07
The workplace of the NYT’s future
Several years ago, when Donald Trump bought the home of my former employer to tear down for one of his new towers, the Sun-Times — which looked like a river barge run aground — was known far and wide as an eyesore, Chicago’s ugliest building.
Most of us didn’t want to move. We had not minded when the toilets backed up and fruit flies took up residence in the sports department around the desk of the turf writer, who inhaled fried chicken and missed the wastebasket with the bones. We hadn’t cared overmuch when our parsimonious publishers let the place turn into Dogpatch. Dowdy, ratty and roach-ridden 401 N. Wabash may have been, but it was also funky and full of memories, comfortable as a hog wallow.
The paper moved downriver to the Apparel Center of Chicago next door to the Merchandise Mart. The Apparel Center is so boxy and featureless that Sun-Times wags immediately dubbed it Chicago’s second ugliest building.
When we arrived, we were dismayed by the huge rabbit warrens of low cubicles marked by neutral colors. Our new home at 350 N. Orleans was sterile and soulless, at least in the beginning.
But as time went on, we got quite used to the new surroundings and had to admit it was easier to get work done there, even though no roll-top desks remained to shelter felons on the lam. There was plenty of elbow room and the faces were familiar. Most important, we brought our personal crap with us — you would not believe the artifacts that accumulate around newspaper people — and soon those cookie-cutter cubicles took on the trappings of home. It could have been worse, much worse.
These musings are spurred by the horrified reaction of media consultant Juan Antonio Griner on his blog to the new digs of The New York Times. I think he’s gone overboard. The new Times newsroom doesn’t look half bad to me — it resembles the new Sun-Times offices in the beginning: warrens for the inmates, glassed-in guardrooms for the straw bosses, recessed overhead lighting, sterile right angles, etc. etc.
What the photos on Griner’s blog don’t show is what happens to a newsroom after the journos move in. In this trade, the Pigpens vastly outnumber the Nancy Neats. Soon piles of yellowing newspapers, posters of sports teams and cartons of week-old doughnuts will funk up the joint just fine.
Timesmen and Timeswomen, you don’t need to worry.
[Correction: It turns out that the photos on Griner’s site are NOT those of the newsroom, though he said they were. See Times photographer Jacob Harris’ comment below.]
Jacob Harris said,
April 11, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Hi, I’m the photographer who took those photos in that blog post with a bit of additional context: mainly that those are NOT photos of the future New York Times newsroom. I do work for the Times and that will be my office, but I’m a software developer not a journalist, and the actual new newsroom will be in a large 3-story-with-atrium base in the back of the building instead of the smaller vertical tower where these photos were taken (the tower will house corporate, advertising, tech, and other supporting functions for the newspaper). The newsroom was nowhere near finished when we took our tour, so I don’t even know what it will finally look like inside, but I agree it’s a bit early for the negative reactions.
Henry said,
April 11, 2007 at 12:41 pm
No kidding? Thanks for the correction.
If the newsroom turns out to look like the new Sun-Times newsroom, that will not be a bad thing at all. Nobody likes change, but sometimes change is nowhere near as wrenching as we think it will be in the beginning.
pete said,
April 11, 2007 at 6:06 pm
>>fruit flies took up residence in the sports department around the desk of the turf writer, who inhaled fried chicken and missed the wastebasket with the bones
It’s always Sports, ain’t it?
Back in the day, the Sports department at the White Plains Reporter Dispatch occupied a room on the first floor — the only air-conditioned room in the entire building. The rest of us would sweat out summer in the second floor newsroom, with the windows open (not that there ever was a breeze). Those of us who worked Nightside had a choice: keep the windows closed and die of the heat, or open them in search of cool(er) air and put up with thousands of moths attracted by the lights.
Meanwhile, Sports had air conditioning, closed windows and no moths.
Somehow, it didn’t seem fair.
In those days, copy moved through the building via pneumatic tubes: plastic cylinders about 12 inches long and 2 inches in diameter pushed by compressed air through brass tubes that connected all departments. When it got especially hot, and the unfairness of life stretched past the breaking point, there always were a few tubes sent from the newsroom upstairs to our friends downstairs in Sports. Said tubes, when opened, released not tonight’s copy, but rather as many moths as we could corral … all eager to read the latest scores in air conditioned comfort.
It was the least we could do.
John C said,
April 12, 2007 at 6:13 am
As a former Sun-Timesman I concur with your thoughts about the beloved 401 N. Wabash building. I was sad to see it go. And though I haven’t seen the inside of the new digs, I went through a similiar experience at another paper, though on a smaller scale. The Daily Herald remodeled when I was there. And everyone was aghast at the cubicles, saying it looked like a bank. I argued, and still do, that as long as they are low cubicles - a foot or so off the top of the desk - the essence of the newsroom is preserved, while improving everyone’s personal space. The key is to preserve the communal workspace and its energy, which the popular high cubicles fight against. I’m with you, Henry. Even if those pics weren’t quite correct, I looked at them and thought: That’s going to be a nice newsroom once everyone moves in.