The Gutenberg Boys

Into Chicago swarmed the biggest army of newsmen that ever surrounded any event anywhere. By the time all of the reporters, editors and background absorbers had shoved their way into place, their number would total some 4,000, roughly two newsmen for every delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Biggest reason for the record: TV and radio, whose electronic battalions outnumber other newsmen ("The Gutenberg boys," one TV producer calls them) almost two to one.

But despite the fact that this year's national political conventions are geared for TV, the Gutenberg boys were themselves more numerous than ever, and were sure to top the record-breaking flood of 19,664,472 words that poured through Western Union wires from both conventions in 1952. Not only were many small-city dailies and weeklies covering a convention for the first time, but press associations and major papers beefed up their staffs (and more brass went along for the show). Some staffs, like the 100-man word-and-picture teams assigned by the Associated Press and the United Press, went on the job with intricate battle orders and (for photographers and messengers) identifying armbands to avoid confusion. As usual, the biggest staff representing a single daily was assigned by the New York Times,* whose 19 men no doubt would file more words than any other newspaper's corps.

Map for Sunday Drivers. The expanded newspaper coverage is largely an unintended product of TV, which acts as a spur to competition. Because it whets reader interest in the conventions, TV is also serving in effect as a commercial for the printed word. Said Carroll Linkins, who has been one of Western Union's press shepherds at the national conventions since 1936: "If you see an event on TV, you want to read an expert to see if he saw what you did."

Newspapers also needed bigger staffs to meet their readers' need for advance guidance on TV's vast convention operations. Edwin A. Lahey, Washington bureau chief of the Knight papers, sold his editors on doing a daily piece on what TV would show that evening. "It's like putting a map in a Saturday paper to help you take a Sunday drive," he explained.

Keeping the Inside Track. Pad-and-pencil reporters had to admit that the first major news breaks of the preconvention week went to TV. Adlai Stevenson's support of a strong desegregation plank reached the public first on film on Newscaster John Daly's ABC show in an exclusive interview. Harry Truman's endorsement of Governor Averell Harriman was anything but exclusive; it came before a jammed ballroom of 800--probably the biggest press conference in history. But TViewers saw it as it happened.

Yet, on the basis of convention history, the Gutenberg boys thought they would manage to keep the inside track. Said U.P. General News Manager Earl Johnson: "After almost every convention, you can put your finger on one development that foretold the final result. The development can be weeks before the delegates assemble or in an obscure room during convention week. Almost never does it happen before the TV cameras. The key to good convention coverage is to move in early with an experienced staff and canvass scores of sources day and night.''

* The Times will poach on the electronic preserve by using a TV circuit to send a daily ten-page, high-speed facsimile edition (circ. 25,000) to the Republican Convention in time for breakfast in San Francisco.

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