Writer of Wrongs

The columnist was tattling on his trade. "Standard practice," he wrote, "is to correct a wrong like 'Joe Blow is a crook' by printing, as many days later as is safe, something that goes 'Don't believe those things you hear about Joe Blow. . . .' "

Columnist Herb Caen knew the usual trade practice: brag about your right guesses, if any, and maybe nobody will notice the others. One day last week he devoted his entire daily space in the San Francisco Chronicle to a recital of his April errors. Sample error: that fine little crack about the canned peas served at the national frozen-food convention banquet had been run without checking; and it just wasn't so. Caen promised to continue "Writing the Wrongs" once a month. "In the course of hacking together 20 or 25 items a day," he explained to his readers, "I'm sometimes . . . wrong. If that makes me almost human, I apologize. . . .

He could easily afford to admit some boners. In the Bay area, parrot-beaked Herb Caen, 31, has a more devoted following than any syndicated columnist, and in the Chronicle he far outdraws Drew Pearson and Billy Rose, the only outsiders Editor Paul Smith prints. Smith has found out what many papers could confirm if they only tried,: a good local column doesn't have to be brilliantly written (Caen's isn't) to outshine all the syndicators that money can buy.

Caen Is Able. Herb was a 20-year-old police reporter and part-time radio columnist for the Sacramento Union when his juvenile gibes at radio caught Smith's eye in 1936. When Smith interviewed him, Caen thought it wise to add three years to his age ("I didn't know he was only 27 himself").

Caen's Chronicle column got off to a slow start, for conservative San Franciscans whose names were newsworthy didn't like to make Caen's kind of news. Without benefit of the pressagents who save legwork for Hollywood and Manhattan gossips, Caen created a cafe society of his own. He haunted nightspots, cocktail parties and theater openings, built an army of volunteer tipsters. Unlike most of his Broadway rivals, Columnist Caen rarely had anything malicious to say about anybody.

While still new at the game, he wrote a naive item about some "hidden gambling dens" on Turk Street. Police raided the joints and the next night the gamblers asked Caen to come down for a drink. "I thought they were being good guys," he says, "but they slipped me a Mickey." Today he is more careful about the company he keeps. He makes $24,700 a year from the Chronicle and a weekly radio program for a beer sponsor (titled What's Brewing in San Francisco). He can afford to turn down handsome offers from Hearst's rival Examiner, whose company he does not wish to keep.

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