V 7 THE MICHIGAN DAILY it PAGE TEN THE MICHIGAN DAILY FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1965 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1965 1942: 'But I have experience, 1919: EDITOR TELLS BARE F) I worked on The Michigan Daily!' by JANET HIATT HOOKER '42 LSA . IN THE SPRING of 1945, "Don't Fence Me In" was a hit and so was Sentimen- tal Journey." Yet to make their bows and exits in America were The New Look,] Howdy Doody, and the horse-collared Ed- sel. Only insiders had heard of Man- hattan Project. Huntley and Brinkley1 were unknown; so was Milltown. The country and the world awaited the end of the war in Europe. That spring, skills acquired on The Daily landed me a job whose details I recall with relish and affection-perhaps because nothing like it has happened to me since. It was a faceless girl at the United States Employment Service in Washing- ton who suggested I see Mr. Gold at The Washington Post. I found him in the WINX Radio News Room presiding over seven teletype machines, all angrily jerk- ing their carriages and dinging their bells. He looked unhappy. "The U.S.E.S. sent me," I said. The aura of gloom made me feel uncertain and inadequate. Mr. Gold glanced at the application listing my work experience and broke his pencil on the desk. A great, sad sigh escaped him. "I wish just once they'd send me someone who'd worked on a newspaper!" "But I have," I said. "I worked on The Michigan Daily." Mr. Gold granted me a suffering smile. He had interviewed the college bred be- fore and he knew all about their inflated little egos. "Uh huh. Well, we don't care about college tidbits here. We air the news." He went to the throbbing machines, tore a sheet off each and pointed to a type- writer. "Here," he said, "take these and write a 45 line summary. It's silly, I know, but that's what I want-the news of the world in 45 lines." IT WAS A delicious moment because I knew I could do it. Twenty minutes and 45 lines later he asked me to report for work the next day, $10 more a week if I would take the night shift, I would. Our office at the Post was in a back corner of the third floor. The teletypes stood like one-armed bandits along one wall; in the center of the room was a long table with a pair of Underwoods on it. A single, huge, screenless window gave onto the fire escape and the alley below. A favorite office story concerned a drunk- en sailor who had ascended the escape, fallen in the window, opened a jackknife, picked up the best typewriter and vanish- ed into the night with his weapon ex- tended before him and the loot beneath his arm. Adjoining the office was an 8 foot square cubicle from which the news was broadcast each hour by a "talent man." A double door arrangement assured quiet in this sanctum and on one side of it was a double paned window looking out on the hallway. Occasionally a stray sightseer stood out there peering at the talent man at work but, otherwise, we were left alone. To my disappointment, no impressive ON THE AIR sign marked our door. All we had was a vicious red, light bulb. Everything aired by WINX-except the news-came out of the main studio. These proceedings were blown, twanged, sung and shouted 19 hours a day from a speaker mounted some 12 feet up our wall. If it was possible to turn down the volume, I never learned how. MY NIGHTS on the WINX desk were easy and routine. I attended the teletypes, watched for sailors on the fire escape, swatted at vagrant moths and wrote a five minute news report each hour, feeding this copy hot from the Un- derwood to my talent man who practiced it aloud across the table with much throat clearing. My man was a thin, nervous old fellow of about 30 and he always wore long-sleeved shirts, dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat. On his hands and face (what could be seen of it) were odd shaped reddish spots which shifted posi- tion every day or so. He told me he was allergic to sunlight. Twice each evening, at 6 p.m. and again at 11, we aired the news for 15 minutes. For these longer broacasts I wrote only a lead paragraph, then resorted to paste and scissors to patch together copy from the wire services. During the broadcasts themselves I hovered over my machines hoping to catch some scrap of news im- portant enough to run into the studio. To Mr. Gold I think I represented, the culmination of a series of indignities in his department. With all the young, able bodied men off having a hand in the War, he commanded a ragged troop. Be- sides our allergy victim, we had a news- caster who limped. One of our writers had only one functioning arm and an- other was an ex-or almost ex-alcoholic of indeterminate age. I was the first fe- male to contaminate the radio news room and this circumstance evidently nagged at my employer. He told me once in a rare moment of confidence that he had had a nightmare about me in which I had dusted the place, hung curtains at the fire escape window and decorated with a bowl of goldfish. IHAD BEEN at my job ten nights when Mr. Gold asked if I could come to work early and go with him to a Presi- dential Press Conference. Accepting with alacrity, I set my hair, got into my smart- est dress and put on a matching hat; I packed a notebook and extra pencils. In the White House waiting room out- side President Truman's office, we joined a throng of milling reporters. A round table I remember as at least 