Last week's look at Bob Greene's book, Late Edition, about having been a copy boy at a Midwestern newspaper, brought back a lot of memories. I, too, was a copy boy for an Ohio paper and can up Greene by one. Before employment by the Cleveland Press, I had delivered papers for arch-rival Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Being a paper boy carried with it a variety of responsibilities. First, you had to get up at 5 a.m., meet the circulation man (a wagon was needed on Sundays), then deliver the papers making certain they were folded properly so that throws could rival the deadly accuracy of Cleveland Indians shortstop Billy Knickerbocker. Another responsibility involved Saturday payments from customers, most of them hard-working people who were as hooked on their paper as Fourth Corner folks today on coffee. An occasional few had poor memories and found it difficult to believe they had not paid in, say, six weeks. I learned a great deal observing and interacting with people in those days and how to deal with them both as a paper boy and as a caddy at Westwood Country Club in nearby Rocky River.
My entry to the Cleveland Press was by way of graduation from Ohio University with a degree in journalism aided by some lobbying by the newspaper's film critic, Omar ("Bud") Ranney. Ranney was a Plain Dealer customer of mine who went to bat for me, perhaps impressed by an arm that could hit his doorstep most of the time.
The Press's hiring policy was unusual. While just about every other paper took on journalism school grads, then immediately assigned them to beats or writing obituaries, the Press had a quite different approach. Possessed of a remarkable sense of public service initiated by editor Louis Seltzer and associate editor Norman Shaw, the Press had lesser duties in mind for new hires. We became copy boys whose main function was running triple-spaced copy from locations like the city desk to the copy desk. We were summoned by one of two shouts: "Copy" or "Boy." Shortly after I started work, the paper hired its first black copy boy and the shouts were reduced by one. Hampton McKinney, son of a minister, was not only the first black copy boy, he was the first black editorial employee on the city's liberal newspaper in a community that included a large black population. That's the way things were then.
Promotion for copy boys took roughly six months as we became imbued with a sense of public relations. As things turned out, the Press experience was a defining experience for me. One of our major functions was answering the phone during regular working hours plus the 4 p.m. to midnight shift and the other from midnight to 8 a.m. In those days in the Forest City, the byword when barroom discussions reached argumentative proportions was: "Call the Press" The questions ranged from sports trivia to how many windows there were in the Terminal Tower Building. One copy boy lost his job for not displaying a proper attitude when asked a question about the Bible.
Early in 1950 there were a dozen copy boys and girls (Louise Nash, a member of the highly social Severance family of Cleveland, was the lone female) and we were to news gatherers what production assistants are to TV news directors today. Our gofer duties were varied, included the entire editorial floor, and enabled us to gain valuable overviews of departments. It was a way of connecting with personnel and staking claims on those areas of journalism that held greatest interest for us. In those days, it was of great importance to make the right decision since it was very common for personnel at major newspapers to become pigeon-holed for 10 or 20 years or even an entire career.
Editor Louis Seltzer was a balding and dapper little guy weighing, maybe, 125 lbs. on a 5'4" frame. His immaculate tailoring was augmented by huge, colorful silk foulards that billowed from breast pockets that appeared to be extra large. In the event your eyes somehow missed Seltzer, your nose always knew when he was nearby; he was never without seemingly massive doses of highly pungent cologne. I was once given a nickel by Louie (he was "Louie" to everyone) who asked me to bring him a candy bar from a machine located at the rear of the newsroom. When I returned, the editor had disappeared, but by following his scent I tracked him to the print shop on the floor below. Seltzer's wardrobe was so splendid that one of the clotheshorses of the entire Cleveland Press Building was an elevator man. He was the same size as the editor who passed along his clothes well before they were worn out.
One of the astonishing things about Seltzer was that he was so good he was named city editor at age 19 having never finished seventh grade. His idea of a productive way to find out about conditions in the county jail was to get arrested, then report from within. Seltzer became the self-appointed conscious of a city he loved. He spent much of his time in the news room (copy desk inhabitants often fired ping pong ball guns at the approaching editor) and it was in the newsroom that he wrote editorials. His office was open to just about everyone--even street people from whom he sometimes got story tips.
Copy boys often were the first to know because the entire floor was their domain and unusual stories about staffers were red meat. As drama critic, George Davis had acquired a lot of years and a little eccentricity. Well into his 70s, Davis' nocturnal routine was climaxed while seated at his trusty Underwood and accompanied by at least a few drinks normally consumed sans shoes. A tidy person and a firm believer in first things first, he always planted a trail of newspaper pages upon returning from the theater. The trail led to a relatively convenient men's room. Old-fashioned in his dress (sport coats were inclined to have belts in the back), the critic favored buttons over zippers.
One evening while making a theatrical evaluation, Davis' kidneys again required attention and he took the paper trail for what turned out to be an extended period. A copy boy reported the next day that Davis, upon re-entering the newsroom, was having trouble walking and was bent over. "I can't figure this out," complained the critic. "I can't stand up, yet I don't feel any pain."
An examination of Davis revealed he buttoned his vest to his fly.
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Next Week: More Copy Boy Stories