Ear on Chicago; Red Streak Final: Chicago Daily News; Part 1

that are Klem Lane. Yeah, okay, talk to Bill Neulman, will you? All right, just a minute. Bill, see we're on 415. Bill, this is Bob Seever. We've been out investigating and complaint on building up at 699 Milwaukee and a couple of other buildings up there in that block. And Mr. Lane wants me to turn in a story to you on this one building at least. It is number 699 Milwaukee Avenue, a three -story brick. Yeah. We went through the building, which is about 75 years old, with two building inspectors. They found, in a survey of the building, commonly found nine building violations. Probably the most important one is that the rear stairs, porches, decking, and railings are in very bad shape. And he found a number of partitions where gypsum board or fiber

board had been used illegally to create rooms, either to split up one room into two, or to partition one room off from a hallway, and thereby create a hallway within the apartment. Oh, is this a routine inspection bomb? No, this was based on a complaint that came to us and we looked over the building first to find out if it was justified and then drew the attention of the building department to it. And so Bob Seever finished his story and folded into the rewrite desk. We continue our report as your reporter interviews the rewrite man, Bill Newman. Bill, you've just received all the information over the telephone. What happens now to the story? First thing I will do is have the copy boy go to our library to see if we have any clippings on the landlord, Ju Stino. Then I will write the story from the notes that Seever gave me. Is this how almost every story comes into

you over the telephone bill? Well, except if I cover the story myself, yeah. So then you get the olive facts and put it down on paper. Then where does the story go from there, Bill? The story then goes to the city desk, where the various city editors check on it. Who checks all the facts, spellings, all the grammar, everything? Who checks that? Well, the final court is the copy desk. There supposed to be fellows who had a lot of experience in my business and they have a lot of information at their technical tips and they catch a lot of the errors that we always make. Do you always make errors, Bill? It looks that way. All right, thank you very much. Well, we followed the story through rewrite and now that it's finally arrived over to the city desk where an editor will handle the story. The editor is Ritz Fisher. Could you tell us what happens to the copy now that it reached your desk? Well, we read it

to see that it's the story that we expected from the reporter, edited to take out any excess words, read it for accuracy, spelling of names and addresses, so on. And after we've edited to that extent, if we feel the story is too long, we may trim out paragraphs and so on and get it down to the size that we think it merits for the news that it contains. How do you check the spelling on the names? Do you have a directory or so on or do you just use the full name? Well, many names are familiar to us, especially those of public officials or persons who have been prominent in the news. If it's a story that has been just occurred that day before or within recent days, then we are familiar with the names of the principles. If it's names that are unfamiliar to us and we're not certain of the spelling, we have any number of directories here, in which we can check it, beginning with the telephone books of course, then we have other directories across cross -indexes of

street addresses and names. We have special directories like medical directories, legal directories, and similar special directories, for instance, a directory of school teachers and so on. And those are all used for verification of spelling. Now, after you finish editing the copy and getting it down to size, what happens to it then? Well, then it's passed on to Mr. Lane, the city editor. Mr. Lane, we have the story reached your desk now from the assistant city editor. What's going to happen to it now? Well, I take a look at it and after I've read it and seen that it's something that we've developed ourselves that it's an exclusive story I'd like to call it to as attention personally. So in a few minutes I'll stroll over to his desk and point out to him that we do have this story exclusive. Well, now while we're waiting for you to go over and see Mr. Acres, I suppose we could talk a little bit more generally about your job. Now, this is just one story and hundreds that come across your desk. Mr. Lane,

sometimes you get maybe a lead on one story and an ad on a different story. How do you keep all these things in mind? Well, you do your best, sometimes you forget, but over the years you develop the faculty, you develop a memory and then you sort of develop a sixth sense. You read this stuff and you read it heardly. And if the Lord is with you, you catch the errors as they come along. It's just one more check on the road to the composing room. We have so many checks that it's not a careful minute reading so much as it is a hasty overall glance. I was just going to mention that. You go over it real quickly. Can you catch an error by reading it that quickly? Quite often, we can on the city desk. It's something that you develop over the years. Paragraph rings a bell for you. We just heard it whistle down there, Mr. Lane. That was a boat, I guess, going up to Chicago River. Which way is up on the Chicago River? The only river in the world that runs

