Stop the Presses!

Like most newsmen, Scripps-Howard Columnist Robert Ruark is fed up with Hollywood's fantastic idea of what working reporters are like. Last week, Ruark, a working reporter for six years before he turned columnist, grabbed at a chance to set Hollywood straight; a moviemaker had asked how he could make a forthcoming newspaper film more accurate.

"Never in all my born days," wrote Ruark, "did I romp into a city room and scream: 'Stop the presses, we're going to bust this town wide open!' I never turned up a hat in front, nor wore a press card in the band of said hat.

"In 15 years I have never heard a newspaperman use the word 'scoop.'- One might say 'beat' to describe a four-minute advantage on a hot story, but scoop is a bad word. A worse word is 'game' to refer to our business, as in 'How do you like the newspaper game?' If this is a game it is a very strenuous sport, indeed, and I would not 'play' it for free.

"Newspapermen do not always meet such 'interesting people.' I have met more bores . . . than . . . the average bank president, civic worker or professional salesman of brushes. I have also met more crackpots . . . If some poor deluded soul has just seen a vision, I am the guy they choose to tell all about it.

"It is not true that all newspapermen dress shabbily and drink up all their pay. I have met a flock of teetotalers and some very fancy fashion plates who carry canes and occasionally wear spats . . . Our children catch colds and wear out shoes, just like yours . . . We do not generally catch criminals, preferring to allow the cops to earn their own pay.

"We are not always in the confidence of the mayor, the President, the Senate or the military . . . To the question: 'Do you want to be a reporter all your life?' as if it were a vice, I answer 'yes,' and strike off another acquaintance . . . We are not freaks, any more than you are."

* Newspaperman Ruark has a short memory. In a 1946 letter to his syndicate, which was run as an ad, Ruark wrote that he had achieved "an amazing amount of scoops."

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