News Shop Shuts

Though few newspaper readers were aware of it, for 48 years the City News Association of New York furnished New York dailies with the big bulk of their local stories. City News shut up shop last week, and Manhattan newsmen acted as though they had lost their best friend.

City News reporters and rewrite men were anonymous. In Manhattan and The Bronx they kept a 24-hour watch over every police station, court, jail, hospital, morgue, municipal building. City News election coverage was called the "greatest example of good reporting" on record. No matter what its staff, no big New York paper tried to get along without the news from "NYCNA."

At its peak (in World War I), City News served 22 papers, employed 150 reporters. Newspaper mergers and resignations whittled membership to eight. When two of these (the Herald Tribune and Post) resigned last month, their share of assessments (about $72,800 a year) was loaded on the remaining six members (Times, News, World-Telegram, Sun, Journal-American, A.P.). These six could neither agree to pay this extra nor to accept less service. Associated Press announced that it would take over City New's tricky urban coverage, adding 29 of its 67 reporters to A.P.'s own local staff of 20.

Dolefully, in a smoke-filled, work-scarred room in downtown Manhattan, about 30 City Newsmen held their wake. Among them were oldtimers who had covered the Triangle Waist Co. fire in 1911, the Wall Street explosion in 1920, the General Slocum disaster in 1904. On the wall a sign read: Profanity is vulgar and offensive. Why not quit it? In her cashier's cage Anna Daly Sullivan, only woman on the staff, swore through her tears.

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