Centennial Edition: 2000s

The 2000s were a frantic decade for the nation — and The Pitt News.

With 24-hour news… The 2000s were a frantic decade for the nation — and The Pitt News.

With 24-hour news coverage on TV, radio and the Internet, the paper shouldered the unenviable burden of providing for an increasingly media-hungry college demographic.

“To be a 19-year-old reporter, covering political rallies or the dual election-night parties … and to stay at the paper until 6 a.m. trying to figure out who our president was … all of it was just incredibly memorable,” said Dave Hartman, who was the assistant news editor during the 2000 elections.

The staff enjoyed providing news to students because, as Hartman said, it “truly mattered.”

“Breaking an important front-page story and standing in the elevator as complete strangers read your work provides an incredible rush,” said Hartman, who went on to become the 2002-03 editor in chief. “The idea that our news stories and editorials actually impacted University decisions served as an incredible motivator to give the paper everything I had.”

Hartman wasn’t alone in this sentiment. Doug Denison, the 2007-08 news editor, related the events of one meaningful night in 2005.  All of the editors, along with a few reporters and photographers, followed Student Government Board members around. Their goal was to find the meeting place of the Order of 87, a recently created secret society.

“It culminated with me in the bushes outside a house where they were all partying,” Denison said.

While that night’s search for answers was fruitless, the Order soon made the paper when Denison and a few others caught its members in the midst of a “Homecoming” meeting.

Of course, the ’00s also had more than their fair share of somber moments — most memorably, Sept. 11. Shannon McLaughlin, the editor in chief at the time, said she recalled people fleeing from the Cathedral in fear after they learned of the attacks.

Terry Lucas, the general manager, asked McLaughlin whether she wanted to send staff home or to produce a paper.

“I remember feeling like there was nothing to do but watch news anyway,” McLaughlin said in an e-mail. “I told everyone it was up to them … I think a few people went home, but the majority of people opted to stay and make a paper.”

Hartman, then the news editor, recalled that the team produced an abridged issue — a one-page front-and-back paper with no advertisements.

“That seemed to be reasonable and appropriate,” he said. “We were basically re-reporting national news that everyone knew.”

Questions of what to print and what not to print also weighed heavily on the staff members’ minds.

The paper had “an international lecturer beg [them] not to report the contents of his lecture, since doing so could legitimately put his life in jeopardy when he returned home,” Hartman said.

Fortunately, The Pitt News had more than a few romances to counterbalance its conflicts. Denison, for instance, met his wife, Sarah Bingler Denison — the 2006-07 opinions editor — when they worked together at the paper as staff writers.

“I was a photographer, and she was covering SGB,” Denison said. “I got tickets to the jazz concert at Carnegie Music Hall in spring 2005 and rounded her up as my date.”

Bingler Denison said her hectic job didn’t preclude intimate moments.

“I’d make him come to all of my SGB meetings just so I could spend time with him … we started dating that fall and have been together ever since,” Bingler Denison said.

The staff at The Pitt News shared not only bonds of friendship, but also common experiences of unpredictable events.

“[The staff] had angry sorority members come to the office when we wrote about one member’s alleged attack of another with a heeled boot,” Hartman said, recalling an incident in 2000.

Overall, the former staffers agree that The Pitt News prepared them for their future careers.

Bingler Denison, who now works as an account executive at the Dover Post in Delaware, explained that she feels her work at The Pitt News did “translate to nearly all fields and has definitely given [her] an edge.”

Denison, a reporter for the same newspaper chain, agreed, explaining how it helps shape careers because “The Pitt News is a real, honest-to-God newspaper … working at The Pitt News lets you discover if you really have a passion for the newspaper business.”

Additional headlines include:

Sept. 18, 2000: Pitt defeats Penn State, 12-0

Dec. 1, 2000: The Pitt News petitions the Supreme Court

April 17, 2001: Michael Chabon wins the Pulitzer Prize

Aug. 27, 2001: Wesley Posvar dies

April 19, 2002: Druids midnight march in black hoods captured on film

Sept. 12, 2002: Honorary candles light up the Cathedral lawn on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks

Oct. 12, 2004: Wangari Maathai, who holds a Pitt graduate degree, wins the Nobel Peace Prize

Oct. 30, 2006: Pitt reaches $1 billion mark in capital campaign.

Jan. 6, 2009: Pitt hoops ranked No. 1 in the nation for the first time ever

Feb. 2, 2009: Riots occur in Oakland after the Steelers win Super Bowl