The changing face of photojournalism - Indiana University School of ...

after serving in the ROTC in Fort Knox, Ky., he took a jobwith the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and he never left.As night wire editor, he was on call to cover breakingnews during the night. He reported several major breakingnews stories, including the crash of a Northwest Airlinespassenger plane that slammed into the ground near TellCity, Ind., in March 1960, killing 63 people; the explosionof a propane tank at the Indiana State Fair’s Coliseum duringa Holiday on Ice show in October 1963, which resultedin the deaths of 74 people; a December 1964 nursing homefire in Fountaintown, Ind., in which 20 residents died; andthe mid-air collision in September 1969 of a Piper Cherokeeand an Allegheny Airlines DC-9 over Shelby County,which killed 83 people.Despite the horrors he witnessed, Anderson says thetraining he received at IU enabled him to keep hisemotions in check.“Because of the training, the byword was to be cool,” hesays. “Tell the story. Don’t get involved. I never had deepfeelings about these things because I was so detached.”But a murder-suicide did bring him down, not throughhis own coverage, but through that of New York-based APwriter and Pulitzer Prize-winner Saul Pett, who came to Indianato follow up on the crime. Pett’s in-depth writing on theincident affected Anderson deeply. He can’t remember all thedetails of the crime, but he remembers what Pett wrote.“What touched me about his story was his description ofthe scene in a woods where the perp committed suicide,”Anderson says. “Mr. Pett discovered the accused was sitting onthe ground, his back against a tree. It was obvious in lookingat the scene, Mr. Pett wrote, that the accused sat for a considerabletime, apparently contemplating what he’d done, beforefinally ending his own life. For me, his article was an emotionpackedpiece on a life that stumbled into desperation.”There were fun times, too. Anderson sat way up in thebleachers to cover the Beatles’ performance at the Coliseum —an assignment he tried to get out of.“I wasn’t a Beatles fan, although I have come to appreciatetheir music,” he says. “I never heard one note from the Beatles,there was so much screaming from the girls.”“My whole intent was to providea way for young people who didnot have the financial meansto get to college.”Marty Anderson with his late wife, Ann.The overnight wire crewEarleen Fisher, BA’68, joined the AP in Indianapolis during hersenior year at IU. After graduation, she worked in the bureaufull time for three years before moving on to AP bureaus inNew York, Cairo and New Delhi.Anderson, she says, was one of a select group of editors —mostly men — around the country who made a career out ofthe overnight wire job. In addition to covering news that brokeduring the night, he went on assignment every year to theIndiana State Fair, which he loved, looking for features about4-H champions and other fair staples.Fisher remembers Anderson’s fastidious habits on the nightdesk in the small AP office in the Indianapolis Star and IndianapolisNews building. Although he worked virtually alone inthe office for much of the night, she says, Anderson wouldcome to work in a sports jacket, shirt and tie.“He was a big man,” she says. “He sort of filled up theroom, although that wasn’t hard to do, considering the size ofthe room we had.”After he arrived, he would come in and straighten up hisdesk, arranging everything just so.“That was the superficial dressing on an organized, efficientman, dedicated to his job,” Fisher says, recounting that one offall 2010 / newswire < 17 >