The coverage of the potential nuclear disaster in Japan reminded me of Marjorie Paxson’s coverage of Three Mile Island. A longtime women’s page editor, Paxson became the fourth female publisher of a Gannett newspaper. She became the publisher of the Public Opinion. This is her memory of covering Three Mile Island:

“Chambersburg is about fifty-five miles south of Harrisburg. And of course, Three Mile Island nuclear plant is just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We found out about it the morning of March 28, 1979. Of course, it moved on the wires and the managing editor — who was a woman, by the way — was in to see me immediately with this. And as we began to find out more about it, I spent a great deal more time in the news room. Now, as I say, we were close to it. We were south of there. The prevailing winds blew from out of the south to the north so that any radiation or pollution contamination would have been blown away from us. So we were not concerned about that.

But it soon became evident that a lot of people in the Harrisburg area were very frightened and they had packed up their families and jumped in their cars and headed south, headed away from it. All of our motels were full. There were three or four and every one of them was full. Some families had relatives who suddenly had come down from the Harrisburg area to stay with them. My big concern was that while we had to tell the story of what had happened about this leak in radiation, we had to be very responsible in the way we told it and we couldn’t write a headline that scared anybody. And that’s what we tried to do. Of course, it went on for several days.

We got one call one time from a motel owner begging me to send a reporter out to talk to the people at his motel because they were so frightened. And I had to explain to him that our reporters there in Chambersburg didn’t know any more about it than the people in his motel. All they knew was what was coming over the wire services, what was on TV — and they could watch TV as well as we could. But for several days, it was a very scary situation because people were just so nervous and so upset.

Gannett has a monthly competition among its newspapers. And for that month — or the month of April, whatever — they specified that they wanted to see everybody’s coverage of Three Mile Island. So we sent several days’ pages in, everything that we had done on it, and everybody else did. In that competition we came in second. We were the closest Gannett paper to Three Mile Island. We came in second.

The winner was the paper in Bellingham, Washington. The judge said that it was really a toss-up but he chose the Bellingham paper because he liked their headline. And their headline read, “Nuke Plant Spits Hot Steam.” Now, you can imagine what would have happened in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, if we had run that kind of a headline instead of a very low-key “Nuclear Plant Accident” kind of a headline. That’s what I’m talking about with the crisis and the responsibility. And I complained to Gannett headquarters about that one, that part of being a publisher and editor was understanding what a headline in that kind of situation might do to the town. I felt like we should have won first place.”

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The coverage of the potential nuclear disaster in Japan reminded me of Marjorie Paxson’s coverage of Three Mile Island. A longtime women’s page editor, Paxson became the fourth female publisher of a Gannett newspaper. She became the publisher of the Public Opinion. This is her memory of covering Three Mile Island:

“Chambersburg is about fifty-five miles south of Harrisburg. And of course, Three Mile Island nuclear plant is just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We found out about it the morning of March 28, 1979. Of course, it moved on the wires and the managing editor — who was a woman, by the way — was in to see me immediately with this. And as we began to find out more about it, I spent a great deal more time in the news room. Now, as I say, we were close to it. We were south of there. The prevailing winds blew from out of the south to the north so that any radiation or pollution contamination would have been blown away from us. So we were not concerned about that.

But it soon became evident that a lot of people in the Harrisburg area were very frightened and they had packed up their families and jumped in their cars and headed south, headed away from it. All of our motels were full. There were three or four and every one of them was full. Some families had relatives who suddenly had come down from the Harrisburg area to stay with them. My big concern was that while we had to tell the story of what had happened about this leak in radiation, we had to be very responsible in the way we told it and we couldn’t write a headline that scared anybody. And that’s what we tried to do. Of course, it went on for several days.

We got one call one time from a motel owner begging me to send a reporter out to talk to the people at his motel because they were so frightened. And I had to explain to him that our reporters there in Chambersburg didn’t know any more about it than the people in his motel. All they knew was what was coming over the wire services, what was on TV — and they could watch TV as well as we could. But for several days, it was a very scary situation because people were just so nervous and so upset.

Gannett has a monthly competition among its newspapers. And for that month — or the month of April, whatever — they specified that they wanted to see everybody’s coverage of Three Mile Island. So we sent several days’ pages in, everything that we had done on it, and everybody else did. In that competition we came in second. We were the closest Gannett paper to Three Mile Island. We came in second.

The winner was the paper in Bellingham, Washington. The judge said that it was really a toss-up but he chose the Bellingham paper because he liked their headline. And their headline read, “Nuke Plant Spits Hot Steam.” Now, you can imagine what would have happened in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, if we had run that kind of a headline instead of a very low-key “Nuclear Plant Accident” kind of a headline. That’s what I’m talking about with the crisis and the responsibility. And I complained to Gannett headquarters about that one, that part of being a publisher and editor was understanding what a headline in that kind of situation might do to the town. I felt like we should have won first place.”

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