The Front Page Revisited

WITH their 1928 play The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur set the stereotype of the fast-talking, hardbitten, wisecracking newspaper reporter that seems destined to endure forever. The play was made twice into movies,* was revived this season on Broadway and has been taped for presentation on TV next season. As a police-beat cub reporter ten years ago, TIME Associate Editor Ray Kennedy worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times when the brassy style of Windy City journalism was still very much in vogue. This summer, Kennedy returned to the scene of his crime-reporting days and found some changes. His account:

Newspaper eras, like political eras, depend on the men who make them. And Harry Romanoff, 73, who retired in June as an editor of Chicago's American after more than 40 years, was quite a man. His reporters tell, for instance, the time in 1966 when Richard Speck was accused of murdering eight nurses (missing only Corazon Amurao, a Filipina), Romy assumed an accent and began phoning around town as the Philippine consul. For a follow-up story, Romy decided to dig up details of the accused man's marriage and troubled early life. He got the phone number of Speck's mother, called and identified himself as Speck's attorney. Speck's sister began talking, and Romy got his story. He once observed: "They said I constantly posed for somebody else. It's not my fault if they misunderstand." As Harry tells it, his time was actually up years ago, when a tantalizing story broke and he was stopped from switching headlines. "What do you mean, there's a war in Yemen?" he roared. "They just stole $25,000 worth of jewels from Ann Sheridan!"

Before then, Harry would have had his headline--war or Armageddon notwithstanding. In Romy's heyday, foreign affairs meant DIPLOMAT FOUND IN LOVE NEST! In recent years, however, Chicago newspapers have expanded their serious coverage of national and international news; now they tend to bury all but the most sensational crime stories in the back pages or, more often, the wastebasket. "Police-beat news," explains one Daily News rewrite man, "is what runs on a dull day."

Murdered Mistresses. A dull day! The very thought would make Hecht and MacArthur spin in their rolltop desks. Their "supermen with soiled collars" were a callous, cynical lot, born of an era when circulation wars raged and when a condemned man was not simply hanged but, as one daily bannered, JERKED TO JESUS. Armed with phony search warrants, police badges and wiretapping devices, reporters got the story one way or the other--usually the other. They climbed through windows to steal the diaries of murdered mistresses, kidnaped suspects to get exclusive interviews, and planted clues to sustain a sordid rape story for another day.

It was all distilled in the City News Bureau, a cooperative founded in 1890 by the Chicago dailies. The training ground for most of the city's police reporters, City News still bills itself as "the world's greatest journalism school," and one of its classrooms is the press room at the police department's Detective Bureau. As recently as ten years ago, this room could have passed for Act I, Scene 1 of The Front Page. As in the play, the focus of activity was a raucous poker game among reporters, policemen, bail bondsmen and ambulance-chasing lawyers. Somehow, in the din of police calls crackling over squawk boxes and the clanging of the fire alarm, a reporter would hear a call of a homicide and shout out the address. Whichever newsman had failed to fill his flush would then check the "crisscross," a directory listing telephone numbers by address.

"Hello," the reporter would say sternly, "this is Lieutenant Murphy from the Detective Bureau. We have a report of a shooting at this address. Is it true?. . . Is he dead? . . . Four times in the head, huh? . . . Who shot him? . . . You did? . . . Now get hold of yourself, dear. Why did you do it? . . . Messin' with another woman, huh? . . . Did you catch 'em in bed or something? . . . Were they naked? . . . What did your boy friend do for a livin'? . . .A laborer, huh? O.K., the squad car will be right there. Goodbye."

The reporter would then return to the game and mutter "Cheap." Translation: No story, because the motive was routine and the victim was a nobody. There were other supposed nobodies. When checking on, say, "a floater d.o.a. at County" (a drowning victim pronounced dead on arrival at Cook County Hospital), the first question was, "Black or white?" If the dead man happened to be Negro, the reporter would "cheap it out." As for impersonating public officials, it was accepted practice. More than one reporter telephoned the scene of a crime and barked, "Hello, this is Coroner Toman," only to be told, "That's funny, so is this."

When not at the poker table, reporters settled into saloons and, over endless drinks and with endless embellishments, swapped anecdotes. Though less frequently and less soddenly, this still goes on at such press hangouts as Riccardo's and Billy Goat's, a short-order joint with a "Wall of Fame" displaying photographs of Chicago newsmen, some of which bear the inscription "30"--for end of story.

For many young newsmen, the passing of the old guard is not cause for fond goodbyes but bitter good riddances. They represented, says one young Tribune staffer, the "tired old practice of letting the status quo define what the news is." Mindful that their young reporters reflect the tastes of the growing number of young readers, editors are letting their younger charges have their head--within limits. Explains Emmett Dedmon, editorial director of Field Enterprises, which owns the Daily News and the Sun-Times: "This is the era of the young, socially aware reporter. We allow them more freedom today in assigning themselves, but too often they want to treat the newspaper as a pulpit. We want their personal insights rather than their personal preaching."

The distinctions are crucial. Chicago is still the nation's most competitive newspaper town. After decades of blood-and-thunder headlines, the scramble today, says Tribune Editor Clayton Kirkpatrick, is "to become more relevant to our times." Romanoff's flamboyant American has even changed its name to a more underplayed Chicago Today. The Sun-Times' method was to appoint Yale Graduate Jim Hoge, 33, as its editor. "Our ideal," says Hoge, "is to give all the people a hearing for their point of view. We are selling the Sun-Times as a paper that is changing." Adds Dedmon: "Because of the changes, you can read any of the four papers today and be reasonably well-informed. That wasn't true ten years ago."

The change shows at the Detective Bureau press room. The Sun-Times' Walter Spirko and the Tribune's Johnny Paster, among the last of the 30-year veterans, are still there. Otherwise, except for the "City News kid," the place is virtually deserted during the late-night dog watch. "Everything's changed," says Paster. "Ever since the riots at the convention, the cops are very leary about talking to us. I've put in for early retirement next year. Things aren't like they used to be." "Yeah," says Spirko. "We used to cabaret around with the coppers, play handball with them and everything. Hell, when I was working on the Dillinger case, I drove the goddam car on a raid of one of his hideouts, packed a .38 and everything. Those were the sweet days." And he deals out a hand of solitaire.

* One of them, renamed His Girl Friday, starred Rosalind Russell as the ace reporter.

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