How I Experienced The Moon Landing
From James Donahue’s Journal
We had a television set operating in the newsroom on July 29, 1969, the day the Apollo spacecraft landed on the Moon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic walks on the lunar surface.
I remember that it was a hot summer day because I was sent out with a photographer to do a “man-on-the-street” series of interviews, asking people’s reaction to what had just been accomplished.
I always hated that kind of dribble, never thinking that it belonged in a newspaper. The things people had to say about it were usually predictable. Yet it was a popular way for newspapers to get pictures and names of common folk in print so they liked to do it.
Instead of sharing the joy of such an achievement with the other editors and reporters in the air conditioned newsroom that morning, I sweated with the cameraman on the hot city sidewalks until we had achieved a number of interviews. Then I had to write the cut lines for each of the pictures we returned with.
That is how I remember the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
From James Donahue’s Journal
We had a television set operating in the newsroom on July 29, 1969, the day the Apollo spacecraft landed on the Moon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic walks on the lunar surface.
I remember that it was a hot summer day because I was sent out with a photographer to do a “man-on-the-street” series of interviews, asking people’s reaction to what had just been accomplished.
I always hated that kind of dribble, never thinking that it belonged in a newspaper. The things people had to say about it were usually predictable. Yet it was a popular way for newspapers to get pictures and names of common folk in print so they liked to do it.
Instead of sharing the joy of such an achievement with the other editors and reporters in the air conditioned newsroom that morning, I sweated with the cameraman on the hot city sidewalks until we had achieved a number of interviews. Then I had to write the cut lines for each of the pictures we returned with.
That is how I remember the Apollo 11 Moon landing.