Reader Response

A good reporter goes about his job on the premise that he can do his work without getting lynched, shot at or otherwise assaulted by anything more deadly than epithets. Sometimes the premise proves wrong, and last week one of those times came for Alabama-born Reporter Byron Riggan, 34, chief of TIME'S bureau in Montreal.

At 10:30 one night Riggan was relaxing in his apartment on Peel Street, in a gracious midtown sector of the city, after a hard week's work on a story about an eruption of shootings and gangster violence in Montreal's east-end tenderloin district; the Canadian edition of TIME carrying Riggan's story had appeared on the newsstands only the day before. Riggan's doorbell rang, and when he opened the door, two rough-looking strangers pushed their way in. "Did you do that article on the East End?" one asked. When Riggan replied that he had, one of the men whipped out a knife and held it to the newsman's stomach while the other smashed Riggan in the face with his fist. "If you work for TIME," the man muttered between punches, "you've got plenty of money. Where is it?" Riggan broke loose, made a dash for the door and shouted for help. The two visitors fled through the back door.

Riggan described the attack to police, who advised him to "buy a gun and shoot first" next time. Both major Canadian wire services, Canadian Press and British United Press, picked up the story. It received heavy play in the Montreal newspapers, particularly the evening Herald, which has been waging an indignant anti-hoodlum editorial campaign. Riggan, onetime Birmingham Post-Herald reporter who has been a TIME correspondent in Canada since 1953, was troubled less by his injuries (which were minor) than by regret that he had not made it a better story. "What rankles most," he joked, "is reading the accurate reports that 'Riggan's yells' frightened off the thugs. It would have been more gratifying if the stories could have read: 'The thugs fled under a hail of blows.' "

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