EWN Building

Disclaimer: While place descriptions and news events may coincide with the real world, all characters and the plot are fictional.
== Approximate location ==
Note: This is a fictional building on the west edge of the PSU campus, approached by traveling westward along SW Mill St from the South Park Blocks. It is a couple of blocks from the Honor's college, and across the street from the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on SW Market St. The front foyer is on the east side. When Will walks Blair and Bianca home, they go out the back door, across to the Honors College building (on Mill and 12th), and down to the residence halls on 12th Ave. The building can be conceptualized as being on the NW corner of SW Market St and 11th Avenue.
== Building ==
EWN is located in an old three-story white-washed brick warehouse owned by PSU, with the 1940s architecture found all over campus. 
Kevin Tighe secured it for EWN use some 10 years earlier when he was news editor, in exchange for the coveted space in the highly-desired Student Union Building that student media had occupied for decades. (Cage Washington believes blackmail was involved.) At the time, EWN was primarily print based, but has since moved to being more multi-media.
EWN occupies the front half of the warehouse building on all 3 floors. The back half of the building continues to be used by the university for storage, and is dominated by a large loading dock.
== Exterior ==
The outside of the building is old white-painted brick with arches on the ground floor forming a porch, and two-storied arched windows that echo the portico arches above it. As well as the entrance to EWN, the ground floor has several small shops which are sub-let by the university. Before COVID closed them, there were a copy shop, a cafe, and a nail salon(4:63/705). The entrance to the EWN foyer, and the external intercom, is more than 15ft from the street corner.
== Interior ==
As well as stairs between floors, there is an elevator, with wavy yellowed glass panels that runs from the ground floor lobby to the third floor. It's designed for four people, but will take up to six. While safe to use, it is slow and noisy. Use of it during the 10pm to 11pm newscast is banned by the television station manager.
There are fire exits from both the second and third floors opening to landings, with a cement stairwell down to a self-locking fire door on Market St. Sounds echo loudly in the stairwell. Staff use the second floor landing as an open-air smoking area, so that door alarm has been disconnected. The second floor exit is 'down the hallway'. The third floor fire exit is off the main hallway.
=== Ground Floor ===
The entrance foyer is about 15ft by 15ft, with doors to the elevator, the business office, and a conference office on the west wall. The door to the elevator on the ground floor is in line with the building's front entrance. The advertising office is on the north side of the foyer, with a half-wall counter. The EIC is the only news person with keys to the advertising and business offices.
Two bathrooms are on the south wall. The east wall of the foyer faces the street, and is basically a large glass door with sidelights which lets in some natural light. It has high ceilings and institutional beige walls. The entrance looks east along Market Street. There is an intercom near the front door, that connects to the newsroom.
The conference office is used as a meeting space for the Teach-In project.
The advertising office is a room crowded with desks, all neat. 
=== Second Floor (Newsroom) ===
The newsroom is located in a large warehouse loft, entered by stairs from the ground-level lobby to a vestibule at the front of the building. There is a hallway in front of the elevator.
A wooden counter, with a hand sanitizer dispenser, blocks most of the entry into the newsroom. On Tuesday June 2, 2020 Kevin Tighe and Pete Madison install a childproof gate to block the remaining opening. The lock on it is linked to the same app that operates the front entry buzzer, and a key is in the counter drawer.
There are two brick rooms that form the entryway to the newsroom: 
* The room on the north side, bigger than an average bedroom, is the equipment storage closet, holding all the video-cameras and safety equipment like gas masks. In 2018, Cage stenciled the EWN 'eye' design on each piece of equipment along with the university tag number, to stop pilfering. 
* On the south side, a door opens to a short hall which leads to the locker area and doors to the female and male bathrooms. The bathrooms are to the right at the top of the stairs, and to the right of the elevator. Each bathroom has a shower. Ceiling heights in these rooms are probably 8ft, not 20ft.
The main newsroom area has red brick walls, 20-foot high ceilings, and cement floors. The whole east wall is dominated by 16-foot-high windows with arched tops which let in natural light. J.J. thinks it looks like some high-tech office in the Pearl District.
There are 3 glass-walled offices on the north side of the newsroom: one for the editor-in-chief in the NE corner, one for the faculty advisor, and the biggest one in the north-west corner for the Geek Cave housing the newsroom servers. Only the computer systems manager is allowed in the Geek Cave.
