‘They Really Did It,’ Staff Members Cry as the News Sinks In

At 1 p.m. Wednesday, Robert J. Danzig, vice president of Hearst Corp., walked into the Herald Examiner city room. Dressed in a dark suit, he climbed atop a copy editor’s desk. He stood silent for a moment, a piece of paper in his hand.

A nervous buzz that had prevailed in the newsroom stopped. Reporters, photographers and editors gathered around the desk and waited to hear what Danzig, a stranger from New York, had come to tell them. Their collective experience told them the news would not be good.

They had been summoned from various corners of the Herald Examiner building at 11th and Broadway, from a bar across the street. One reporter had been drawn out of a Jimmy Carter press conference downtown.

‘I Knew’

“I walked into the newsroom and I saw all the people gathered around,” said Assistant City Editor Bill Johnson, who had hustled to the newsroom from the Hill Street Grill. “And I knew the paper was dead.”

Danzig began to read from the paper in his hand. His voice seemed sad, subdued. He stuck to the text.

“The Los Angeles Herald Examiner will cease publication on Nov. 2,” he read. “It is with great regret that we have made this decision to close the Herald Examiner.”

Employees, who had long known this day would come, nonetheless were overcome with emotion. Some cried. Some workers just stared, while others grabbed each other tight--like they were afraid to let go, of the newspaper and of each other. There was no gallows humor.

Danzig read on.

“We were unable to find a purchaser that could provide the financial capacity to sustain the business.”

Danzig spoke of the corporation’s sadness at the decision, of how proud the executives in New York all were of the Herald and its staff. An employee cut to the essentials.

“Do we come to work tomorrow?” she asked.

Danzig said he didn’t know for sure.

After five minutes, the executive stepped down. Reporters ran to the phones calling up relatives, and they all seemed to utter the same thing into the receiver.

“They did it,” they said. “They really did it.” A typist started circulating a list, filled with the phone numbers and names of those who had worked for the paper and wanted to keep in touch. One sheet was almost covered by 1:30 p.m.

There were more tears after Danzig departed.

“How,” reporter Susan Seager asked, “am I going to feed my baby?”

Through the afternoon, the sort of cynical humor typical of newspaper people began to creep into conversations.

It wasn’t so bad, said Andy Furillo, a reporter of eight years who followed his father’s footsteps to the Herald, where he met his bride.

“I got a wife out of the deal. How do you beat that?” he said, smiling.

Old stories of better days circulated, as they often do at wakes. Beer bottles began to pop up beside computer terminals.

The staff bulletin board began to fill with job notices from places as far away as White Plains, N.Y., and as near as Orange County.

As deadline approached, Assistant City Editor Kerry Webster wandered among the reporters who were preparing stories that told of their paper’s demise.

“OK everybody,” said Webster. “Write like there’s no tomorrow.”

There wasn’t.