CHAPTER 5Newsroom Apprentice
HOME FROM THE army and awaiting my return to college, I went looking for any kind of work at a newspaper. At the New York Herald Tribune, then at 230 West Forty-First Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, I was interviewed in a reception area adjacent to the elevators by Florence Pyewell, then secretary to the city editor. She was in charge of the copyboys, and it was as a copyboy that she hired me. The salary was sixteen dollars a week.
The Herald Tribune fifth-floor city room was, to me, an intoxicating place, some of the reporters and editors like characters out of central casting. As I carried copy, take by take, or page by page, from reporters’ typewriters to the city desk, fetched coffee and sandwiches, ...
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