Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at The Wall Street Journal

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, ...