In the ’60s, if we wanted to be reporters, we majored in journalism. We pounded out stories on manual Underwoods in an old yellow frame house on Calhoun Street. There were two rows of electric outlets on the floor, in case we ever got electric typewriters.We never did.
Yesterday’s gone.
There weren’t many enterprise pieces being refined on the New Orleans papers 40 years ago. Local and lurid, that’s what sold. Newsrooms spun into daily chaos as deadlines loomed. Editors bellowed. Copyboys scuttled. Reporters sucked on cigarettes, punched at typewriters with two fingers, cursed, wadded up bad leads and threw them on the floor.
We wanted to be just like them. We scuttled around the yellow house. We bellowed. We cursed. We would have thrown paper on the floor, if we’d had enough paper. We hung cigarettes from our lower lips and typed furiously.
There were maybe two dozen of us majoring in journalism at Loyola. The departmental chairman and its only full-time faculty member was Edwin Pierre Fricke. He was gone a lot during the racing season, since he was also Ted Turfman, Times-Picayune handicapping columnist. But many of us remember him as the best teacher we ever had. He was by far the most colorful. His personality was precisely in tune with the Damon Runyonesque image we had of reporters.
The Maroon was his passion.
When we did a good job, he let us know. When we didn’t, he let us know that too. Any Maroon staff member who wasn’t producing was “dead wood.” A poor page layout wasn’t just poor; it was “bilious.” A bad issue of The Maroon was an “abortion.” Every year, when a new staff and editor took over The Maroon, the first issue was an abortion, each page bilious in its own way. Always. That issue, and all that followed were posted on office walls, with red circles around stories and exclamation points in the margins, but most years the paper won an All-American rating – the highest awarded by the Associated College Press.
Fricke made us write all the time. He sent us to City Hall, to night court, to WWL-TV, and, of course to the Fairgrounds, where we interviewed various interesting friends of his: grooms, jockeys, the race track bugler.
He acquired a horseshoe desk from the New Orleans Item when it merged with the other afternoon daily, the New Orleans States. The editor sat in the middle (the slot) with copy editors along the edges (the rim). Reporters put their stories on spikes there to be edited.
Journalism classes were also held in the old yellow frame house, with the teacher in the editor’s slot. Most of the instructors were working reporters he’d talked into giving a course or two. Fricke taught the other courses himself.
He forbade us ever to start a story with ‘the.’ He said it forced us to be more creative.
We were creative in a lot of ways, not always in our best interests. The Maroon took on the student council a lot. We complained about the cafeteria food. We sniped at the administration. We opposed the war in Vietnam.
In 1965, Fricke accepted an offer to be director of publications at Kent State University in Ohio, and Loyola went on without his dynamic presence.
Since then, as newspapers weaned themselves from the scoop-or-be-scooped mentality, journalism education has evolved. At Loyola, print journalism became part of the communications department, which has a full-time faculty of 13 and five part-time instructors.
By the time I became Maroon adviser, the yellow house was long gone, and the Maroon staff had moved into a glass-fronted office on the third floor. There’s an old typewriter on display, and the students roll their eyes when I reminisce about it.
But they scuttle around the newsroom, pound computer keyboards, snipe at authority and complain about cafeteria food. And, of course, they collect journalism awards regularly.
Every Friday, we review that week’s issue. We grumble about this and that. But nobody has ever said “bilious.”
Yesterday’s gone.
A longer version of this column was originally printed in New Orleans Magazine.
