BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:JOURNALISM

for Neil Hickey

NEW YORK NEWSPAPERS IN THE 1920s


The newspapers, the Journal and American, later
combined , were dedicated to ”noise in the news”
and had an editorial view of the world from
inside a bedroom, or at the rail of a police desk
at night. These tales were printed in newspapers
that practiced bribery, extortion, calumny, also
known as slander, and two kinds of  lies., bald-
faced and by omission. Anybody on the staff
who performed an act without malice was 
regarded as a dreadful amateur. There was
great confusion in the office, for sometimes
the sins being committed at typewriters were
greater than the ones being written about. 
There was no situation so bad that a fresh
edition  of the morning American or evening
Journal couldn’t make it worse. Yet the working
conditions were the best in the history of the
business, for nobody died at an early age of
the worse of maladies, seriousness.


Jimmy Breslin. A Life of Damon Runyon (NY:
Ticknor & Fields, 1991)

BRENDA STARR --REPORTER
Dalia Messick had ambitions to create a comic strip from her early days; she submitted her first strip, Weegee, in the mid-1920s, when she was just out of high school.[3] After studying at The Art Institute of Chicago, she got a job designing greeting cards.[4] During the 1930s, Messick submitted three more comic strips—Peg and Pudy and Streamline Babies were about "Depression-era heroines born ahead of their time, working girls come to the big city to earn their living", while Mimi the Mermaid explored a fantasy theme. Feeling that editors were prejudiced against female cartoonists, Dalia signed these strips with a more ambiguous first name, "Dale". Still, these strips were each rejected.[3]

In 1940, Messick created a new heroine—a "girl 
bandit" named Brenda Starr—whose looks were modeled 
on the film star Rita Hayworth, and named after a 
popular debutante, Brenda Frazier.[5] She submitted 
the new strip to the Chicago Tribune-New York News 
syndicate, but the syndicate chief, Joseph Medill 
Patterson, "had tried a woman cartoonist once... 
and wanted no more of them." Patterson's assistant, 
Mollie Slott—later the vice president of the 
syndicate—saw the discarded samples, and encouraged 
Messick to make Brenda a reporter. Patterson accepted 
the strip, but ran it in the Chicago Tribune's Sunday 
comic book supplement, rather than the daily paper. 
He refused to run it in his other paper, the New 
York Daily News, which finally carried Brenda Starr 
in 1948, two years after Patterson's death.[3] After 
the strip was established, other instances of resistance 
were reported. "Whenever Ms. Messick drew in cleavage 
or a navel, the syndicate would erase it. She was 
once banned in Boston after showing Brenda smoking 
a polka dot cigar."[6]

from Wikipedia

DOROTHY KILGALLEN ON JACK RUBY

"I'd like to know how in a big, smart town
like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby -owner of
a strip tease honky tonk - can stroll in and
out of police headquarters as if it was a health
club at a time when a small army of law enforcers
is keeping a 'high security guard' on Oswald.
Security! What a word for it."

Mark Shaw. The Reporter Who Knew Too Much.
(Franklin Tennessee: Post Hill Press, 2016)

REED WHITTEMORE AS TELEVISION CRITIC

A television set sits at my left hand a window
at my right -- which shall I look at and out?
The TV,obviously, I am paid munificently by this
noble rag* to watch the tube and its vision of
life, not the yellowing leaves and the blue sky.
Nature's programs change slowly, except for
occasional storms they offer no challenge to
the journalistic mind. And nature's art is
excessively subtle; it knows not the world
bludgeons. No, the journalist must stick with
his tube -- and of course his newspapers."

* The New Republic

Reed Whittemore. The Poet as Journalist
(Washington, D.C.: The New Republic Books,
1976)

ON MEN, WOMEN, & JOURNALISM

“The journalist who spoke at the vocational event was a woman sportswriter for the

Los Angeles Times. She was very charming, and she mentioned in the course of her talk that there were very few women in the newspaper

Business. As I listened to her, I suddenly realized that I desperately wanted to be a journalist and that being a journalist was probably a good way to meet men.”

Nora Ephron. “Journalism: A Love Story” in I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections (NY:’ Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

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ABOUT THE  1932 MOVIE—20,000 YEARS IN SING SING ,

STARRING SPENCER TRACY AND BETTE DAVIS

“It was very unusual to see banner headlines from real newspapers l

ike The New York Times and The New York Herald-Tribune. Perhaps

the producers wanted to add a documentary-like realism to the story.

Most movie screaming headlines from that era were from fictitious

newspapers. For example, the favorite paper on the Perry Mason

series was The Los Angeles Chronicle, a paper that did not exist.

IdmB  Trivia

*THE MOST FAMOUS NEWSPAPERMAN ON TELEVISION?

Actor Ed Asner, who died in August 2021, was
well-known for portraying the newspaperman
Lou Grant. Ed Asner, in fact, was the first
tv star to win Emmys for playing the same
character in both a comedy and drama series.
  In his obituary, written by Anita Gates (the
New York Times, August 30,2021), Ms. Gates
noted that ” ‘Lou Grant’ (1977-82) itself was
an usual case, a drama series developed around
a sitcom character.In the show, Mr. Grant
returned to his first love, editing a big-city
newspaper, and the scripts tackled serious issues
that included in the first season alone, domestic
abuse, gang rivalries, neo-Nazi groups, nursing
home scandals and cults.”
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ALL RIGHT–MAYBE CLARK KENT WAS THE MOST FAMOUS
TV NEWSPAPER REPORTER

Kent, Clark Joseph
Award winning journalist and novelist. Clark Kent
was born in Smallville, Kansas, where he grew up o
n his family’s farm. He played football in high
school (Man of Steel miniseries #1), Following
his graduation from high school, Kent wandered
the world for a while, but finally attended Metropolis

University (World of Metropolis #2). He became [briefly]
the protégé of world-famous journalist: Simone D’neige,
in Paris.Kent’s first journalism job was with the
Daily Planet, where he had the honor of getting the
first full length story on Superman. He has a
reputation for getting many of the stories about
Superman.


Steve Younis. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF .https://www.supermanhomepage

.com/comics/ who/who-intro.php?topic=kent-clark

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