For D&C, a bittersweet move but a new beginning

The editor barks at the reporter. “Give it to me straight,” he says. “Just the facts.”

Nervous, the reporter bangs out the story.

“The Democrat and Chronicle this weekend is leaving its longtime home at 55 Exchange Blvd. in downtown Rochester, for a new and more efficient leased building a few blocks away at 245 E. Main St.”

“I like it, kid,” the editor says. “No mess. No fuss. But be sure to add that the building is being sold to Morgan Management and DHD Ventures, but that plans for its use haven’t been announced. And then put it up online.”

Stop the presses. Hold your cursor.

The above story is true, the D&C is moving to its new building across the Genesee River at East Main Street and South Clinton Avenue in Midtown this weekend.

► What's next for the old Gannett building?

But the rock solid structure at 55 Exchange just means too much to the people who labored there, to the region it watched over, to be written off in just-the-facts style.

“It’s been an honor to work in this beautiful old building with such a rich history,” said Karen Magnuson, the D&C's executive editor and vice president/news.

“An extraordinary number of outstanding journalists have walked these halls, serving the community with unbridled passion and courage, and I’ve heard from alumni who are cheering us on from afar. The last week has been bittersweet but we’re all excited to move in to our new digs. It’s truly the start of a new era.”

So let’s sneak up on the story and start over in gentler way. Here we go:

For years, visitors to the newsrooms of the morning Democrat and Chronicle and its sister paper the evening Times-Union first walked through ornate revolving doors. They passed a picture of Frank Gannett, founder of the company that carried his name and owned the papers. (As a boy, Gannett  delivered the Democrat and Chronicle and other publications from his family home in South Bristol, Ontario County.)

After passing that portrait, visitors to 55 Exchange Blvd. then took an elevator to the fourth floor.

Exiting the elevator, they soon walked into the newsroom of the Times-Union or the Democrat and Chronicle, the not-so-friendly rivals separated by glass partitions in the middle of the room.

On either side of the divide, visitors found themselves looking out on a vast space that was jam-packed with desks and piles of paper. They thought to themselves, “What a mess.”

And it used to be worse. “In the days before computers and word processing, it was all typewriters with their clack-clack-zing,” recalled Jack Garner, who came to the Times-Union in 1970 and went on to serve as the film critic for the Democrat and Chronicle and then Gannett Co. Inc. before he retired in 2007.

“Newsrooms were noisy places with editors yelling ‘deadline,’ reporters adding elements to a story, and copy editors making corrections. With no building security, you also had pitch men and friendly folk and wackos coming to try to generate ink. And, of course, cigarette and pipe smoke was in the air.”

Computers arrived, smoking was banned, security was introduced. However, the truth was, and is, that news, the sort that people used to read exclusively in newspapers but now more often read online, is not always put together by people with neat file cabinets and in-door voices.

But should newsroom guests have seen beyond the disorder, they would have begun to understand the energy and the camaraderie that occupied 55 Exchange.

Crowded on top of each other, most often working under the pressure of deadline, staffers got to know each other, often for the better, sometimes for the worse. And while chaos could reign, out of that chaos came stories and pictures that seemed neat and clear.

Readers took the newspaper personally, and sometimes in the newsroom they would stop and point out their favorite reporters. There at his Times-Union desk was Dick Dougherty, a quiet and surprisingly shy veteran of World War II who made Rochester laugh again and again.

Nearby was Peter B. Taub, a guy who who loved names that work, as in Dr. Mitten, the hand surgeon. Once Taub, who didn’t have a lot of hair himself, did a column on all the judges in town with toupees. It made him happy. It made readers happy. The judges didn’t mind.

Carol Ritter, another star, worked on the Democrat and Chronicle side, following in the footsteps of Henry W. Clune, whose “Seen and Heard” columns captured old and then new Rochester for decades. The other day Ritter, now retired from the paper, recalled taking Clune to the company holiday party. He was 100 years old at the time and lived to be 105.

At times the newsroom could seem empty. That was good. It meant the reporters and photographers were out of the building. In September 1971 they rushed to cover the riots at Attica prison. The reporting earned the Times-Union a Pulitzer Prize, a prize that could have just as easily gone to the Democrat and Chronicle.

►Former employees return to say goodbye

When a storm hit — think 1991 and all that ice — it was a point of honor to get to work even though roads were closed, even though all unnecessary travel was banned.

