Friday, January 28, 2011

Twenty-five years ago ...

... I was asleep in my dorm room when the phone rang. Linda, the editor of The Gamecock, said, "The Challenger blew up. Come in."
And I was on the ball. First time in my life I felt like a hardcore damn journalist.
We actually had the AP wire, which usually just loaded right in to our computers, but we turned on the printer, which actually ticked ... kind of. A heat transfer printer. Not much used anymore.
Got student reaction, few other things. Spent the whole day either interviewing or at the office.
The whole campus blew off class.

3 comments:

Paula Wethington said...

Front page bylines from The Gamecock that day: Stephen Guilfoyle, Paula Wethington, Carl Dawson, Lynn Cusick, Mary Jo Miller, Amy Delpo, Jim Newman. and a file photo of McNair by Ray Gronberg.

What a tragic day. What an amazing response by a college news team.

(Paula)

SGuilfoyle said...

Do you have that page or something? I'd love to get a look at it, particularly the McNair photo, because he is from Lake City SC and that's one of the papers I work with.

Paula Wethington said...

I can send a picture of the photocopy. Can't find my original. Look for it on FB in a couple of minutes.