Putting Out The Paper
Bill Taylor
— Brooklyn College was not necessarily known for its sports teams but it had a very good college basketball team, and it had soccer. It was early for colleges to have soccer, but Brooklyn College had a number of foreign students in those days so they had a pretty good soccer team. And we would travel and go places and follow the teams. And I became a stringer for the New York Times and for the Associated Press. That was something that came with being a correspondent.
Myron Kandel
— Nobody had a special beat, although I did a number of stories on cultural matters. I remember doing stories about some of the plays that were being produced by the drama group at Brooklyn, but covering all kinds of things initially, before I moved into sports. Being a sports addict and somebody who was very much interested in the field, I gradually moved into sports.
Herb Dorfman
— Every week we had a staff meeting and the back-and-forth on it was tough — people justifying what they had written as well as what they were going to write, and a lot of criticism. The people working there just happened to be of a high level so that every issue was expected to, you know, deliver the message that college journalism is alive and well.
Herb Dorfman
— You started as a writer, and then you moved up, became an issue editor or part of it, and then you became an editor. We actually had elections - and you presented yourself and so forth. Eventually - you got elected.
Harry Baron
— Essentially, [the managing editor] did up the weekly assignment list. You had to be diplomatic too, because feelings were rustled very easily. “Why did you give me this story on so-and-so? I did it last week!” We had a staff of about fifty, sixty people and you wanted everybody to really get a sense of what he was doing, to share the experience. You couldn’t have one person doing all the best stories all the time so you needed to think about this.
Geri Stevens
— They had elections every year and I guess I worked my way up and I was a candidate. The elections were for the members of the Executive Board, and specifically editor-in-chief and managing editor. And I always remember, I had run for managing editor the year before and was defeated by like one vote by — I think it was Herb Dorfman. Then the year after that I ran and was elected and Bill Taylor was editor-in-chief.
Harry Baron
— When I got back from the Navy I was suddenly in the running for office. The politics. My God! The whole sports staff was saying, “run for managing editor.” So I did and they elected me because they voted as a bloc. That was how simple it was. And other people didn’t have that backing.