I Write so what By george stallings I'm a newspaper man: one of the legion of yarn hucksters known (questionably) as "gentlemen of the press." But you could fool me. I get my weekly pittance each payday, the check duly signed by the publisher, his auditor and his cashier, on engraved watermarked paper. I'm "on call" for any and all of the editors, deskmen, rewrite men, and feature writers who may be looking for a complete story or merely wish a fact verified or a rumor substantiated. I go to work on schedule on the dull days and with the "breaks" when a "hot" yarn pops, regardless of the hour of day or night, whether it's my shift or day off. My superiors frequently take me to task, making gargantuan, inexcusable, and devastating the smallest error even a missplaced comma. They grunt, noncommittantly approving a minor success: a well-turned sentence, a well-selected adjective, or a big exclusive. "Today's hero tomorrow's bum." The proverbial newshawk's attitude holds forth even among newsmen . . . the opposition's scoop of the morrow will shade yours of today . . . you had it coming . . . never rest on past laurels . . . consistencey's the thing. . . Yes; I know I must be a newspaper man. But you still could fool me. Kings and princes, industrial leaders and big businessmen, politicians and politicians' puppets, millionaires and sabled mannequins none are pals of mine. Sure, I've met, oggled, cowtowed to, and interviewed them. I've momentarily ruled over them as I shouted "hold it, please" while I aimed and shot my mugbox I've asked their indulgence while I put the mugbox in a safe place and returned to interview them. But my short-lived dominance resulted only from their tolerance not from any threat of disfavor they might provoke by telling me to go peddle my papers, which they might well have done for all of any lasting contribution to mankind they released to me. Not one of them seemed in the least dependent upon me and my favor for their continued existence at the top of whatever ladder from which they looked down upon me. If they had anything to say, they said it (if the time happened to be appropriate, meaning that they might gain something by talking); if not and such instances have been not infrequent the returns would have been more in ratio had I tried opening a clam with a toothpick. No sort of "heavy, heavy, hangs over thy poor head" could I evoke to my favor, although I knew of several wedges in each difficult situation. My biography certainly would not be the key to any foreign or internal machination or development. A "right" word, a daring hunch, a coup de bluff has never been the cue to change governments or your stock broker, or to switch your election money as far as I'm concerned. I've never run a city by using the mayor, the alderman, or the political boss as the factotum. I've never found my opinion of any weight as deciding any governmental or business issue. Taxes have never been lowered because of me, nor have faulty sewer, water or electric lines been adjusted, nor has any political malefactor grafting the heart out of the public been brought to justice because I was in on the "know" and had oft refused to be bribed from my high purpose of seeing justice brought about. I've never solved a murder nor any major crime. I've never had a policeman who "held out one me" transferred to the sticks. I've never told the police chief to hie himself, stuffed shirt and all, back to his favorite cork tree, nor implied that his figurehead position was anything but a recognition of his services to the community. And I've never called my editors a bunch of fatuous coots, singly or collectively, at least, not in their presence; and if I had, I doubt that I could have wheeled around, left in a huff, and returned two hours later with conclusive evidence. Yet, I'm a newspaper man else why does the publisher not object to my being on the payroll? I write and the job's no sinecure but what? Generally (meaning ad infinitum), an account of Mrs. Jones' baby's stirring battle against diet rash would surpass in appeal, and more closely approach a yarn of stop-the-presses proportions, the routine run of stuff which pours out from my typewriter. Of course, my job is with a small metropolitan daily, a three-edition-a-day sheet, and yarns of the Jones' baby calibre are quite necessary to circulation. Names make news but here that aphorism has been warped to read: "Subscribers' names make circulation." Link this with a "down the middle" editorial policy aversive to crusades, the ever-present editorial fear of libel, intricate economic and fraternal tieups between publishers, governmental officials, and leading industrialists and businessmen (big advertisers), then "freedom of the press" becomes the signal for a voluminous yawn, a vigorous stretching, and a couple of "ho hums." The glamor of reporting, whatever amount of it you started out with, rapidly becomes so much tinsel when you see what you think have been your best stories choked into an already overflowing wastebasket. The gloss is gone. The routine is left. And you struggle on, hoping for a break on the yarn that can't be tossed out and buying sweepstakes tickets, forseeing the day when you may get tossed out. We're interested in facts, ostensibly; ungarnished, un-tinted realities sustainable in tangible evidence. We're not concerned with boosting anyone into heaven, and neither are we bent upon bursting bubbles unless they be political soap blowings. (Apparently, we know politics to be so rotten that as such it couldn't withstand the unveilings of itself should it be tempted to fight back. But, here also, we're concerned with policy and acts, shortcomings and perverted visions of the future not individuals!) The beat man that's me; the harassed soft skull whose duty it is to contact every day or so certain news sources in the hope that some space-filler for those blank spaces between the pink-pill ads will result from a series of discussions about the weather. (Continued on page 21) Page Eleven