Lewis Lapham - Rookie Reporter

 

 

It's the autumn of 1957. I am 22 years old, and I have just come back to the United States from Cambridge University in England. I have my first job, which is as a cub reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. And I am sent to the Oakland City Hall press room. This is Oakland in the 1950s. This is before Mario Savio, before Haight-Ashbury, it is still the old world. The press room looks like something out of Front Page. Radios on the walls, barren desks, typewriters, Underwood upright typewriters of the kind that you still see in some of the movies of the 1930s. Everybody is wearing a hat. [chuckle] My tutor at Cambridge was C.S. Lewis and I am filled with poetic expectation. On driving across the Bay Bridge in the mornings, I memorize the Cantos of Ezra Pound. [laughter]

 

I'm a precious youth, [giggles] very out of tune with the press room, the Oakland City Hall. And my three mentors are Crowley of the Examiner, my own paper, Dougherty of the Chronicle, and Swann of the Call-Bulletin. These three gentlemen are in their 50s and they have reached the point in life when they all recline on couches lined against three of the walls. They never rise from their couch and they are cynical in the old sense of the word. And my first job as the cub in the morning is to produce a bottle of bourbon. [audience laughter] I have to arrive at 9 o’clock. Dougherty, Crowley, and Swann come in at 11:00. And on the desk, there has to be a bottle of Jim Beam. And I have to extort this from one of the city officials that inhabit the Oakland City Hall.

 

The Oakland City Hall. In those days it was not only the police department, it was also the courts and it was the mayor's office. Every official of any pretension to office was in the building. And the night before, Crowley or Dougherty or Swann would leave a small piece of paper on the desk with just a single name. And the name would be Milstein or Bethune or simply the Lady in Red. And I was to take the name and present it to the official. And this was supposed to strike terror in the heart of the official because if the judge or the cop didn't come across with the bourbon, Dougherty or Swann or somebody would publish a story in the paper that would leave him for dead.

 

If I wasn't given the bottle of bourbon, I had to buy it myself because no matter what, the bottle had to be on the table. Three times out of five the official would look at me and come across with the bourbon. And it was wonderful and it was all well understood and so forth. And that was my primary task. Once the bourbon was produced, I was then dispatched. The Examiner was the richest of the three papers in those days and we actually had a photographer and a radio car. The photographer's name was Seymour Snaer and Seymour was the original dirty old man. I mean, he was about five foot six, sharkskin suit, hand-painted tie, dark glasses, very oily hair and thought about nothing except women. It was the only thing that ever came into Seymour's mind.

 

And we would drive around Alameda and Contra Costa County listening to the police radio and try to get to the scenes of the crime before the local police arrived. And Seymour had a competition with a photographer at the Chronicle, which was the other big paper in the San Francisco Bay Area. His name was Ainsworth. And the question-- these were the days of the Police Gazette photograph. This is before Playboy magazine. Seymour had a Speed Graphic camera with which is one of those, big kind of cameras and a hat. And whenever went on a story that involved a woman, Seymour would try to get her to take her clothes off so he could photograph her and then compete with Ainsworth of the Chronicle as to who could collect the best portfolio. And Seymour was never squeamish about these things. I mean we would walk in.

 

I can remember once walking into a murder scene of the man, who was not yet dead [audience laughter] and we had arrived before the police. We happened to be very close by when the call came in on the radio and the girlfriend was in some degree of-- it wasn't clear how the man had died. He had four gunshot wounds. But nevertheless, whether she had shot him or he had shot himself or somebody who had left rather abruptly had shot him, none of this was clear. But Seymour was trying to get her to pose in a negligee standing over the dying man. And to my amazement he succeeded in this enterprise [chuckles] somewhat.

 

Some days later, we're driving around in our radio car. I've provided the bourbon. Everybody is calm back at the city hall and the word comes in from the office in San Francisco that a very prominent citizen of Oakland has been run over by a truck on Route 1 somewhere north of Marin County. And this is a man of 65 years old, a pillar of the community. Large mansion in Piedmont up in the Berkeley hills. And it's going to be an eight-column headline in the afternoon edition. But we have no photograph of him. So, the call comes in from San Francisco. Seymour and I are dispatched to get the photograph, also by the way to inform the widow that she is a widow. [audience laughter] And we drive up to this mansion in Piedmont, long, long wonderful gravel drive, huge house, fountains, marble.

