Contract - May 2016 - 92

By Tracy Grant

Tracy Grant is deputy managing
editor of The Washington Post.

About 11 a.m. on December 14, 2015, I stood in the
shiny new eighth-floor newsroom of The Washington
Post. The move of some 700 journalists to the first
new headquarters in decades was less than three
hours old. I looked around the sleek open-concept
workspace. As far as the eye could see, people had
set books into crisp white cubbies, drawings were
pinned up on white tackboards, files were tucked
away in blond-wood drawers, and computer screens
glowed from futuristic dual-monitor arms.
To a casual observer, it would have looked
like any typical day in a 21st century, white-collar
workplace. The seeming mundaneness of it all was
what made it so miraculous. Standing in the middle
of the scene, I wept.
Let me defend myself by saying I am not
a crier. But after spending more than 15 months
overseeing every aspect of the move of the newsroom
of one of the world's premier news organizations,
after countless sleepless nights anticipating
catastrophe after catastrophe, the quotidian sight

"But by the end of the first week, countless
design elements (some of which I had been deeply
skeptical about) were winning raves... The interior
worked so spectacularly that even some grizzled
newsroom veterans were struck speechless
by the beauty and functionality of the space."
of people working in the space only hours after
moving in was a relief beyond words.
That computers and printers and phones
worked was one (enormous) measure of success,
but what I had yet to realize was how much the
space itself would be a success. Moving is hard.
Logistically hard, psychologically hard, physically
hard. And The Washington Post newsroom was
moving from the iconic, and yes, historic, newsroom
that had been home to journalists Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein and editors Ben Bradlee and
Leonard Downie. We were moving from a building
that we had owned to a building in which we would
92

be a tenant, and we would have less total square
footage in the new space than the old.
Journalists are by nature skeptics; some are
even cynics. Most of the time this is a good thing,
and it allows us to uncover corruption, right
wrongs, and win Pulitzer Prizes. But when it came
to the move, it meant that I fielded seemingly
endless charges of failing to honor the history
of the organization, of overemphasizing digital
needs, of demanding to purge historic papers
because of less storage space.
But by the end of the first week, countless
design elements (some of which I had been
deeply skeptical about) were winning raves.
People curled up with their laptops in high-backed
chairs set in cozy nooks as a way to enjoy a change
of scenery from their desks, and contemporary
couches arranged at interesting angles invited
serendipitous conversations. A variety of small
meeting rooms allowed for the kind of surreptitious
exchanges with sources that actually do happen.
The interior worked so spectacularly that even
some grizzled newsroom veterans were struck
speechless by the beauty and functionality
of the space. As for the history buffs, the reality
is that the new space honors the legacy of
the Post in a way the old building never even
tried to: Glass-enclosed conference rooms are
wrapped in historic headlines from the Post
archives; key spaces are named after Post
journalists, including the Ben Bradlee Story
Conference Room and the Michel duCille Photo
Studio; a two-story wall chronicles each of the
more than 60 Pulitzers that The Washington Post
has received.
As we had prepared to leave the old space,
in an attempt to soften the blow of the impending
departure, many commented that it was the people
not the place that made The Washington Post
such a spectacular newsroom. As we settled into
our new space, we absolutely knew that to be true.
But we also realized that having those fantastic
people working in a light-filled, highly functional,
well-designed space is very sweet indeed.
contractdesign.com

MAY 2016

PHOTOGRAPHY: PORTRAIT BY MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST

Shepherding a premier news organization
into its new home, and relishing the quotidian
http://www.contractdesign.com
Contract - May 2016

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