15 feet in diameter filled up with their hats. Off this hall was a smaller Press Room in- habited by a table full of telephones and the private booths belonging to the wire services. Although we had been checked in at the gate, a Secret Service man, spot- ting my infamiliar and probably over- eager face, asked me again for identifica- tion. I felt I had arrived at the Big Time. Mr. Gold kindly gave me a few minutes to look around before he told me my function. "Stand here," he said, "and when the Press Secretary lets us in the President's office, you grab one of those telephones, dial the Post, and keep the line open until I get back." That's the way it was. In the punish- ing heat of the Washington afternoons. I followed Mr. Gold by trolley or taxi keep- ing my eyes and his lines open. Once, en- tering an elevator on Capitol Hill, I col- lided with Francis Biddle. He had ceased to be Attorney General a few days earlier. Once, when no one could think of any better way to get a news release aired, I was thrust into the breech to read it into a Man-on-the-Street mike. In the Treas- ury Building I thought I saw Madame Perkins in the Ladies Room. When VE Day came I was on hand to see Merri- man Smith break an arm bone in the mad dash around the table full of hats to the UP phone booth. Never "in" I nonetheless found the proximity to glory a heady experience. THAT SUMMER my night vigils ended abruptly with the docking of a troop- ship. The hearth and cradle beckoned. Mr. Gold, never one for compliments, politely said he was sorry to see me go. Maybe the alcoholic had had a lapse that day, I don't know, or the night man had got out in the sun by mistake. I said I was sorry too and I meant it. I bought Mr. Gold a bowl of fish for his desk and left him holding the line. As this is written, after many years of raising a family, I ask myself, am I ready for the bowling, bridge and luncheon cir- cuit, for the lane to the pasture? I think not, so all that remains is to push self-doubt aside, to take hold of the possibilities. In one bold fancy, I sit again across the desk from Mr. Gold. My credentials lie exposed to his pitiless eye. "But you've been unemployed for 20 years!" he gasps. "No matter," I cry and I seize the sheets from the chattering teletypes and hasten to the Underwood to pound out the news of the world in 45 lines. It is ridiculous but I think I could still do it. After all, I once worked on The Daily. Acres and Acres of Da'lies BEHIND by JAMES MARTIN '19 LSA CAST OF CHARACTERSK James C. J. Martin, '19 . Telegraph E Editor & Wire News Stenno 1 Miss Rose Mitchell, '19 .. Michigan E Daily Managing Editor I Miss Alice Smith,,... . .'21 Stunning 1 blond society editor George Brownlee, '22 . Frosh reporter Joseph Bigelow....Elderly Staff Reporter, Detroit Free Press E "Shorty" Cunningham . Linotypist, Compositor, Pressman for Daily (Names in cast, except author, t purely fictious to "protect" original characters.)t SCENE: Basement of The Daily. TIME: One cold Michigan night in December - 10 p.m. Staff waiting for an Associated Press phone call on Mich- igan basketball game results, before putting the night's edition to bed. [T WAS ONE of those memorable, un- forgetable evenings in The Daily ,hack. Reporters, copy writers, editors, nd the Telegraph Editor did an excep- ,ionally good job-the paper was ready1 o go to press with the exception of news in an important intercollegiate game. If hat came in soon the staff would have >roken some sort of a record for being BLUE MONDAYS THE SITUATION as to publica- tion (Tuesday through Sunday) has not changed at The Daily since John Pritchard '34 was one of the editors (he now is in publications work for the Detroit P u b 1 1 i Schools.) Pritchard recalls vividly how Guy Whipple, one of the night editors and now a, copy editor on the De- troit News, always answered the phone: "Daily except Monday!" through long before the midnight dead- line. "Shorty" Cunningham opened t h e pressroom door and yelled "Well!! Let's have it and go home." "It'll probably be an hour before the report comes in," Martin shouted back "Whatyu want me to do-twirl my thumbs?" "Shorty" snorted. "Why not play some poker in the reporters' room downstairs?" The suggestion went over 100 per cent and everyone present at that time of night shuffled downstairs, after ascer- taining that the front door was locked. The game lasted about an hour before the all-important news wire phone rang and broke it up. THE STORY was hastily written, set in type, inserted in the forms and the paper put to bed. Every student then dutifully filled out the required "Report STRIP POKER SCAN Slip" as had been done in routine fashion and phrasing on work nights. However, possessing an urge to be different, Frosh Brownlee added under the heading "Oth- er Work Done"-"won $3.00 playing poker." He showed it to the others pres- ent and it was laughed off. It was per- mitted to be filed with the reports which had not been picked up for months by the Faculty Advisors. Bright and early the next morning a faculty member picked up the reports, in- cluding the one with Brownlee's notation. That afternoon the campus was flooded with the early p.m. edition of a sensa- tional Detroit newspaper which em- blazoned its front page in large black type with the following banner headline: STRIP POKER PARTY ON CAMPUS PROPERTY ROCKS UNIV. OF MICH. Three or Four Prominent