backward, you know? Yeah, it's going up towards Lake Michigan, so I guess we'll call it up. Mr. Lane, let me ask you this question. You've been around the Chicago for a long, long time. And this job here culminates a long years of activity as a reporter. You were here back in the old days in the roaring 20s of Chicago, weren't you? Oh, yes. In those days I was on the rewrite desk. I must have written literally hundreds of gang murders in the course of my career as a rewrite man. Recently, I remember we were going on a tour, and when we got up to the Chicago Avenue station, you had an opportunity to tell about one of the most famous stories. Oh, the Dillinger case. He was quite a boy. He really turned the Midwest upside down for a good many months there. But there were other stories in those days, too. At that same time, if you'll remember, there was a discussion of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Incidentally, I put that name on that collection of gang killings. I also

hung a good many of these nicknames on some of our more notorious characters. Mr. Lane, have you noticed any noted change in reporting and newspapering over the last 15 or 20 years? The writing is much better. It's clearer, cleaner, shorter. The average reported today is much better educated than his fellow of 20, 25 years ago. He's far more business -like. There were some in the 25, 30 years ago who regarded what we are doing as the newspaper game. The young men of today know that it is not a game, but a business. The business of getting the news to the public is accurately as fairly as quickly as human fallibility will allow. Well, I think everybody would agree with you on that, and we all know that the Daily News is leading the way here in Chicago in that activity.

Well, thank you very much. We try to do our best. Well, maybe Mr. Rakers is about ready for that little conference. Yes, he is. Let's go over to his death. Mr. Rakers, our news editor Ed, we have a story here that is exclusive with us. We got a tip on these slums over in Milwaukee Avenue, and we had Bob Sieber out there. Bill Newman has written a nice, hard -hitting piece on it. Very good. We'll play that with a good -sized head on our forward pages. Now, I wonder if we could talk to Mr. Rakers. Now, what's going to happen? You just mentioned that you're going to put a good -sized head. I guess that means a good -sized head line. That means a major play on this story. After I have designated the head line to be written, I pass this over to the head of our copy desk. And he in turn will read this copy for any errors, in fact, or in grammar, and he will have one of his men write a caption on it. And according to what I have designated. Mr. Rakers, we've found that almost every place we take this story, they check and recheck and check and recheck for accuracy. Is that

the biggest thing in a new story? When I first entered this business, I was told that the first law of newspaper work was accuracy, and I still believe it is. I have to have those names spelled right and so forth. That is correct. It is very vital to have every fact in there to be assured of every fact and to be especially certain that you're correct in all your statements and your addresses. Sometimes giving an improper address and a gambling story may lead to a liable suit. We find it very expensive not to mention the fact that it also damages the prestige of the paper. There are four accuracies, one of our main goals. Mr. Rakers, do you decide where the story goes, no matter whether it's local or wire copy, and what kind of head line it's going to receive and so on? In general, I do. Subject of course to conferences occasionally with the managing editor, but in general, I handle the play of the news story. When you're a busy man, what with sometimes 80, 90 pages in the paper every day and a lot of stories going in there, you're awfully busy. Well, for the benefit of my employer, I should say yes to that.

