Snipers in the Cily Room

To outward appearances, Police Reporter Gene Grove, 34, and Aviation Editor Harry Franken, 35, are smart, hardworking newsmen on the daily Columbus (Ohio) Citizen (circ. 85,942). But once each week the two slip off duty and into the harness of the Columbus C.I.O. News, a weekly organ for organized labor. There Reporters Franken and Grove conduct a column called "Checking the Press." Its purpose: to appraise the performance of the Columbus daily press, including their own Citizen, A recent example of their work in the C.I.O. News: "The Citizen has more and more sugar-coated its stories, has spent more and more time on the goody-goody type stories ... It gets downright sickening."

Such backbiting has been going on since 1954. when Reporters Franken and Grove, both members of the American Newspaper Guild, a C.I.O. affiliate, offered their services--at $5 a week--as undercover editors of the C.I.O. News. The column "Checking the Press" had been introduced in 1950 with the News's hope that it would "succeed in forcing the daily papers to report the news that they now suppress."

From their vantage point inside the Citizen's city room, Franken and Grove expanded this charter into a broadside attack on the faults of the Columbus press, peppering not only the Citizen but its bigger rival, the Dispatch (circ. 185,437): "We believe the Columbus Dispatch has been grossly unfair and inaccurate in its reporting."

Many of their shots went wild, but sometimes a snipe hit home. After "Checking the Press" exposed the high incidence of identical Citizen and Dispatch stories, the Citizen began rewriting pressagents' handouts. With considerable Tightness, Franken and Grove pointed out that a football game for charity (Philadelphia Eagles v. Chicago Bears), sponsored by the Dispatch and the Columbus Ohio State Journal, cost Ohio taxpayers $60,000 more than the take.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Grove-Franken operation is that they have remained unidentified to their bosses--until this week. But the Citizen had long suspected that its own employees were involved. "I know that some of my men contribute to it," growled Citizen Editor Don E. Weaver last week. "And it's a dirty bird that fouls its own nest." For all the fact that Grove and Franken have often criticized real Citizen shortcomings, Editor Weaver may have a point.

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