How would you describe your experience in Pipe Dream?

“I had a great experience. I started in the middle of my freshman year, like the beginning of the second semester, I guess. I hadn’t been on the newspaper in high school, but it was one of those things where I was a news bug, and I always thought it would be really cool to work on a newspaper. And so they put out the ‘we’re recruiting people for Pipe Dream,’ and I walked in the office at the beginning of second semester freshman year, and I loved it. It was a great community, and I really enjoyed working with the people who gravitated to working on the newspaper. And I enjoyed reporting stories, writing stories. Then I moved up as an editor in the course of the next couple of years, and became the news editor, and then the managing editor, and eventually editor-in-chief in my senior year. And it was really an exciting thing, it defined, in many ways, my college career. I majored in English and history, and I was interested in my studies, but my pastime was to work on the newspaper. And it also was a great way to really feel involved in the university, because I was always interviewing administrators and faculty and students, and you got to see the exciting things that were happening, and be there when it was happening.”

How did Pipe Dream impact the student body during your time at Binghamton University?

“I was there in an interesting time because this was still during the Vietnam War, there was still a draft. When I started in the fall of 1970, the previous spring the campus had been shut down by demonstrations, and there were no final exams because Kent State happened that May, where several college students were killed by the National Guard during anti-Vietnam War protests, and the universities around the country went, you know, started strikes and all sorts of things. And so it was a time of upheaval. But, students were passionate about issues, and throughout my time at SUNY Binghamton, the anti-war movement was very active. I was old enough to have to get a lottery number. They did a lottery, I was lucky. I had a good lottery number, but that was something that people thought about. So it was a very interesting time.

At the same time, the university kept expanding. I was a move-in when they first built College-in-the-Woods. I was one of the first students to ever live in College-in-the-Woods because I was already there at the university when they built it. It was late, by the way. We had to move in six months late, and they put us back in old dorms before the College-in-the-Woods was ready. But it was magical because it was dramatically nicer. I mean, now it probably looks old to you folks, but trust me, in 1972 or whatever it was, it was cutting-edge construction and it was a lot nicer than dorms that had been built in the early 1950s.”

How has student journalism changed since you were in college?

“My guess is that students are likely writing about the same kind of things that we wrote about, but the technology is different. I mean, we thought we were on the cutting edge. When I was there, we had offset type equipment. I mean, you’d laugh if you saw it, but back in the day, we had to learn to code. We typed our copy on old nonelectric typewriters, like you’d see in the movies from the mid-20th century. We then would have the copy edited and then input by people who learned how to code, and it would be recorded onto tape, like physical tape, and then that would operate a printing machine that would print using different fonts and would create the columns, and print it onto strips of paper, which had adhesive backing, and then you would cut out with X-Acto knives and paste up. Literally, we would paste. Our teams would paste up the copy.

It would be a physical newspaper, and then our printer would pick it up from us in the early morning hours, and take it and run it off from offset type. And that was considered to be very modern at the time because we were using, in a sense, a computerized system: We could pick our own fonts, we could design our own copy, whereas 10 years before that they couldn’t have done that in a college newspaper. And now, of course, we all have our own computers, and we have email, and we have all these techniques. So, I’m sure it’s dramatically different from a technological perspective. But honestly, and I know you can’t print all this, just so you know, I mean, honestly, the nuts and bolts of what people cared about on campus. I’m sure there are similar issues today that people write about.”

What kinds of things did you find most important to write about?

“We were always concerned about issues that affected student life, and we were always concerned about issues that affected strategic planning for the university, so that when we got wind of new initiatives or changes that were planned, that would always be something we’d really be attentive to. And we always tried to think about what aspects of the way the university community runs are things that not everyone knows about. You know, some interesting club or organization that most people might not have heard about.

I remember one of the projects I remember doing because I thought it was fascinating, was, I don’t know if they still have the notion of the different residential on-campus colleges being, in a way their own, you know, not that they had academic programs, but they were, they were considered, you know, their own units in some ways. And I did this whole investigation, talking to all the administration about ‘what is this idea,’ and ‘what’s it really supposed to mean’ and ‘what does it mean in practice.’ It just intrigued me, and so, you know, that was something that I did a story on, and it was like a multipart story because there were different aspects of it. So, I think those are the kinds of things.

And then we would write about things where something happening in the world touched the student body. So if there was a big political development, and students seemed to be very engaged by it. we would write about that. But of course, in the life of the university, you’re always having speakers come, and that’s another way that, you know, was a natural for Pipe Dream in those days. If you had an interesting speaker coming, either in politics, economics, the arts, whatever, that was a way to write about a subject because you had a visitor from outside who was focusing on that. I think all those things are probably still whole.”

How did your time in Pipe Dream impact your life?

“I think it really did help with skills that have helped me in the career that I ended up pursuing. I think it gave me a level of confidence because by working at the newspaper and working my way up and becoming, you know, not just being part of an organization but ending up, you know, running it as a senior, it helps you get confident in yourself. You know, it’s a way to build up your confidence and say, ‘I can do things, I can make a difference.’ You know, I was entrusted by my colleagues to write editorials that would be published twice a week, and you know how to take responsibility, but also to feel confident about doing that, so there was that.

On another personal note, the woman I ended up meeting and marrying was a journalist, and I don’t know if it would have not happened otherwise, but the fact that I could understand what she was doing so immediately when we met, and could relate to her profession, and could get a kick out of what she was doing, because she worked for important news organizations and important jobs, you know, all of that, because I had that background. You know, I’m not sure it’s great to have a marriage where both people do the same thing in their career, but the fact that I fully understood and appreciated how she did her job, and I could relate to it when she was facing issues with editors, with stories, with everything else, and that I could unofficially give her a hand when she was struggling with her copy from time to time. I mean that had an influence on my life as well, in a positive way. So not everyone’s going to go out and use this, you know, with their future spouse, but it didn’t hurt in my case.”