Monday, Jun. 06, 1949

School for Reporters

A wag once sent a dead mouse through one of the pneumatic tubes connecting Chicago's four daily newspapers with the City News Bureau. Two minutes later, "City Press," which prides itself on its speedy service, shot back a box of rat poison. For live news, it moves even faster; on big stories it sometimes pops 2,000' words a minute through the 40-m.p.h. tubes.

Last week, as City Press moved into new offices on Randolph Street above Texas Guinan's old nightclub, news was waiting on the doorstep. Hearing a commotion in the street, Reporter Donald Coleman raced downstairs, found the cops chasing a fleeing prisoner, and phoned back a story on his recapture. Five minutes later, blue-inked, identical copies of Coleman's story were on city desks all over town.

Scoops & Stethoscopes. Though Chicagoans read its stories every day, few have ever heard of professionally anonymous City Press. Reason: it is a kind of trade secret of the loudly competitive newspapers, which share its cost and its news. But City Press is probably the most successful school of practical journalism in the U.S., and its alumni are as well-known as the academy is obscure.

Hearst Executive Walter Howey, the model for Managing Editor Walter Burns in The Front Page, was only a City Press cub on a routine assignment in 1903 when a blackened figure in stage costume suddenly popped out of a nearby manhole and gasped a few frenzied words. Minutes later, City Press had the first flash on Howey's beat--'the great Iroquois Theater fire, in which about 600 died. Hildy Johnson, the star reporter of the Chicago Herald-Examiner and The Front Page, scored a string of courtroom beats as a City Press legman by holding a stethoscope to the paper-thin walls of Chicago jury rooms. He got the eavesdropped verdicts to his city desk before the foreman handed them to the judge. Playwright Charles MacArthur, who with Ben Hecht wrote The Front Page, also did his stint on City Press.-

In the old rowdy days, some of the reporters carried pistols, and now & then a celebrating staffer took a shot at. the city-room clock; General Manager and Managing Editor Isaac Gershman put down the practice when a wild bullet holed his vest as he sat at his desk. Nowadays, a City Press reporter's life is less temerarious; though a juicy murder or a big fire still comes along to relieve the routine, it is mostly a hard-working job of covering the unexciting but important little stories that fill out the chronicle of the day. But Editor Gershman, now 54, is still boss.

Pinpoints & Planning. A harassed, high-strung veteran of 34 years at City Press, "Gersh" starts his $3O-a-week cubs as "ink monkeys" in the back room, running the duplicating machine. Gradually he teams them up with reporters covering police beats, courts, hospitals and public buildings, finally puts them on their own. From Gersh and City Editor Larry Mulay young reporters learn to turn out a story that is fast, straight and complete.

Like a general committing his troops to battle, Gersh pinpoints his reporters on a map of Chicago. Every Election Day, with the help of an army of cops and statisticians, City Press flashes returns from Cook County's 5,000 precincts. The same planned teamwork gave City Press the jump on the $10 million stockyards fire in 1934, the Selective Service lottery in 1940 (it listed 20,000 names in 2^ hours) and the William Heirens murdef confession in 1946 (city desks got it six minutes after the state's attorney).

But City Press coverage is mainly "protective"--to keep the newspapers from being scooped when their own reporters go off on special angles. City Press staffers have to worry about being beaten themselves; Gersh keeps scrupulous "scoop sheets" to see how the boys are doing. Most of them are doing pretty well: there are 1,000 alumni on newspapers from New York to Rome.

-Other famed alumni: Chicago Tribune Managing Editor J. Loy Maloney, the late Columnist O. O. Mclntyre, Collier's ex-Publisher William L. Chenery, Cinemactor Melvyn Douglas.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.