City Room Prophet

Few readers of the New York Times ever heard of David Joseph. The names of Bob Lee, Charles Marsden and Bill Wren mean nothing to readers of the Chicago Tribune, Boston Transcript and San

Francisco Examiner. They are all city editors, as important on their newspapers as first mates on ships -- and as anonymous. Yet many and many a newsreader who never heard of his own paper's city editor, knows about Stanley Walker. In six years as city editor of the New York Herald Tribune youthful Stanley Walker has be come something of a legend. He has escaped the anonymity of desk work often enough to produce articles for Harper's, American Mercury, Forum and The New Yorker, a best-selling book (The Night Club Era ) and to pose for a full-page testimonial for Gruen watches in the Satevepost. He is reputed one of the ablest news executives in the land, although he will be only 36 this week. Last week he established himself as a prophet of his profession with a new book. City Editor.* City Editor is salty, rambling shoptalk and third-highball-philosophy of what the author calls "the greatest business on earth.'' Says he: "The business . . . calls for the best. Sometimes it mistreats its best, starves them, and then throws them into the ashcan. More often it deals with infinite justice and consideration. . . . The job of reporter has heartwarming compensations. Sometimes it pays a living wage. Sometimes it is 'a stepping stone toward better things.' Again it is a satisfying career in itself." Many a youngster wondering whether or not to "take up journalism" will read Stanley Walker's book and decide against it. For the ambitious cub who gets on a paper and stays there. Author Walker pictures a city-room postgraduate course: "It is like attending some fabulous university where the humanities are studied to the accompaniment of ribald laughter, the incessant splutter of an orchestra of typewriters, the occasional clinking of glasses, and the gyrations of some of the strangest performers ever set loose by a capricious and allegedly all-wise Creator. . . . And he is being paid--not much, but something--for attending this place which is part seminary, part abattoir. . . . Every office needs at least one man who, though a competent workman, understands that existence is primarily a droll affair, with the horselaugh predominant not only to the grave, but after the will is read. For purposes of keeping up morale and teaching the cardinal truths of life, any large paper could afford to hire, at princely salary, such a man as Gene Fowler . . . or Joel Sayre, a wandering behemoth who went to Hollywood. ... As balloon-prickers, daubers of stuffed shirts and philosophical pranksters such men are worth any dozen efficiency experts. . . ." After he has learned the million-and-one do's and don't's of technique, and "not to ask the city editor how to get to Canarsie." and that "Women, wampum and wrong-doing are always news," the reporter may, after several years, earn nearly $50 a week. A small group who have "legs, wind, imagination, knowledge, a sleepless curiosity, and can write in the blunt Saxon tongue" will climb to the top. City Editor Walker pays a rare tribute to "The Man With the Green Eyeshade" --the underpaid, unappreciated copyreader, who cuts the purple prose out of the reporter's copy, corrects his spelling, keeps the paper out of libel suits. He salutes the energy and courage of photographers, deplores the sneering superiority of reporters who occasionally have declined to eat at the same table with the unpolished cameramen. Sports writers he divides into two schools--"Gee Whizz!'' and "Aw Nuts!''--and clearly prefers the latter. Toward press agents, City Editor Walker is tolerant: "Some are so useful and companionable that all newspaper men welcome them and their messages; others are such chiselers and bores that reporters and editors take fright at their approach." Edward L. Bernays, nephew of "that Daniel Boone of the canebrakes of the libido, Dr. Sigmund Freud," is more important in Stanley Walker's estimation than the Rockefellers' Ivy Lee, whom he considers a hindrance to the Press. With elaborate codes of ethics pompously drafted and adopted by press conventions, City Editor Walker has little patience. "Newspaper men's codes are under their hats, not in the rule books. There are two commandments: do not betray a confidence, and do not knife a comrade." On female reporters, Stanley Walker is eloquent. He recites the familiar blanket indictments, "some outrageously prejudiced and others based on sad experience": "They are slovenly in their habits of mind. . . . They won't look up names and facts. The observant editor feels that if they were housewives, the dishes would still be in the sink. They are impolite, screaming for 'service' from overworked telephone operators, the help in the library and the office boys. . . . They depend, even the good ones, too much on their male colleagues to help them over the tough places in their assignments. They accept these courtesies as a matter of course, then, without thanking the man, double cross him as often as possible. . . . They become hoydenish, and worse. . . . They are uniformly devoid of humor. . . . They are masters of dangerous office intrigue. ... To all of these grave charges the newspaper women can plead 'Not Guilty! That is, not always guilty.'" But City Editor Walker insists: "It is still easy for a newspaper to get along without them." Of his own job, the city editor reflects: " 'You meet such interesting people.' Well, except for the bores and the swine, who sometimes hold a clear 51% of the voting stock, that's probably as true as anything can be in a world of yes and no, where even the Ten Commandments may be questioned on the grounds of public policy."

*Stokes ($3).

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