The EIC's office has just room for a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, and two chairs. One chair has is a black leather sling chair with a chrome frame, and one filing cabint is short and black, and full of personnel paperwork. Looking out over the newsroom, the large windows on the left (east) are visible.
Computer tables fill most of the newsroom, with a slightly off-center 'living room' area containing two deep-green velvet sofas, matching over-stuffed armchairs and glass tables in front of the glass offices. The computers are grouped in six pods of five (reduced from six for social distancing), with hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes at each pod.
The closest pod to the front counter is the main editing pod, and the computers there contain the high-end video-editing and page-design software. This pod has the desks of the news editor, the copy-editor, the chief videographer, and the Folio editor. The news editors desk faces the front counter, so they can see everyone who enters the newsroom, but the TV station stage can also be seen from there.
The other pods of computer desks cup around the living room space. The photo editor's desk is on the western side of the newsroom, near the Geek Cave.
The sports reporters have their own area, separate from the news reporters, in the small space between the TV news shell and the windows.
The news set for the television station is housed in south-west corner, set off from the rest of the room and the windows by a white shell. It takes up about a quarter to a third of the total floor area. There is a large clock on the wall in the television studio. Behind the brick wall that separates the set from the main newsroom and stretches to the entrance is the television station manager's office - which has solid half-walls - the Green room and the sound booth. A rabbit warren of small rooms backs up against the restrooms.
=== Third Floor ===
==== Book2: Choose ====
The third floor is segmented. The front half of the building is for the student media offices: the EWN radio station, the office of the editor of the Portland Review literary magazine, and a storage room. The back half of the building is locked off and labeled as university storage on the physical plant maps. The access point for the university is through freight access at the rear of the building, and it has its own elevator on that side. There are bathrooms on the 3rd level, but no showers. The third floor fire exit is off the main hallway. 
==== Radio Station ====
The radio station is mostly run by student volunteers with music majors, although the newsroom provides them with stories for a 5 minute news break on the hour. It is comprised of an outer office and a sound booth.
==== Portland Review office ====
==== Storage Room ====
The storage room has at least 3 windows (Kevin Tighe uses 2 for speakers, and one for a projector).
==== Crows Nest ====
In about 2015, Ryan Matthews notices the elevator in the EWN building has a back door with its own panel. After obtaining a key (rumored to be by seducing someone in the key shop), he finds a storage room beyond with concrete floors and a raftered ceiling, partially filled with boxes. As a prank. a few friends are enlisted to move the boxes, clearing a space. From the university's side, it still looks like the boxes fill the space to the rear wall. But from EWN's side, there is an open space 30 feet deep and the width of the building - about the same size as the newsroom below. 
Ryan had named it the Crow's Nest and EWN staff use it as a party place. Over time, they add seating, a bed, table and chairs, a dorm-sized refrigerator, and even a computer workstation for the videographers, for late-night projects. 
===== Book1: Stories We Tell =====
* Friday May 22, 2020 - Emily Andersen calls for a popup party to be held in the Crow's Nest after the broadcast that night, to help reduce EWN staff stress levels. It is attended by Joanna, Carrie, Bianca, Brandon, Ben, Cage, Karin, Jason, Miguel, Corey, Emily, Will, and Ryan.
* Friday May 29, 2020 - After Cage and Turk return from the protest, Cage asks Ryan if Turk can stay 'upstairs', as public transport is shut down. Ryan agrees and takes Turk to stay in the Crow's Nest.
* Saturday May 30, 2020 - Ryan Matthews agrees that EWN will give sanctuary to independent journalists covering the Black Lives Matter protests downtown on the following conditions: they must be escorted into EWN by Cage or Turk, or be buzzed in them; and they have to be gone by 9am when the ad office opens, or wait until 2pm when Emily arrives.
===== Book2: Choose =====
Monday October 12, 2020 - Midnight: Turk buzzes the front door at EWN. The two others with them are carrying Carroll. Cage lets them all in then takes them up in the elevator to the Crow's Nest.
Tuesday October 13, 2020 - 2pm: Emily tells Sarah King of the Crow's Nest, and how the EWN editors decided to extend sanctuary to independent journalists at Cage's recommendation. Only the EWN leadership: Ryan, Cage, Emily, Lam, Ben, Sam and Corey are aware. 
During the December 2020 COVID surge, it is used as a isolation/quarantine ward. Kevin Tighe and two former editors scrounge extra beds, seating, mini-fridges, a couple of microwaves and a hotplate for EWN staff. Others drop off bottled water.