precision that a crown rose above the rim of the glass and one did best to lean over to the first sip. The Artist and Writers was called Bleeck’s, pronounced “Blake’s,” for its owner, who had operated a speakeasy and not allowed women into the bar until 1935, at which time a
Tribune
reporter grumbled, “Next they’ll be buttering the steaks.”Bleeck’s was on Fortieth Street, directly under a garage. With several of Leo’s martinis inside him, a baseball writer missed an assignment when he looked out the back window and saw torrents. “ ‘S rainin’,” he said. “I’ll write a rainout story at five o’clock,” and he returned to the martinis. The day was cloudy but dry. Workmen had been washing cars on the garage roof and the “rain” came from their hoses. Colleagues eventually filled in the man, and the story he wrote on the game he did not see was passable, although poorly typed.
The drinking press was variously furtive, as in sneaking a quick one to “get the damn lead off the ground,” gregarious, as when a story was finished and approved, and contentious. Irascibility and combativeness struck people unpredictably when the parabolic tension bottomed, leaving a man adrenalin for which he had no proper use.
The production of an enormous newspaper, Joe Herzberg has suggested, is nothing less than a miracle. “It never ceased to surprise me,” he said years later, while bearing the title of “Cultural News Editor” at the
Times,
“that somehow a finished newspaper emerges every day.” But the achievement of the
Tribune
then and of the
Times
then and now relies not on divine assistance but on mundane organization. Once lines of copy flow are established, once responsibility for various essentials—page make-up, photo selection, caption writing—is distributed and once the mechanics of production are subdued, the creation of a half million newspapers a night is no more miraculous than one day’s output of automobiles at Flint, Michigan. A technological marvel is no miracle.
The immeasurable difference between producing cars and producing newspapers is pursuit of the horizon. A car begins with specifications, that is to say limits, within which production workers succeed or fail. If the front discs are not quite ready for 1972, there is plenty of time. Install them in 1973, or ‘74 or ‘75. A newspaper has no specifications. “Nothing ever written,”F.P.A. observed, “was too good to appear in a paper.” The editor planning his news section wants the world in miniature. The reporter starting to type remembers Marlowe’s mighty line. Newspaper work, good newspaper work, begins with passionate striving. The rise or fall of newspaper tension is unique.
At the
Trib,
only copyboys were immune. It was no more difficult at 8:20 to walk a story from the wire room to the foreign desk than it had been at 5:15. Sure of ourselves, observing without involvement, we humored Benny Weinberg, took the measure of the people around us and tired the clock with debates.
The newsroom cast was troubling and impressive. A young Hunter College graduate who was assistant women’s page editor raised her left arm and snapped fingers when she wanted coffee. Seeing a male obey the wordless order made her smirk. “But I really think,” one of the two night copygirls pointed out, “that if she must order coffee that way, she ought to shave her underarms.” A chubby Navy veteran served George Cornish as night secretary and wandered among us, an emperor amid clowns. When we ignored him, he drove into conversations, remarking that $240 a week was too much to pay for an editor, whose name he mentioned. He had access to his employer’s files, and knew everybody’s salary. The police reporter Walter Arm was a hero for his ability to write succinctly and quickly. The foreign correspondent Homer Bigart was a hero because totalitarian governments were always expelling him and, besides, he was said to have been a
Tribune
reporter grumbled, “Next they’ll be buttering the steaks.”Bleeck’s was on Fortieth Street, directly under a garage. With several of Leo’s martinis inside him, a baseball writer missed an assignment when he looked out the back window and saw torrents. “ ‘S rainin’,” he said. “I’ll write a rainout story at five o’clock,” and he returned to the martinis. The day was cloudy but dry. Workmen had been washing cars on the garage roof and the “rain” came from their hoses. Colleagues eventually filled in the man, and the story he wrote on the game he did not see was passable, although poorly typed.
The drinking press was variously furtive, as in sneaking a quick one to “get the damn lead off the ground,” gregarious, as when a story was finished and approved, and contentious. Irascibility and combativeness struck people unpredictably when the parabolic tension bottomed, leaving a man adrenalin for which he had no proper use.
The production of an enormous newspaper, Joe Herzberg has suggested, is nothing less than a miracle. “It never ceased to surprise me,” he said years later, while bearing the title of “Cultural News Editor” at the
Times,
“that somehow a finished newspaper emerges every day.” But the achievement of the
Tribune
then and of the
Times
then and now relies not on divine assistance but on mundane organization. Once lines of copy flow are established, once responsibility for various essentials—page make-up, photo selection, caption writing—is distributed and once the mechanics of production are subdued, the creation of a half million newspapers a night is no more miraculous than one day’s output of automobiles at Flint, Michigan. A technological marvel is no miracle.
The immeasurable difference between producing cars and producing newspapers is pursuit of the horizon. A car begins with specifications, that is to say limits, within which production workers succeed or fail. If the front discs are not quite ready for 1972, there is plenty of time. Install them in 1973, or ‘74 or ‘75. A newspaper has no specifications. “Nothing ever written,”F.P.A. observed, “was too good to appear in a paper.” The editor planning his news section wants the world in miniature. The reporter starting to type remembers Marlowe’s mighty line. Newspaper work, good newspaper work, begins with passionate striving. The rise or fall of newspaper tension is unique.
At the
Trib,
only copyboys were immune. It was no more difficult at 8:20 to walk a story from the wire room to the foreign desk than it had been at 5:15. Sure of ourselves, observing without involvement, we humored Benny Weinberg, took the measure of the people around us and tired the clock with debates.
The newsroom cast was troubling and impressive. A young Hunter College graduate who was assistant women’s page editor raised her left arm and snapped fingers when she wanted coffee. Seeing a male obey the wordless order made her smirk. “But I really think,” one of the two night copygirls pointed out, “that if she must order coffee that way, she ought to shave her underarms.” A chubby Navy veteran served George Cornish as night secretary and wandered among us, an emperor amid clowns. When we ignored him, he drove into conversations, remarking that $240 a week was too much to pay for an editor, whose name he mentioned. He had access to his employer’s files, and knew everybody’s salary. The police reporter Walter Arm was a hero for his ability to write succinctly and quickly. The foreign correspondent Homer Bigart was a hero because totalitarian governments were always expelling him and, besides, he was said to have been a
Similar Books