 

And we get to the front door and I say, "Seymour, you know how to do these things. I mean I just got back here from Cambridge. I mean this is not my kind of thing. I'm a sensitive person and I don't want to have to do this." And he's back of the hand. I mean, I'm a fool and a kid from the East. And I've got to learn the business somehow and go in there and tell a lady that her husband's dead and get the photograph and don't give me a hard time. So, I walk around the house three or four times. I really did not want to do this. I ring the doorbell. The maid comes to the door. I explain that I'm from the Examiner and that I have very bad news. And the-- she ushers me into the living room, a very large living room, least as large as this bar, furnished with mirrors and expensive furniture.

 

The deceased is 64 or 65 years old. The woman that comes into the room is maybe 30. And is one of the most beautiful women I think I've ever seen in my entire life. [audience laughter] And I explained to her the situation. I said, "Your husband has been run over by a truck. And what we're asking for is a photograph because he's a very important person and we'd like to put his picture on page one of the Hearst newspaper tomorrow morning in San Francisco." "I understand what you mean," she says, and leaves. And she says, "I'll get you a picture."

 

Twenty minutes pass. She returns and she has changed into a nightgown much like one that you would see in an old Carole Lombard movie. I mean, it's got feathers and it's white satin. She's got a bottle of champagne and two glasses. And she says to me, "This is the happiest day of my life." [laughter] And she said, "We are going to fuck for three hours." [audience laughter] And I understood that I was a recently returned from London, Cambridge. And I understood that it was good manners to comfort the widow, which I did. [audience chuckles] And the three hours later I went out to the car. Seymour was asleep with his hat on the head of the wheel. And we drove away. And he said that I was somewhat slow coming back with a picture. I said that was true. And then he asked me what happened.

 

And I didn't have the heart to tell him. I couldn't say this to Seymour, and I tried not to. But eventually he wrung the story out of me and never spoke to me again. Because I explained that whoever had walked through the door, that was the way it was going to be. “It could have been you, Seymour” I said. He never forgave me for this. Meanwhile, back at the Oakland press room, the refinement in those days was every Friday afternoon, there was a showing of stag movies that were collected by the vice squad raids. [audience chuckles] And these are the old movies. This is before pornographic movies have become common on HBO. I mean, people are wearing blue socks and brown shoes. It's an old kind of film, but nevertheless, it was a big hit in the press room. And they put it up on the wall. We didn't have a screen, but we had a white wall. And the vice squad that provided this every once a month. The vice-captain also provided a woman who he was having an affair with, who was a nymphomaniac, who was married to another very prominent citizen of Oakland. And she would present herself on Dougherty's couch every Friday afternoon-- I mean once a month to again the favored officials. I was not eligible for this. I was too young. Also, I wasn't sufficiently sophisticated because although very beautiful, the woman only had one leg, which was-- I wasn't up to that at the 22. [laughter]

 

Finally, this is once a month on Fridays. And then one terrible day, the word comes in from the courts that the vice squad captain has been named as correspondent in a divorce proceeding brought by the husband of the one-legged woman who is now accusing the vice-captain of destroying their marriage and he is the nominee. There were many others that could have played the part, but it was the vice-captain whose name was in the court document. And the document came into the press room. And this is when I was inducted into the last and greatest mysteries of the American newspaper business because for the first and only time, I saw Dougherty, Crowley, and Swann actually get off their couch and shuffle toward their typewriters to write the editorial that would appear in the next day's paper Examiner and the Chronicle and the Call-Bulletin. And their words were as heavy as stones. "The moral fabric of Oakland has been torn to shreds. [audience laughter] Women are not safe in the streets. How can such things be?" On the magnificence of their hypocrisy was a lesson that I have never forgotten. [audience laughter] I mean, a few days later I was reassigned to San Francisco, but I had an insight into the American news media that has stayed with me lot of these many years. Thank you.