The Newspaperman and the Moon Landing

From 1969 to 1986, one man, Frank Widner, who was once told by a journalism professor that he would “never make it” in the newspaper business, had the responsibility as news editor for the Indianapolis Star for deciding what stories would go on the Star’s front page and how they would be displayed. “It makes you feel like you have your fingers on everything going on in the world,” he said of his job.

Widner, who was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2010, remembered that there were few dull days in the newsroom of a metropolitan newspaper such as the Star. But in a seven-day-a week operation, Sunday was perhaps the closest to being considered a slow news day.  Widner noted: “The big decision is what to make the main headline for the Monday morning edition? What is the top story of the day?”

The decision seemed to be an easy one for Widner to make on Sunday, July 20, 1969—if all went as planned, America was about to land two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, on the lunar surface as the crowning achievement of the Apollo 11 mission. (The third member of the Apollo 11 crew, Michael Collins, stayed behind to fly the Command Module, Columbia.) “I wrote a ‘flag’ that anticipated the landing and moonwalk, and called Joe McHugh, who was the composing room foreman that day,” Widner recalled. He told McHugh to find the largest headline type he could find. They settled for 144-point type, more than twice the normal size, and the front page for Monday, July 21, began to take shape.

The news editor had also established a “moon desk” at the Star, and selected John McDowell, one of the best “rewrite men in the business” to run it. Star editors funneled all of the “moon” copy from the teletype machines to McDowell, and he sorted through the millions of words that spewed out and “meticulously rewrote the various wire service reports and came up with a clear and concise story of the historic event,” Widner noted.

Widner was no stranger to making important judgments when it came to groundbreaking news. Before joining the Star, he had worked on a competing local daily, the Indianapolis Times, where he started work in 1939 as a copy clerk, became the paper’s police reporter, and eventually served as its assistant managing editor. He was sitting in the Times newsroom on November 22, 1963, when he received a report that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. With the newspaper nearing its final-edition deadline, Widner acted quickly, leaping to his feet to hit a button behind his desk that, literally, stopped the presses.

As the time for the actual landing on the moon by the Lunar Module Eagle neared, the Star’s chief photographer, Jim Ramsey, set up his cameras in front of a television with a five-inch screen to photograph Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface. 

Widner had planned something different for page one—a single photograph of Armstrong on the moon with no article, just the headlines. “The story of the moon landing and walk, which McDowell would write, would be on page 2,” said Widner, who had his plan approved by Bob Early, the newspaper’s managing editor.

The unusual makeup for page one caused some consternation. Widner recalled the following conversation:

“Where’s the story going to go? Asked one veteran staffer who was walking past the Page 1 draft in the composing room that was waiting for THE PICTURE.

I replied, “It’s all on Page 2.”

“But,” he said, “we’ve never done this before.”

“That’s right,” I replied. “But we’ve never put a man on the moon before either.”