While we're waiting for our copy to get down to the composing room, where it will be made up and published in the paper, we might describe some of the physical facilities up here and talk to Dick Collins, our guide in the city room. As you probably can well imagine, from the background noises, there are tremendous amount of desks and typewriters, reporters and rewrite men, city editors, and so on up here, working rather furiously at the moment because the newspaper is on deadline. We're standing right in the middle of the city room and far to our right and far to our left. We can see rewrite men with headphones on, taking stories from reporters, and also the copy desk where they take all the copy, edit it, and so on. But the land who can tell us a lot more about how they get all this news and so on is Dick Collins. Dick, first of all, we have followed a story from the reporter getting the facts and phoning it into the rewrite man. That's only one story which appears in the daily news and you have hundreds of stories every day. How do you get all that information? Well, here we

have the Associated Press Service, the United Press Service, the City News Bureau of Chicago, our own Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, then of course we have publicity releases, telephone call tips, letters, all kinds of different ways and things come in. Hundreds of messages coming in all the time. That's right, you. Now, we have followed only a local story, only one local story and all of the local stories that are going to be printed in the paper. What about the overseas stories and the stories out of Washington? Where do they come? They come in on our Associated Press and the United Press teller types you and also our Daily News Foreign Service uses least wires. They go to the desk of the cable editor or the wire editor depending on whether there are overseas news or domestic news. The cable editor or wire editor read through them to see if they are of local interest. You know many things on the wires would be of interest to people in the state of Washington for instance but not here in Chicago. These two editors then review all the stories coming in, pick out those which would be of interest to our readers

and turn them over to the news editor. Then the news editor puts them in the paper, calling it a space. Now of course one of the major things in a newspaper dick is you know our pictures and we haven't even mentioned those. What about pictures? How do you get them? Where are the photographers located and so on? Well we have a stamp view of about 19 photographers. They're over in the corner behind you there. They're on duty all day round the clock 24 hours a day. There's somebody a photographer working. Right now there's three or four of them over there waiting for an assignment and then there are others out on the street covering other assignments. How do you keep in contact with your photographers and reporters? Well our photographers rather all have two way radio telephones in their cars. A couple of our reporters have them too. They call in the office whenever they finish an assignment to see if there's a further assignment in the same general area or if they're to come back into the office with their pictures or whatever the photo chief wants to do. Now once the cameraman or the photographer has taken this picture what happens to the film? Do you develop it right here or what? Yes that's right. We have our own dark rooms here. There are about six or seven of them back there where the films are developed

and prints are made immediately and turned over to the picture editor to use in the paper. The process is very fast. It takes about a half hour after the time that photographer gets in with the film. The picture editor. Now what does he do with the picture once he gets in? Well you'll we get about a thousand pictures a day in here from various sources, the wire photos and the press releases and our stuff our own men take. Those pictures are gone through by the picture editor. He discouraged those that we can't use in the paper and otherwise turns them over to the engraving department to have cuts made to put in the paper. And who writes the caption underneath the pictures? That's handled by the photo editor or one of his assistants. And who makes up that back page of pictures that you have in the daily news? That again is the photo editor's job. He decides what picture goes where and so on. Well he can salsa with the managing editor on it if it's a big thing. Well thank you very much Dick for telling us about the city room and how you get your pictures and your stories into the city room. Our story is probably about ready downstairs isn't it? Yeah it's probably down there now you do you want to go down and see what's happening? Right let's go.

We've come out of the composing room and we're going to talk to the superintendent Bill Markhart. Now Bill on this particular piece of copy we've got Mark Blue. What does that mean? Blue and straight first edition of Martin. That's the first edition in the morning. Now what about the headline? It's find flats full of violations. How do you know what type to set and so on? Well they specify it by numbers. We have a chart we follow. What is Mark's slugged number 14 we said in Roman. If it's slugged 15 all our odd numbers are italic. Now this is number 14. Tell us what that means. That's a one column 30 point head single column head Roman setting Roman. Okay now Bill we've got this piece of copy here. What what happens to the story now? Where does it go? The head copy is a slug goes over the head machines and they in turn set the guideline what we call the guideline slum.

