"Love, Drama, Crime . . ."

A crowd of 200 stood around the monument in Manhattan's Columbus Circle, waiting for the Columbus Day ceremonies to begin. Just as someone was about to start the speechmaking, shots rang out a few blocks away. Reporters and cameramen raced toward the sound. They found a badly wounded holdupman who had tried to rob a store; an hysterical girl who had helped him; a dozen policemen. . . .

Long before the ambulances arrived, Photographer William Eckenberg of the New York Times was scuttling back to his office with what he knew was a picture editor's dream. One of his plates showed the wounded gunman seated on the pavement, the girl clasping his head to her shoulder, the alert hands of policemen and detectives haloing the couple's heads. Police dragged the pair apart before other photographers penetrated the crowd.

There, surely, was a newspicture of the month; but not for the august Times, which printed a stodgy shot of the Columbus Circle speechmakers. Through its .Wide World syndicate the Times offered exclusive morning paper rights to the print, sold it to the tabloid Daily News for $30. Evening rights went to Hearst's Jour nal which five-columned it beneath the caption: "The Camera Sees Love. Drama. Crime, Tragedy and Probable Death"

How did Photographer Eckenberg get his scoop? The Times said he simply got there first from Columbus Circle. But every other cameraman on the job told his editor another story: that lucky Eckenberg was late on his way to the Circle, was passing the store just as the shooting occurred.

In its nosing for "Love, Drama, Crime" copy the gaudy Journal last fortnight outdistanced other papers of its type with a front-page series whooping up next month's trial of Torch-Singer Libby Holman for the murder of her husband Smith Reynolds, tobacco scion. The Journal sent its correspondent to Winston-Salem, N. C. to interview everyone in the case, accompanied his reports with elaborate picture layouts under such sympathetic headlines as: FACTS HELP LIBBY'S DEFENSE. PROSECUTOR LACKS LIBBY MOTIVE, CLAIM LIBBY 'EXONERATED' BY SECRET AUTOPSY.

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