This is the way I remember it back in the middle 1930's in Chicago on the Hearst papers in Chicago.

As I came back from lunch one day, there was a bunch of young college kids standing in the doorway of the office. As I came in I asked them what they were looking for and who they wanted to see and they told me they had come for the tour. I stuck my head in the boss' office and I said, "Do we give tours?" He said' "What's a tour?" I told him about the kids from the Medill School of Journalism standing in the doorway and had come for the tour. He says, "Well, give them a tour." This is the way it started. I told them to follow me and we went upon the roof of the building to the pigeon walk. Back in those days they used pigeons to fly the pictures in from the race track and the ball games and things like that. Remember, we were putting out eight editions a day and the editors didn't want to hang around waiting until the end of the day to get the news. They want it, they wanted the pigeons, they wanted everything in a hurry. Everything was in a big hurry in those days. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

We were on top of the building and I showed them the pigeon's walk and explained to them how the photographers would take the pigeons out to the race track and the ball games and take the pictures and put them on the bird and fly them in. Of course there were problems even with that type of news gathering. The reason the pigeons would fly in was because the pigeons weren't fed the day before they took them out and of course, like every person, when they got hungry they knew where the food was and they made a beeline for it. Except on time I remember Joe took some pictures, put them on the bird and threw the bird up in the air and the bird just went to the top of the bleachers and walked around the grandstand and was enjoying the game. Joe couldn't figure out why the bird wouldn't fly until he looked in the basket and saw that his wife had been feeding the pigeon peanuts for the last six innings.

Then, of course, there was the time when the photographer for the Hearst paper sent pictures on a pigeon and it was released at the same time the Times released their pigeon and it's the old story of "Your place or mine?" Well, it happened to be her place and they both ended up in the Times and when the photographer came in that afternoon the picture editor was pretty hot under the collar because he had spent all day waiting for the pigeon.

Coming down through the building whenever we would get to a department or something that I thought the kids would be interested in, this would have to be some sort of mechanical department, because, after all, pushing a pencil in newspapers and pushing a pencil in an accounting firm, there really isn't too much difference.

The next floor down was the wire photo department. This was where they received and sent out pictures to other papers by wire. Hearst had about 20 papers around the country at this time. These wire machines were quite intriguing. Transistors, chips and all the wonders of today had not been dreamed on yet at this time. This wire machine looked like an old Edison phonograph. The cylinder was about the size of a beer can of which was placed an unexposed film and as the cylinder turned, a tiny light about the size of the head of a pin exposed the film. The intensity of the light was controlled by the machine that was sending the picture. There was a sound signal also attached to this machine to let the two cylinders know that the machines were synchronized. The pictures were recorded and sent out later in the day to the Western papers where the time change mattered. If you ever see one of these machines in a museum some place, take a good look at it. I'm sure you will be intrigued.

Down a couple of floors was the wire room. This is where the news from around the country was received in telegraph, teletype and direct phone lines to special places that kept the newspapers alert to what was going on around the country. This was a noisy place with the clatter of the telegraph machines, the thumping of the teletypes and the ringing of the telephone bell would make you think that the whole world was coming to an end. The people in this room just seemed to walk around nonchalantly, not paying any attention to anything. I asked one fellow once, "Doesn't anyone here ever read the teletype machine?" There was six feet of paper on the floor over there and no one goes near. He said, "That stuff isn't important." I said, "How do you know it's not important if you don't look at it?" He explained that the bell that would jingle just before the machine would start the message started, told if the message was important. The more jingles, the more important the message.

We stopped at the Linotype department. This is where a long batter of Linotype machines would clank out great volumes of news for the composing room. If it happened to be a slow time then the operators would explain the keyboard and the machines to the eager journalists or write their name in type as a souvenir of their visit. Linotype's were seven times faster than a single hand set method.