Ring-Around-The-Rosy

When eight men were burned to death in a cheap West Side Chicago hotel last April 6, firemen and a coroner's jury said it was an unfortunate accident. But around the city room of the Hearst Herald & Examiner, reporters told each other there was something funny about that fire.* When they had nothing more pressing to do, they hung around the neighborhood, asked questions. Last week the Herex, which has hung many a ring-around-the-rosy scoop on its dignified morning competitor, the Tribune, blazed forth with exclusive "confessions" from two poolroom loungers, Frank Kolesiak and Emil Guerrieri, that they started the fire because they were "insulted" by the janitor.

Like Murderer Robert Irwin, who telephoned the Herex last year to confess the killing of Manhattan Model Veronica Gedeon, Suspects Kolesiak and Guerrieri got no chance to talk to anyone, even Chicago police, until their statements had been liberally smeared over the newly tabloid pages of the Herex. Staff men spirited them from one hotel room to another, grilled them with the help of a State fire marshal assigned by Governor Horner. Suspect Guerrieri posed for the Herex front page tipping an empty gasoline can over an old towel, to show "How It Was Done." While the Tribune frantically pursued Governor Horner across the State by telephone, the Herex strung out its scoop for two long days, finally delivered its "prisoners" to State's Attorney Courtney's office on the third. Immediately, Kolesiak repudiated his Herex "confession," produced a witness to prove he was in a trolley car accident when the fire broke out. But most newsmen agreed the Herex had added another notable knot to a string of dizzy scoops.

* In New York last week Hearstmen worried about another fire which burned 1,500 tons of paper in the building where the Journal & American is published. Rewrite men stuck to their desks on the sixth floor, wrote the story with wet handkerchiefs dangling over their eyes to keep out the smoke.

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