Death, too. Newsrooms chronicle death, react to death, and then it’s one of their own. Peter B. Taub, still working, was lost to a heart attack in 1993 on his way to the public library. The newsrooms inhaled, grieved for a moment, wrote the stories, grieved a lot more later on.

The building at 55 Exchange, which is on the National Register of Historic places, was perhaps more functional than stunning. (The other day, David Cowles, who did a stint at the papers as an artist, summed the structure up as “sturdy, husky, intimidating,” which seems fair.)

The original structure was built in 1927 to house the Times-Union. Three additions followed. The Democrat and Chronicle moved to 55 Exchange from East Main Street in 1959.

A giant printing press at 55 Exchange spun out papers until 1997, when a new off-site and state-of-the art press was opened at Canal Ponds in Greece. It was then that the Times-Union ended its run, going the way of most afternoon newspapers.

When Cub Scouts and Brownie Scouts visited 55 Exchange before 1997, the press would win their hearts. It was so inky, so elaborate, so big. The pressmen wore dainty square hats that they made out of newsprint. They would quick fold them for the scouts. Nothing beat that for fun.

The newsroom always gets the credit, but 55 Exchange was filled with other people without whom the papers would never have gotten out the door.

After the linotype machines went silent, compositors still put the paper together, a Times-Union shift coming in during the day, a Democrat and Chronicle at night. The compositors were quirky, funny, even profane, protective of the paper strips of type they waxed to pages.

In another part of the building, the advertising department did the hard work of selling, heading out with rate books under their arms to call on businesses. Knock on one door, knock on another. Be pleasant. Be persistent. Meet your goal.

Circulation was also a get-out-of-the building department, one faced with the daunting task of delivering the product to readers despite the weather, despite dogs, despite darkness.

The publisher’s office and, for many years Gannett’s corporate headquarters, were on the fifth floor of 55 Exchange. Frank Gannett. Paul Miller. Al Neuharth. All worked there driving the company forward.

Over time, the technology changed. Word processors replaced typewriters. Digital cameras arrived; the darkroom left. And then, the internet, the cellphone, social media, videos. The company no longer needed the 153,350 square feet at 55 Exchange.

And thus, reporters, editors and photographers had to clean up their acts. Magnuson said she started harassing the staff a year ago to start going through their things. “Then I put Dottie on it,” she said, referring to her administrative assistant, Dottie Savage. “She’s relentless.”

Longtime reporter James Goodman, a pack rat’s pack rat, has found a solution. Told by his wife not to bring any of his stuff home, he is piling it up in his car. “There is room for a passenger in the front of my car and a mousetrap in the back seat,” he said, not worried.

Gary Craig, a reporter for the D&C who started at the Times-Union in 1990, has been working through tens of thousands of pages of documents, letters and articles.

“I found myself revisiting stories and characters that I’ll never forget,” he said, “This was the positive side of the wholesale trashing of many of my files.”

New chairs, new desks, new views, new filing cabinets await the D&C's employees at the new building, which is on East Main Street in Midtown directly opposite the former Sibley’s building.

Finance, circulation and business operations will be on the first floor along with a television studio, a large meeting room and other offices. The advertising department and the newsroom, along with the publisher’s office, will be on the second floor. The building’s large sign on Main Street reads, “D&C Digital,” reflecting the company’s emphasis on getting news online as soon as it breaks.

Checking out the large, open-space newsroom the other day, reporters Victoria Freile and Kevin Oklobzija gave thumbs up to the room and the high windows that wrap around the building. “It’s very new; it’s very bright,” Freile said approvingly.

Still, even though the move from 55 Exchange was necessary and welcome, it tugs at the hearts of the people who showed up for work there for years and even decades. They look at the building and remember the friendships, the adrenaline highs of working on a big story. For many, 55 Exchange was home to their first job, their best job, and sometimes their last job.

“I would do this all over again,” Rich Egan, a retiree who worked at both papers, said the other day. “We had a lot of fun.”

And so we end.

The city editor starts cleaning off his desk. He barks at the reporter. “This is it,” he said. “We’re moving uptown. Turn off the lights when you leave.”

The reporter turns off her computer, picks up her notebook and starts out of the room. She pauses, looks back, wonders about all of the people and all of the stories.

The reporter reaches for the switch. Turns out the lights. The newsroom is dark. But not far away, the lights are on.

Jim Memmott is a retired senior editor for the Democrat and Chronicle. He writes a weekly column, Remarkable Rochester, that appears in print on Wednesdays, and other freelance articles.