CNN newsroom tour
Employees stride in and out the Time Warner Building located near the corner of 59th Street. They encounter the main lobby area with a large silver sign reading “Time Warner,” but no indication of CNN. Yet, a few floors up are the newsrooms of one the nation’s largest TV networks.
An overpowering red CNN poster welcomes the employees to the seventh floor of the building. The heavy glass door to the left only strikes open when the reporter taps a white card. The long corridors leading to the newsrooms and studios are decorated with portraits of famous news anchors that CNN has birthed over the years, giving a sense of pride that newer reporters want to live up to.
CNN has multiple newsrooms due to the various audiences the network tries to reach through its different platforms. The only thing that remains unchanged in each newsroom are the multiple Apple computer screens properly set up on every desk, signaling the reporter’s need to be alert in a 24/7 news cycle.
Next to the assignment desk are large glass windows looking out to what most residents do not see in Manhattan: the view of Central Park engulfing New York’s tallest skyscrapers. That is where most of the staff is actually working, out in the field getting video and sound bites that readers will access almost instantly through their computers, mobile devices or TV.
NYU Professor Phil Rosenbaum, who is an executive producer for CNN, explains that headlines are no longer enough to draw the audience into a story. The amount of work that goes behind the scenes at CNN gives some indication as to why it is one of the most popular networks in the world.