And the body matter believe first that is handed out to two or three operators depending upon the length of the story. And that way we have two or three men saying one story at the same time. And we have a schedule we get to the military department. It gives us an idea how long that story will be. What it's leading two has leading three has. So when in turn you get the type over to the makeup here and correct it. Now you're talking about when you go to the operator you mean the line of type operator. The line of type operator yes. We use term operators to shorten. Yeah. And we have possibly handed out the two or three operators. And in day and turn each one has a sheet of copy and assignment and we stump their takes we call takes. And in turn it goes to the proof press in the proof room or it's proof red. All right now let's go over here to this table here Bill. Here sets a page made up. What page is this? This is tomorrow's editorial page right now but page one is over at the other over there. Well let's talk about the editorial page that's going to appear tomorrow in the paper. This is a night special page. Where was that made up now? This is being made up right now. The process of

having pipes set on it right now. I see. Now what about page one? Is that all ready to be changed in case there's a late breaking story? Page one and we just replayed for a late bulletin. You just replayed it? Just replayed for a late bulletin and a missing child. How often does that happen? Well and not probably once or twice a day. Sometimes it's not. You might go long for days not having it all. Is that what you would call an extra addition? That's an extra. We call it a replay. I see. Now notice you've got page one right over here which is right in about the center of the room. Why do you have it in that particular location? That is about the last page to go to press on any addition during the day. Because that carries a very latest news or anything like late bullets that you might have. Or late races. All right now Bill, we'll get this piece of copy away from you again and we'll get it in type and get it set in a page. Now what happens to that? Just to find a page and lock it and send it to the center of the parking department for molding. You lock it and set it in for the molding?

That's right. Well we're now over to the stereo type department and we're prepared for our sheet to go into the roller here and be made a mat. Now that sound you heard was the page going right onto the roller. And in just a minute the man will send the page through the roller and on the other side will come a mat. We're going to talk to the superintendent of the stereo type department Ed Lund. Ed what's this piece of paper he put on there just now? It's a matrix. The impression is taken off the type. Now he's pushing it into the roller. Pushed in underneath the roller with a cork blanket and a fiber board on top. As it's rolling through the impression is being taken off of the type. That's the sound of the machine of the roller and here on the other side comes the mat. Well now

that only takes just a couple of seconds Ed. It takes about 15 seconds. Now our story appears on page three of the Chicago Daily News and this is how it's going to come out in the paper. The headline reads find flats full of violations and the subhead is city aids building hit by inspection. The lead on the story is inspectors have found 32 buildings and housing violations at a 75 -year -old apartment building owned by a city employee. The story then goes on to tell about how the violations were discovered and so on. Now Ed what happens to the mat? The mat is taken from the form looked over to make sure it's clean. No high slugs are led sticking up in it. Then it is placed in a pre -shrink machine. Which is over here a little ways. This is the pre -shrink here. What's the purpose of this? The purpose of this machine is to pre -shrink your mat into a certain size prior to the roasting of it. Now you put it in the machine and lights come on. What is that? A minute and 15 seconds. Then a bell will ring. And after that

the mat is ready for what? It is taken out of there and put in a stay high to partially form it and also to shrink the mat in a little farther in width. This is a rather rapid process. Ed how much time does it take you to get a page out after it finally reaches you? When the time it reaches the stereotype department until the time the actual plates are delivered to the press room is about 12 to 13 minutes. 12 to 13 minutes. So they can change the front page in a very short matter of time. That they can. Now we've just taken it out of the pre -shrink and it's over here in this machine. This is the stay high pre -shrink. Now Ed has taken the mat out bringing it over here and cleaning it. Blackening the back of it so that you can see to put in your packing so you don't pack over type or cuts. And it is placed on the packing table. Which is right over here. Now what happens to it here? And it is backed up here with different

thicknesses of felt paper to keep it from blackening up in the paper. Now what will happen to it after they finish putting the felt paper on it? Then it will be placed in another stay high where it will be dried for two minutes. Then it goes down to the foundry where the plates are cast for the press room. Then here to come down with me I'll be glad to show you. Fine, our story will be there in just a few minutes and we'd like to see it on the finished product. We've come now to the foundry which is right next to the large presses which you're printing the daily news today. You can hear all that noise in the background. That is standing right next to me. And we've got our mat down here to the foundry. What happens now? Here the mat is trimmed to size to fit the casting box. Alright, we've come over here now to where the mat is going to be trimmed and we'll watch this boy trim it. Got a great large knife coming down just over the edge of it. Why do you have to trim it in? It has to be a certain size to fit in your casting box.

