A field had to be designated place, though not announced sometimes as work days pushed through (i)shut down(i). So all involved in a place had opportunity to learn.  Seemingly quirky stuff like (i)don't smoke your Reporter's notebook(i).  "Why?" 

     (i)Well, because it's unhealthy(i).  "Why for real?" 

     Academic credentials had to be checked for okays to share info.  "You might get an answer, a better answer, if you ask that person over there." 

     The response might be something on a spectrum like, "Not a good time for that question." Or, "Excellent question." If you'd been put in a Journalism "pool" you might move forward in a "queue" (cue).  Old schoolers might consider the question common knowledge amongst tradespeople, or might not know exactly.  Can be funny, some of the answers.  The gist--- when Print Matter is a unique category, it's an insult to "newspaper".  And it could be someone else's something.  Even having to do with world-doings as opposed to private affairs.

     

    It wasn't a "staging ground" and it wasn't "triage" although the mounting wounded needed both.  If those of us who'd taken a stand on religion and nation were a marsh of cattails, the tide had come in high and smacked into anything jutting out.  Our "heros" were men and women thrust awake to vulnerabilities within "the system" and a dulled local.  The system and the local were getting overwhelmed by a modern age clashing with old fashioned.  Gen X stepped up as conscious bridge-workers at that time.  And we kept stepping up as the nation faced the facts of homeland "frontlines".