Article July 8, 1933 Issue

Item of Interest

As The Christian Science Monitor of June 26 announced, the news room, composing room, telegraph and stock-ticker rooms and the newsboys' rooms are settled in the new Publishing House and in operation. Also, the paper is being printed in the new press room and mailed out through the new mailing room, thence to the loading platforms and to the Monitor trucks. To many the names of some of these rooms may not clearly indicate their purposes. These Items have previously described the commodious, light, silent, and attractive news room in the new building before its occupancy by the Monitor news staff; also the architectural skill which paneled the hung ceiling and crossbeams and delicately fluted the supporting columns; and now we shall briefly picture the room in use, the desks occupied by editors and writers, who have long looked forward to working in these more commodious and quiet quarters, and to doing even better work there for their beloved newspaper.

Those who viewed the motion pictures of the new Publishing House sent out by the Directors of The Mother Church for the use of branch churches, may recall the few preliminary scenes taken in the present Publishing House which showed its congested condition. One of them pictured the Monitor news room, and in the center a big Ushaped desk surrounded by seven or eight copy readers with the copy editor in the desk's center. In the small surrounding space were the desks of a dozen or more reporters and editors busily engaged in writing, reading, or correcting copy, with messengers coming and going to and from the Executive Editor, the Editorial Board, the telegraph room, or the composing room, while pieces of copy were being handed about, and three or four different conversations on the business of completing copy for the paper were carried on, all within a radius of fifteen feet. With the stage thus set the Executive Editor's assistant entered the center of the picture with an "immediate" message and a happy smile. That smile and, sometimes, jocular interchange are typical of the camaraderie of the news room.

Those workers or writers who feel they cannot writer, or even think, unless they have a corner to themselves might have learned a useful lesson from the good work accomplished in the bustling and noisy Monitor news room, but now, in the new quarters, several times more spacious, having acoustical tile ceiling and padded rubber floor, the newsroom workers will find reward for their patience and diligence in working in such restricted quarters. Arranged for expeditious handling of the copy or "story" under preparation for printing, the U-shaped desk occupies the center of the commodious space provided for the growth of future years. At one end of the room—nearest the telegraph room—are located the desks of the various news editors. Their work is defined according to geographical or other lines, so that some handle certain foreign news while other read and alter, accept or reject, news stories from the United States. Each is a specialist in handling a particular type of copy.

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