I wish you could hear the sound of the trimming but of course it's impossible because of the overpowering sound of the presses. But I'll describe it to you briefly. It's cutting off just to maybe a half an inch off of each edge of the mat with this large knife coming down over the plate. It'll be ready and just a minute now why don't happen to it Ed? From the cutting table it goes over to another packing table where the certain spots are touched up to make sure there aren't no black spots in the paper. That's over here. Alright, we'll walk over here to where we're going to make sure that there are no spots in the paper. Over on this table here the final touch up on your mat is made. Make sure you get a good clean paper out. From here it is going in another roaster to be heated up for roughly 30 seconds. From there it goes over to the casting box inserted in the casting box and whatever number of casts that are required for that

particular runner made. Now after it's made into a cast then what happens? From the casting machine it comes onto a shaver where the plate is shaved down to a certain thickness which happens to be 441 thousandths. Then it is delivered to the press room. Finally it's going to be printed on the news print after it gets into the presses. Is that right? That is right. Now out of the presses comes the final finished product. Ed, what about this over here? How does that work? That's coming out of what is known as the fly. It comes down through your folder and then out into the fly which delivers it onto a conveyor which takes it over to your mailing machines. Now the presses are slowing down and one of them has already stopped at what's going on here. It might be a replay going on a page might have changed or stopping to put on the new plate or the run might be off. I see how long would it take on a replay if they had to. It depends on how many pages they have. If

it's one page you would leave minute and a half to two minutes and the time they receive the place of the time they're on the press. But while it's calmed down now I have a chance to tell you just a little bit about what we can see. The papers are coming off of the printer, off of the press, and as Ed told you going down into a conveyor. For the conveyor they go over to a bundling machine where they're packed into I suppose about 40 or 50 papers maybe fewer. But anyway the wires stretched around the bundle of papers moved back down out of the conveyor belt and down into the big hole. Now where does it go from going into the shoot down here into this big hole? From the mailing machine it goes on to your belt conveyor from the belt conveyor down to a loading platform where they're loaded in trucks for different parts of the city. While we finally got our paper published the story is on page three and we hope everybody reads it. We are now in the office of Mr. Everett Norlander managing

editor of the Chicago Daily News. Mr. Norlander why has your paper shown so much interest in the slum areas of the city? I doubt that we devoted any more space or given any more attention to the slums and we have to any other subject of equal importance. It's true that we went into this subject in a big way a couple of years ago we set up a staff of several reporters and some photographers to that particular story. They did nothing else for many weeks but we've operated like that on other big stories. We did something similar when we investigated the traffic courts here several years ago. In fact on that project we rented offices in the loop and the special staff used them as headquarters. You know newspaper reporters are always curious about things and we didn't want this special staff to be questioned in our own newsroom on what they were doing. What's the responsibility of the newspaper to the community? It's always seemed to me that our primary responsibility and maybe this is somewhat selfish but our primary responsibility isn't producing a paper every day that is clean, readable, lively, interesting and informative. I think we

succeed fairly well but then on the broader scale our responsibility is to try to make this city a better community in which to live and to work. We do this in many ways. For instance we do it by printing pictures and stories and how the city can be improved. We print pictures and stories showing how other cities have met similar problems. We proud and we pray. Mr. Norlander how does the daily news fulfill its obligations to Chicago? Well as I said we proud and we pray but to be specific let's take just one subject that of the endorsement of political candidates which we are getting into right now. It seems no longer possible for a citizen no matter how well informed to be able to learn enough about every candidate. So in advance of every primary and election we assign a staff to make that investigation. They inquire into the records the education the standing in the community of every candidate. It's a tremendous job but we think it's well worthwhile. Having obtained all this information we pass it on to our readers with our recommendations. In this way we think we are

fulfilling some of our responsibilities to our readers giving them the information on which they can cast their ballots more intelligently. Thank you very much Mr. Norlander.