Losing the light

By Margaret R. Menge 

Columbia Journalism Review

March-April, 2005

In a recent bout of reshuffling at the U.S. News & World Report bureau in New York, writers were heaved up and installed across the hall into windowless offices. Into the windowed offices moved circulation managers and printing managers and other people who work in a department of the magazine called "Manufacturing."

"Don't writers need windows?" I asked my boss, the kindly columnist, shortly before the move. "I do," he replied, and we both cast our glance at the expanse of sky and city that take up one whole wall in his double office. The sun was sinking toward the Hudson and was a brilliant red, as I remember. "It's never quite the same," said the columnist, "I've been meaning to take pictures ..." 

But pictures of a sunset always come as a disappointment. The immensity of the world below and the breadth of the sky above cannot be captured in a photo. The changing light, the way it fills the room and changes the person sitting there -- neither can fit in a photograph. 

Much has been said about the tightening of the screws on the news business, but not enough has been written about the warehousing of writers into soul-deadening office space, into space that is quite functional, according to human-resource managers. In the basic office cubicle, four walls push in on the imagination. Thoughts are hemmed in and the preoccupation is with the self, and with one's own small life. 

But something happens to the mind whose eyes rest on a great expanse. Memories wander in; people's faces appear and fade out; new plans begin to stir. If the day or the view is particularly brilliant, then maybe some new possibilities begin to take shape in the mind. How, when the world is so wide and the view so far, can all things not be possible? 

I stood up from my desk one evening before the move and walked toward the window on the opposite wall. The daylight was diminishing and the sky was a deep blue. The buildings shot up in my view, lit against the twilight, and music came up in my head. Inspired, I sat down to write. 

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Margaret R. Menge is a freelance journalist in New York and a former assistant to the U.S. News columnist John Leo. 

COPYRIGHT 2005 Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.