Night Shift

Asked the Atlanta Constitution's Editor Ralph McGill: "Why did he have to do it Saturday night?" For newspapermen, President Truman could hardly have picked a worse time to announce he would not run again (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Many dailies had only the usual weekend skeleton crews on hand to handle one of the biggest political stories of the year, and their presses had already rolled off a big chunk of their fat Sunday editions when the big news came through. Most had been decoyed into a false security by an advance text of Truman's speech sent out at 11 a.m. which said not a word about his intentions. Nevertheless, when he news came through at 10:58 by radio, ront pages were torn up so fast that many Dapers were on the streets with the news vithin half an hour.

No one was better prepared for the unexpected than the New York Times. For its two-page summary of the "News of the Week in Review," which usually closes at 7 p.m., Sunday Editor Markel had .aken no chances. He had ordered four different leads written for the section (will run, won't run, etc.). When the speech came through, staffers quickly dropped in he right heads and lead, caught two-birds of the Sunday press run with a complete story on the Truman decision.

In Portland, an Oregon Journal photographer excitedly ran eight blocks to the Civic Auditorium where Margaret Truman was about to start a concert. Panting, he momentously told her the news. She sweetly replied that she had known it. In Chicago, the Sun-Times spread across its centerfold two pages of pictures of Truman from cradle to Jefferson-Jackson banquet. Many a paper, -e.g., the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had taken a chance and gone to press with stories based on the advance text (PRESIDENT DOES NOT INDICATE PLANS), and shifted to a new banner and the big news before their press run was finished.

In rounding up man-in-the-street reactions, as many papers did, none got a weirder assortment than the New York Daily News. It picked some names from the phone book, then decided to "chase around to barrooms, nightclubs and restaurants where most of the people were." Among those quoted in the first News survey: two all-night restaurant proprietors, the owner of a nightclub, Jimmy Durante, a disk jockey and Sammy Fuchs, the unofficial "mayor" of the Bowery.

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