‘Hello, Sweetheart, Give Me Rewrite and Stop the Presses’

Having spent most of my adult years as a newspaper reporter (even though more than 30 of those years have been spent as a columnist, I still consider myself a reporter), I am naturally interested in the way we reporters are depicted in the movies and on TV.

As everyone knows, newspaper reporters are loud, brash, irresponsible, cynical, duplicitous, insensitive drunks who would sell their mothers for a scoop, a scoop being a story that their colleagues don’t have.

Their clothing is cheap and disreputable and their ensembles are usually topped by a battered fedora--often a porkpie. (It was said of a prominent New York City reporter that he “looked like an unmade bed.”)

This stereotype of course was formulated before women were admitted to the profession in large numbers. When I started at The Times in 1953 we had one woman in the city room, and she had come from the women’s section.

Without meaning to demean them, I must suggest that women reporters are hardly fashion plates, probably because, like males, they are required to enter into vastly different milieus in a day’s work--going, perhaps, from a society luncheon at the Regent Beverly Wilshire to a stabbing in the slums. I remember once when I had to interview the atomic energy commissioner in the morning at the Biltmore and was sent out on a forest fire in the afternoon. It is impossible to dress appropriately for two such events.

Actually, I never wore a hat, and if I had I would not have stuck my press card in the hatband. I have in fact had a few colleagues who were Beau Brummels. They were always splendidly attired and took care not to get blood or ashes on their ensembles. On the other hand, I have known reporters who looked as if they slept in dumpsters.

The laissez-faire attitude of city editors was in part responsible for the sloppy attire of their employees. The late, beloved Agness Underwood, city editor of the Los Angeles Herald-Express, was not demanding in that respect. Once when I came to work in a red wool lumberjack and my World War II Marine Corps green pants, Agness told me to go out to the Ambassador to interview Kirsten Flagstad.

I told her I couldn’t do it. She said, “Why not?” I said, “Look at my clothes.” She said, “You look all right.” (I didn’t do it.)

What provokes this reminiscence into the style and habits of my profession is a letter from Auriel Douglas asking two questions:

“Did you ever call the city room and say, ‘Hello, sweetheart, give me rewrite’?”

“Were you ever present when someone ran into the city room and shouted, ‘Stop the presses!’ ”

As a reporter I often called the city room and passed my notes on to a rewrite man. But I always went through the city editor, and she (or he) turned me over to a rewrite man. (There weren’t any rewrite women.)

So what I said, in fact, was “Hello, sweetheart, give me the city desk.”

I don’t remember that I ever heard anyone shout, “Stop the presses!” though I have been present when stories broke that probably would have resulted in stopping a press run, provided the presses were running at the time. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was one and the assassination of John F. Kennedy was another, though both occurred when our presses were still.

If the presses were to be stopped, shouting, “Stop the presses!” in the city room would not work. It would require a phone call to the press room by someone with enough authority to get it done.

It’s true that reporters used to be a bibulous crowd. I’m not sure why that was, except that reporters often rubbed up against the scum of life and had reason to be cynical. Also, their city editors were often drunks, and thus were permissive. Agness was not a drunk, but occasionally she would have a festive night and would come to work at 5 in the morning with a raging hangover. On those occasions she would have a case of beer sent up from the Continental bar at Pico Boulevard and Georgia Street, and when we came to work at 6 a.m. she would require each of us to drink a bottle. Drinking a beer at 6 o’clock in the morning is not likely to lead to a sober day.

When I came to work at The Times, the photographers usually kept a bottle or two in the darkroom, and it was routine for a reporter and photographer to have a nip before going out on a story. I am told those days are over.

As for the way we dress, I think it is significant that I have never been named among the 10 Best Dressed Men of the Year, and no doubt never will be.