The Offices Only a Newsperson Could Love

"There is something inspiring about an ugly building. I don't mean high-concept ugly, like a brutalist tower, but rather a place that's provisional, and purely functional, if barely-your Meadowlands, your Knights of Columbus halls, your strip malls. These are dumps, but our dumps. Among my own cherished dumps are old newsrooms. My first was the Trentonian, a New Jersey tabloid that's still limping along, though its former headquarters, where I worked, now houses a gypsum-supply company."

"I thought of the twin Trenton newsrooms, and their industrial reincarnations, when I encountered an absurd, delightful photograph from the offices of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, part of Ann Hermes's series "Local Newsrooms." This is an office only a newsperson could love. Duct tape slashes across the carpet. The ceiling leaks. There are three types of overhead lighting (fluorescent, can, and candelabra)."

Local newsrooms across the United States inhabit provisional, utilitarian buildings that are often ugly, leaky, and patched. These spaces feature thin carpet, retro computers, duct tape, mixed lighting, and makeshift repairs. Rival papers can exist nearby, and many old newspaper buildings have been repurposed for warehouses or supply companies. The physical neglect coexists with affection: the rooms feel intimate, unpretentious, and essential to community reporting. Photographs capture the eccentric details that signal resilience, improvisation, and memory. The aesthetic of decay communicates both economic strain and the stubborn persistence of local journalism.

Read at The New Yorker