Letter from a former editor

After some four decades tucked away in a subterranean corner of Cal State Long Beach, the Daily 49er is finally heading to higher ground.

In the coming weeks, the campus newspaper of record will be leaving its longtime home in the Social Sciences/Public Administration Building basement and moving to another spot in the Language Arts buildings on Upper Campus, closer to the library and closer to more throngs of CSULB life.

To many, this change may seem insignificant.

But to 49er staffers, and generations of alumni who worked there, it’s the end of an era.

With genuine affection, we’ve called our newsroom “The Dungeon.”

Since the 1970s, the 49er’s news and business staffers have gotten the job done in the basement of the SSPA Building, a place where the sun never shines because there are no windows, where cell phones rarely get a signal because the walls are too thick and where rain seeps through the ceiling before sputtering onto work desks, piles of old newspapers and into strategically placed trash cans (so the floor won’t get wet).

In The Dungeon, we were young journalists willingly trapped by deadlines and bound to our jobs of producing the best content we could.

Our newsroom’s below-ground stature was perhaps the least of its charms. The Dungeon also contained not one, but two manholes (the same kind found on Bellflower Boulevard).

And, like any good newsroom, the 49er’s newsroom also contained piles of junk in the corners, dingy furniture and random assortments – awards, posters, old issues, a map of the United States – pasted on the walls.

Even the editor in chief’s office wasn’t spared from hosting piles of junk. It contained storage closets with years work of stuff (trash) that got jammed in there over the years. When I was editor, it even contained a safe. No one knew the combo.

Journalists and their newsrooms have a peculiar relationship. We seem to like our workplaces scrappy and full of character, much like the characters who run the paper. I can tell you scrappy details of nearly every place I’ve worked.

Our irreverent selves seem bound to the irreverent, erratic lifestyle that comes with chronicling the day’s events.

On Tuesday, I visited the 49er with another colleague from my time at CSULB. We were there to say goodbye to the place during a little party the 49er staff planned. Like the periodic rain that threatens flood into the newsroom, the memories flooded back to us when we wandered back into our old subterranean stomping grounds.

I have many fond memories of my time at the 49er, which amounted to more than three years of being there nearly every day and even during the summer breaks.

One of those memories, however, is threatened to be lost.

It’s a giant horseshoe-shaped table that likely dates back to the 1960s, perhaps earlier. It’s a wooden table like what newspapers used to have when proofreading was done manually with paper and pencil, before computers. The “rim” editors would sit along the table’s edge and pass stories around before sending them to the final editor, known as the “slot,” who was seated inside.

Over the years, the table has been decorated with past 49er issues. Many staffers have left their mark by signing it.

I’m told the table is so large that it won’t fit in the new newsroom.

Please help save this essential part of 49er history by finding a new campus home for the “U Table,” so new generations of students can use it and appreciate its strong ties to campus history.

I may even volunteer to help move it. It’s going to be a hell of a job getting it through the door.

BRADLEY ZINT, class of 2008, is a former 49er staffer and a member of its board of directors.