I saw my opportunity: “Why don’t we go back to the paper and see if Mr. Swift has a few minutes to talk to you. He certainly had as much to do with this as Tandee and I did.”
I figured Swift wasn’t going to be happy about talking to a bunch of kids, so I didn’t call ahead. We walked back to the paper and bearded the bearded one on his glass-sided cage. He was poring over a stack of wire service stories looking for something wild and weird enough to make a front page headline.
“I’m busy. I told you to take care of these people,” he muttered as I waved Sanders and the kids in.
“Shiu said this would polish our image. Besides, they’ve got managing editor questions. You want me to tell them how this paper judges news worthiness?”
Teeth showing in a hairy smile, Swift told the kids clustered around his desk, “Welcome to the Capital Register & Press. It is our pleasure to have you here to observe a newspaper being made. Please feel free to ask me anything.”
A husky, dark-haired young woman standing in front got in the first question, a low, wicked curve that would have done justice to a Sam Donaldson or a Helen Thomas:
“How come you’ve turned the Register & Press into a tabloid scandal sheet? It used to be a serious paper and now it looks like something you’d buy at a supermarket checkout.”
Swift unfolded from his chair and towered over everybody in the room but Sanders. Looking like Charlton Heston getting ready to part the Dead Sea, he fixed the young woman with a glare.
“Scandal sheet? See here, my lady, you’ve got some strange ideas of what a real newspaper is. Maybe Professor Sanders here has told you that The New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor are what newspapers are supposed to be, but don’t you believe for a minute that they are the real standard in this business. And yes, I said business. You may think you’re studying to become professionals, but you’ll find out what newspapers need and pay for is craftsmen—people who know how to make a product that sells to readers and to advertisers.”
The girl wasn’t cowed: “Well, Mr. Swift, I understand that your reputation has gotten so bad you don’t have a chance to win the Pulitzer Prize even with the Schmid story—which may be the best expose of the year.”
“Pulitzer, is it?” Swift was getting red in the face. He turned to the shelf behind him and pulled down a thick book.
“Perhaps we should refer to history. Your teachers will tell you that Pulitzer’s World was the epitome of great journalism, but in point of fact it was as rowdy a piece of work as you’ll find anywhere.”
Swift opened the book to a marked page. “Now listen to what Joseph Pulitzer told the staff of the New York World at their first meeting: ‘Gentlemen, you realize that a change has taken place at the World. Heretofore you have all been living in the parlor and taking baths every day. Now I wish you to understand that in future you are all walking down the Bowery.’
“They were in a circulation war then, and Pulitzer was determined to win it. Those old papers were louder and more raucous than we ever thought of being, and they were ready to manufacture the news if the real thing wasn’t exciting enough for them. Sometimes they even fabricated pictures.
“Oh, yes, your big papers have become respectable and sanctimonious enough today, but look at their market positions. Most of them are monopolies and a lot of them even own their so-called television competition. Its when there is hand-to-hand combat on the news racks that newspapering challenges the clever.
“Now, you want to know why we pursued the governor? Because it was a good story… one that would make people say—what is it, Wartovsky?—‘Gee, whiz! You have heard of Joseph Medill Patterson? Creator of the largest circulation newspaper in America. He was asked what made the Daily News a success, and his answer was, ‘Hijinks in high places’. It works every time, right down to the Washington Post and Watergate.
“Perhaps we did do a service to the people of this state who elected that lout, but that wasn’t why we got into it. The First Amendment you Americans are so proud of doesn’t say the press is supposed to protect the public from its own blunders, even if that is what its authors intended. It does say the American press is to be free… and that means free to do whatever its proprietors want it to do.”
Swift subsided and sat down glumly. The kids, who had heard a somewhat different view of the high purposes of press freedom from their instructors, stared at the floor, none willing to ask another question that might provoke a diatribe. Sanders, for the first time that day, didn’t have an interpretation handy.
Recovering his cool, Swift looked up at me and said, “And now I think you ought to tour our state-of-the-art newsroom and publishing plant. Mr. Wartovsky, please show the group around the newsroom and s&e if someone in the shop can give them a rundown on the composing and printing facilities. Oh, and step back here for a moment when you can, Bob.”
I herded the group out and turned them over to the composing room boss, who was as enthusiastic about dropping everything and becoming a tour guide as your average NFL tackle would be serving high tea. I went back to Swift’s office.
“The next time you spring something like that on me you’ll be covering church dinners for the state page,” Swift growled when I came in. “I bloody well got the wind up, and if Shiu hears about it, he’ll have a shit fit.”
“Well, you certainly gave it to them with the bark on,” I said.
“It won’t happen again, old boy. Now, did you say you knew Sanders?”
“From a journalism school seminar on statehouse reporting at the university. He moderated and we had a couple of drinks after. He used to work back East and we traded some old-timer stories.”
“You can bet your life he worked in the East. I didn’t connect the name until I saw the face. Frank Sanders was the hottest snoop in New York twenty years ago, before some twit invented the term investigative journalism. He had the politicians in the city and Albany quaking and then he quit at the top of his game, saying he had enough of long hours and low pay.
“Now then, Wartovsky, what in the hell is he doing here?”
“Hell, how should I know? Teaching his kids. You think he has something else in mind?”
“I don’t know either. But I want you to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut about the executives and the management of this newspaper. That’s the rest of your assignment—and try to keep them out of the building. Take them to cover the state highway commission or something.”
I thought that over as I went to the back shop to retrieve Sanders and the kids. Why was Swift so nervous about a journalism professor?
Sanders took me aside after I introduced the kids to the newsroom and found a computer terminal they could try out.
“Bob, old buddy, what do you think of your new bosses?” he asked.
“What’s to think? They’re running the paper and we do it their way or check out. It’s kind of wild, but it sure isn’t as boring as it was when Morgan and Fargo ran the show. We got to calling it the ‘Register and Suppress’ toward the end.”
“D’ya know anything about Shiu? Or Swift?”
“Not much. Shiu doesn’t know much about the editorial side, but Swift sure does. He gets bizarre at times, but he knows news.”
“Oh, yes,” Sanders said. “Granville Swift is, or was, one of the hottest yellow editors in the world. When I worked back East, he already was a legend. He’s edited tabs in London, Sydney, and New York and raised circulation and hell everywhere he’s gone. I don’t know the whole story, but one of my old friends wrote me that Swift took on a Boston paper about six years ago that he couldn’t help, and it turned him into a kind of monomaniac. Ruined his marriage and his health. The story went around that he got burned out and was let go.