Football Players and Coeds Involved in Night Card Game on University Property "It was quite a party," declared James C. J. Martin when interviewed many years later concerning the affair. "It was quite a decent and enjoyable eve- ning. There were no football players in- volved and the closest to being a 'strip poker party' was the 'stripping of some money' by several at the table." THE REPERCUSSIONS were far reach- ing. After reading the Detroit story we all held a private conference to deter- mine a course of action. It was argued that 'truth never harmed anyone' so it was concluded we would not lie or make excuses but give the true facts if de- manded. We would not reveal the play- ers' names unless forced to. No names were given in the story. Metropolitan dailies and wire services obtained the scuttlebut and wanted de- tails and confirmation. Pressure was brought to bear upon all the campus press representatives. Due to the war and a shortage of men on the student paper I representedtwo wire services and six daily newspapers. I obtained a two- day delay in announcing the names of the participants, hoping that the excite- ment would subside or they would forget the request. Time ran out and staff reporter Bige- low of Detroit and myself released the names in the first news story we ever had to write about ourselves. I was torn between a newspaperman's duty to re- port all the news and the fact that my father, a former leading editor of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, but at that time editor and owner of his own newspaper, carrying Associated Press news, in a bustling Nevada mining town, might cut off my allowance. I was 2,000 miles away from home and only six months from graduation. Also, what if the University kicked me out of school? W E FOUND OUT later that a faculty member came to The Daily that night, tried the front door and couldn't get in. He saw lights glowering on the sidewalk from the basement reporters' room. He peered in, picked up the slips The man with seniority at The Daily is Lauren Kinsley, 60, who and pressman since 1924. He is shown here packing mats, continued in the early sixties. Present staffers recognize Laure the building after 2 a.m. when the paper has to be rolled a I morning. the next morning and ordered a thor- ough investigation to explain the nota- tion, 'Won $3.00 playing poker.' We were called on the carpet before a select austere group. Society Editor Alice Smith, a vivacious coed who would 'do anything within reason on a dare;-rang- ing from smashing a raw egg under a re- porter's typewriter to placing a bag of eggs in the driver's seat when she and her war lieut. date were dressed up to go to a ball,-was the first witness. Laughter was heard at the closed door by those awaiting their turn. Frosh Brownlee was next but it was short and snappy. Then Managing Editor Rose Mitchell took up about 10 minutes of their time. Last was myself. "'What do you know about it? I was asked. 'You have the whole story-it's true.' 'You will all be notified in due course on the p In due course Smith was assig couldn't go an: walk, without ai tired of taking I think I'll go r George Brownle tion. The mana in power. I lost to train someone ever, they permi proofs for news services and m5 (of which I ne graduate) for w marked 'D'. The as credit was n dissertation on 7 correct the mt graduate in Jun 19290 By ROBERT G. SILBAR '29 LSA THE 20'S WERE the football halcyon days of Oosterbaan and Friedman, and in those days it was the custom of the Michigan Daily to issue extras on football afternoons, print a few hundred copies and rush them to the stadium (opened in 1927). We prided ourselves on having the "extras" sold at the stadium gates as the crowd came out of the game. Now, in order to get the newspaper to the field before the crowd got away we had to print the "extras" on an old Football Extras, Pressroom flatbed press slightly before the game ended. We would take down a dictated story over a direct telephone wire from the stadium to our office, the sports editor covering the game and a typist pounding out the copy as the play-by- play account was received. With the last quarter nicely under way we would stop the story and finish it with the phrase, "There was no further scoring." FOR A box score we used to place pieces of metal on the press indi- cating the quarters, and as each quar- ter ended we would punch the score into the metal with a die. The game I remember saw Ooster- baan and Friedman up to their old tricks. I was "working" the inside role at the office, editing the copy as it came over the telephone lines, and, following the usual procedure for an "extra" the signal was given to close the game off and to start printing. The scores were punched into the metal and the press started to roll, when the telephone operator yelled, "Wait, Michigan just scored another touchdown!" HASTILY, WE stopped the press, threw away the copies already printed, Chat punched the n score metal, anc The game had go and we had with the copies This time the the "extras" tc way out of the Arbor Press bu stop him. Michi touchdown! We printed that day and 1 "extras" to th were already mo on their way h: Once a day, six days a week, forty-five weeks a year (counting trimester) adds up to a lot of Dailies, about two semesters worth shown here. That's a lot of Dailies and a lot of work over seventy-five years.