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was while I was there, I got my first page 1 story in the Dallas Morning News
because somebody, well I've forgotten what the story was now, but they were
selling the transit company and the new owner was in Hawaii.
Barta - And so, the Morning News contacted me and asked me to do an interview with
him and so I got my first page 1 story. I had been there for almost a year when
Kennedy was assassinated and, it happened in Dallas. And we were, you know,
watching the 5 days of coverage on the TV. And I thought, you know, and I also
had a friend who was working in Washington and was getting letters from her
about what was going on in Washington and the, the Martin Luther King march
was that summer and a lot of the civil rights stuff was going on back here and
then Kennedy was assassinated and I thought you know the world is passing me
by. Everything is happening back on the mainland and I'm over here lying on the
beach and you know learning how to surf and playing golf and having a great
time writing these little neighborhood stories but you know it's time to get
serious. So anyway, I came back and I went to Washington, uh because I had a
friend there and, who was working on Capitol Hill. and I thought well that would
be an interesting, it would be interesting to try get a job on Capitol Hill, so a I got
a job in a senator's office and worked in the press office. And I got really
interesting in politics and government as a result of that, before then I didn't have
a whole lot of knowledge about politics or government or either one actually. So, I
applied for a fellowship at University of Texas at Austin in a program they had
then, I don't know whether or not they still have it, called public affairs reporting,
and I got a fellowship to go and do this program. It was a one year program. And
do my coursework and cover the Texas legislature was part of the program. So I
did that as a way to pave my way into some sort of job where I could cover the
making of public policy, some kind of government, cover government or politics
in some way. And, so armed with my master's degree or at least my master's
course work, I was still working on my thesis. I went back to the Morning News
and applied for a real news job, writing real news. And so they hired me to write,
to work on the city desk, eventually as a reporter and I remember, I think my
starting salary was $10o a week or something like that, yeah.
Nishimoto - And what year was this?
Barta - This was 1963.
Barta - So my first job was actually as a rewrite person on the city desk; that was the
entry level job at that time. So you answered the phone, you did rewrites, you did
obits, and there were ... so there was a day rewrite and there was a night rewrite. I
started out on night rewrite which was working 4pm-11pm writing obits and
taking phone calls. And then the next person that was hired I was bumped down
to day rewrite. So I'm making progress see, and so she comes in and she gets to
be night rewrite. So I did that for a while until then I moved into a general
assignment reporting job. There were at that time, only, there were certain kinds
of stories that they would allow women to cover. Mostly as general assignment,
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