By now, we are all settling into our new digs in Camarillo (no, not the newsroom seen at left), enjoying our ergonomic chairs, flat-screen monitors, and the open, light, bright and airy room. Everything is so neat and clean and uncluttered and pretty. But is that what a real newsroom generally looks like? San Francisco Chronicle reporter Peter Hartlaub thinks movies and television shows misrepresent the look of a newsroom. He says they glamorize the rooms with neatly organized desks that hold books stacked just right and cups that are well-stocked with pens and pencils. He says the latest movie to get it wrong when it comes to journalists' work spaces is "Zodiac," which includes scenes from the director's vision of what the Chronicle newsroom looks like. Hartlaub says the neatly organized desks in "Zodiac" are the first mistake. He writes: "In real life, newspaper reporters just lie down a few of their heavier books horizontally to keep the others from falling, or they cram everything into the shelf tightly so all solid matter surrounding it is unable to move, like a well-played game of Tetris." He says the typical
journalist's work area may contain: a dead plant, partially covered by a pile of used reporter's notebooks; a bunch of stuff the ergonomics consultant dropped off two years ago, in an unopened pile; and half-eaten ham sandwiches and birthday cake. Referring to Drew Barrymore's "Never Been Kissed," in which copy editors have their own offices, he writes: "Every group of copy editors I've worked with is lined up in two evenly distributed rows of tightly packed cubicles, like a team of basketball players flying in coach." So Hollywood's depiction of the newsroom may not have always been accurate in the past (though "All the President's Men," pictured here, is generally regarded to have gotten it right), but with our shiny, new digs here, we may demonstrate that a newsroom can indeed be neat and orderly. You can read the entire article
here. My thanks and two thumbs way up to Trinity for posing for the photo above, back in our old offices, which were dark, cluttered and in disrepair.
By now, we are all settling into our new digs in Camarillo (no, not the newsroom seen at left), enjoying our ergonomic chairs, flat-screen monitors, and the open, light, bright and airy room. Everything is so neat and clean and uncluttered and pretty. But is that what a real newsroom generally looks like? San Francisco Chronicle reporter Peter Hartlaub thinks movies and television shows misrepresent the look of a newsroom. He says they glamorize the rooms with neatly organized desks that hold books stacked just right and cups that are well-stocked with pens and pencils. He says the latest movie to get it wrong when it comes to journalists' work spaces is "Zodiac," which includes scenes from the director's vision of what the Chronicle newsroom looks like. Hartlaub says the neatly organized desks in "Zodiac" are the first mistake. He writes: "In real life, newspaper reporters just lie down a few of their heavier books horizontally to keep the others from falling, or they cram everything into the shelf tightly so all solid matter surrounding it is unable to move, like a well-played game of Tetris." He says the typical 
journalist's work area may contain: a dead plant, partially covered by a pile of used reporter's notebooks; a bunch of stuff the ergonomics consultant dropped off two years ago, in an unopened pile; and half-eaten ham sandwiches and birthday cake. Referring to Drew Barrymore's "Never Been Kissed," in which copy editors have their own offices, he writes: "Every group of copy editors I've worked with is lined up in two evenly distributed rows of tightly packed cubicles, like a team of basketball players flying in coach." So Hollywood's depiction of the newsroom may not have always been accurate in the past (though "All the President's Men," pictured here, is generally regarded to have gotten it right), but with our shiny, new digs here, we may demonstrate that a newsroom can indeed be neat and orderly. You can read the entire article here. My thanks and two thumbs way up to Trinity for posing for the photo above, back in our old offices, which were dark, cluttered and in disrepair.
