The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-12-26
DEC. 2s. 1893
Fair
Enough
-RY MEsTRRooK PEGLER-


THE other day I wrote a story
= which, I am afraid, turned out
to be a sermon. on the subject of
Colonel Lindbergh and the invasion
of a great mans privacy by report
ers and photographers. All the time
I was remembering many occasions
when. in the line Of my work, I had
sat on icy doorstepS by the hour or
had been pushed in the face by i'm
ported buffers or showed around and
around by refined society people
than whom there are no more IL
hammered people to be found on
any dock-Side. in obedience to my
instructions to get the story.
I do not think I am old enough
yet to call myself old-School, but l
am newspaper. and know the re-
porter's side of such problems by
personal experience and the pho
tographers' side by sympathetic
observation. I stop short of bur-
glary, but the sort of newspaper
schooling that I received did not
teach me to throw down an assign
ment any time I happened to find
the job repugnant to my finer feel
ings
I have had to put diStaSteful
questions to many persons and if
had been the vulgar rascal who was
ordered. on an office tip, a few years
ago. to ask Colonel Lindbergh if it
was true that he was engaged to
Miss Anne Morrow. I would have
been the vulgar sort of rascal to ask
him Just that
There has been a new develop
ment in this business since Ivy Lee
moved in as the press-agent for the
Rockefellers to explain that the
massacre in Colorado which the late
Bill Shepherd wrote about so feel
ingly was none of the Rockefellers'
doing and that they we're, at heart,
nice people. Since that time there
/ has developed something which you
might call the boSS-f1x.
TINE public figure who Is being
l. annoyed by reporters and
photographers goes over the heads
of the reporters and photographers
and arranges to meet and exert his
personal charm upon the boss. Pre-
ferably the owner or publisher and
preferably at luncheon. the boss in
many such cases is completely won
over, personally, and agrees that
| certain reporters-not his reporters,
to be sure, but, you know, a certain
| type of reporters a great discredit
and detriment to journalism.
But let us not kid ourselves about
types of reporters. There are, Of
! course, some froWsy trampS in the
newspaper business, and you GER
tainly can not expect to hold many
Harvard Phi. DIS on the local staff,
| because, for one reason, they
wouldn't have enough of what it
takes to be a good rough-and- tum-
BILE reporter. But in between the
frowsy tramp, of whom l have
known just very few, and the help
less Phi. D. type, there is the news
! paper reporter.
| One hears Slurring cracks about
the tabloid type of reporter, but
everybody in this business knows
that tabloid reporter and a full
size reporter as one and the same
and interchangeable A full-six re-
porter out of a job is glad to get a
job with a tabloid and do the tab
loid's way. And many tabloid re-
porter has gone along to become a
star on the staff of a fulI-size pa
per, and 1 could name you some who
have become first-class book writer's
and magazine people, not that that
means so much, either.
TINE finest individual ethical
Il stand that ever came to my
knowledge in this business was that
of tabloid reporter, a beautiful
young woman who was assigned to
visit Quebec, single-handed, without
letters or social credentials of any
kind dance with the prince of Wales
and write story about it. The
| young woman went to Quebec,
danced half a dozen dances with the
| prince Of Wales, to the furious
jealousy of all the socially am
bilious mothers of twittering de-
butantes, who were present at the
ball, and then refused to write a
word about it. I will say of my ac-
! quaintances with many tabloid peo-
pie that the full-size papers would
| do very well to raid the tabloids for
some talent every now and again.
They might pick up some remark
ably fine newspaper people.
l have heard the boss-flx side of
the Lindbergh complaint and the
reporters side, too, and I readily
understand why the reporters who
have to approach Lindbergh on
/ questions Of a non-technical nature
do not like the task or him. He has
tossed them around, in manner of
speaking, without any waste Of
kindness and a man gets back no
better than he sends.
The schools of journalism are
turning out their annual quotas of
book reviewers, dramatic critics and
sport columnists, but the papers
will always need reporters who will
take their assignments from the
desk and do their best on them
without pausing to ask themselves
whether it is, after all, in the best
interests of science, art, humanity
and the profession that these assign
ments be covered.
Copyright. 1888 by United Features
Syndicate, Inc.J