Flood Tide in Chicago

As they prepared to cover the Republican Convention next week, newsmen all agreed on one point. Their big competitor in Chicago will not be the other newsmen; it will be television and its gavel-to-gavel coverage. In a memo to his staff, Scripps-Howard's news executive Dick Thornburg sketched the plan of battle against TV: "Our job more than at any time in the past will be to provide interpretive material. Why did Joe Blow make that kind of a speech? What influence did it have? What votes did it change? Also, forward-looking stories telling the readers what to expect that evening on TV . . . telling what happened in the back rooms and caucuses the TV viewer did not see."

To report the convention, more than 5,000 reporters, technicians and brass from newspapers, magazines, radio and TV will move in on Chicago by week's end. It will be by far the biggest press corps ever to cover a convention. Many will have to work in shifts, since Convention Hall has only 860 press seats for dailies. One big change caused by TV: special press-conference rooms have been set up so politicos will have to come to the press, instead of summoning reporters to hotel suites, where TV coverage would be difficult.

Insurance & Teletypes. To handle the flood tide of newsmen, half the space off the floor of Convention Hall has been set aside for press rooms. Flanking and in back of the speaker's platform, where the main press gallery is, 30 noiseless teletype machines will carry running stories as fast as they come from reporters' typewriters. Elsewhere in the hall are 45 other teletypes, a battery of wirephoto transmitters, and more than 2,000 telephone lines. At the Conrad Hilton Hotel, convention headquarters, is another big press room. This, plus the hall's equipment, will enable reporters to file 500,000 words of wire copy an hour. As double insurance, many newspapers have put in their own teletype and telephone lines direct to home offices.

Novelists & Specials. Despite the space allotted the press, there is nowhere near room for everyone who wants to be there. The Republican Convention Committee had to turn down requests from newspapers and magazines with less than 10,000 circulation, refused applications from such marginal news publications as shopping guides, factory house organs, etc. Associated Press alone is sending 150 staffers, National Broadcasting Co. 300, Columbia Broadcasting 250, International News Service 80, United Press 70. Other big contingents: TIME Inc. 85, New York Times 27. Society editors, fashion columnists, pundits, humorists and "specials" of every stripe will be on hand.

The size of the coverage has staggered even old convention hands. Says William H. Mylander, public-relations boss for the Republican National Committee, with a worried eye on the future: "In 1956 there will have to be serious consideration given to pooling by the press or in some way drastically cutting down...The convention halls and hotels in any city are just not big enough to accommodate the growing demand by press, radio and television."

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