a“bunch of shitkicker papers,” he was proud of his position as a national political writer and the dues he had paid to win it. ‡ Nothing made him angrier than small-town newspapermen—“homers”—who came up to him during campaigns and told him that he was ignoring “local factors.” “God,” he said, “I remember this one homer in Columbus. I’ve worked in these jobs, you know, as a homer. I’ve been a city-side reporter, a statehouse reporter, I’ve done the whole bit—and I’ve worked for a bunch of obscure newspapers. Christ Almighty, they were obscure. And for some guy from Ohio who works for this goddam shitty newspaper to come up and tell me that I don’t understand the whole thing—I’ve been covering this campaign for about sixteen months—and this asshole comes up and tells me this after two weeks’ exposure—ooh, I was outraged. Got pretty testy in the saloon, I must say. Told him what I’d do with his fucking newspaper.”
So PWDS was not for homers or tyros. It was for the professionals’ professionals. More specifically, said Germond, sipping a Scotch and soda, the standard was this: Who are the men who cover an obscure Western governors’ conference in an off political year? “Everyone covers the national governors’ conferences,” said Germond, “that’s easy. You go out there and they just drop stories in your goddam lap. But you go out there and cover the Western governors, or the Southern governors in a year like ’67 or ’69, and if you can make a story out of that—if you can even convince your office they ought to pay your fare home—you’re a goddam genius.” Germond and Witcover had found fourteen men who passed this test. Not counting themselves, there were:
David Broder of the Washington
Post
Paul Hope of the Washington
Star
Robert Novak of the Chicago
Sun Times Syndicate
Warren Weaver of
The New York Times
Ted Knapp of Scripps-Howard
Bruce Biossat of the Newspaper Enterprise Association
Jim Dickenson of the
National Observer
Loye Miller of Knight Newspapers
Tom Ottenad of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Marty Nolan of the Boston
Globe
(who replaced James Doyle in the group when Doyle moved from the
Globe
to the Washington
Star
)
Pat Furgurson of the Baltimore
Sun
Jim Large of
The Wall Street Journal
These people, said Germond, rated membership because of what they did, not because of the organizations they represented. The rule was that no member could send a substitute to a dinner. It was an elite group of men who, by their own consensus, were the flame-keepers of political journalism—the heavies. “We took a couple of guys who we thought were pretty dumb,” said Germond, “but we brought ’em in because they were entitled by what they did.” No doubt there were some serious omissions—reporters like Johnny Apple of
The New York Times
, Alan Otten of
The Wall Street Journal
, Peter Lisagor, Jim Doyle, Harry Kelly of Hearst, and Jim Perry of the
National Observer
—who either were not congenial to the group or worked for papers already represented. But by and large this group was the elite’s idea of the elite. They did not consider the network correspondents to be serious political reporters, nor did they hold a high opinion of the wire-service men (except for Walter Mears) or of newsmagazine reporters (except for John Lindsay of
Newsweek
). But Lindsay could not be admitted because he would have got more out of the dinners than the rest—little pieces of color that the daily journalists couldn’t use. And Mears had to be excluded because, on the rare occasions when a not-for-attribution story emerged from one of the dinners, he would have put it on the wire and beaten everybody else. “Most of the wire-service reports generally reflect nothing about what is going on,” said Germond, “but Walter’s good enough so that he would
whip our ass off
. Walter and I are good friends and he was pissed and kept asking me whyhe couldn’t get
So PWDS was not for homers or tyros. It was for the professionals’ professionals. More specifically, said Germond, sipping a Scotch and soda, the standard was this: Who are the men who cover an obscure Western governors’ conference in an off political year? “Everyone covers the national governors’ conferences,” said Germond, “that’s easy. You go out there and they just drop stories in your goddam lap. But you go out there and cover the Western governors, or the Southern governors in a year like ’67 or ’69, and if you can make a story out of that—if you can even convince your office they ought to pay your fare home—you’re a goddam genius.” Germond and Witcover had found fourteen men who passed this test. Not counting themselves, there were:
David Broder of the Washington
Post
Paul Hope of the Washington
Star
Robert Novak of the Chicago
Sun Times Syndicate
Warren Weaver of
The New York Times
Ted Knapp of Scripps-Howard
Bruce Biossat of the Newspaper Enterprise Association
Jim Dickenson of the
National Observer
Loye Miller of Knight Newspapers
Tom Ottenad of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Marty Nolan of the Boston
Globe
(who replaced James Doyle in the group when Doyle moved from the
Globe
to the Washington
Star
)
Pat Furgurson of the Baltimore
Sun
Jim Large of
The Wall Street Journal
These people, said Germond, rated membership because of what they did, not because of the organizations they represented. The rule was that no member could send a substitute to a dinner. It was an elite group of men who, by their own consensus, were the flame-keepers of political journalism—the heavies. “We took a couple of guys who we thought were pretty dumb,” said Germond, “but we brought ’em in because they were entitled by what they did.” No doubt there were some serious omissions—reporters like Johnny Apple of
The New York Times
, Alan Otten of
The Wall Street Journal
, Peter Lisagor, Jim Doyle, Harry Kelly of Hearst, and Jim Perry of the
National Observer
—who either were not congenial to the group or worked for papers already represented. But by and large this group was the elite’s idea of the elite. They did not consider the network correspondents to be serious political reporters, nor did they hold a high opinion of the wire-service men (except for Walter Mears) or of newsmagazine reporters (except for John Lindsay of
Newsweek
). But Lindsay could not be admitted because he would have got more out of the dinners than the rest—little pieces of color that the daily journalists couldn’t use. And Mears had to be excluded because, on the rare occasions when a not-for-attribution story emerged from one of the dinners, he would have put it on the wire and beaten everybody else. “Most of the wire-service reports generally reflect nothing about what is going on,” said Germond, “but Walter’s good enough so that he would
whip our ass off
. Walter and I are good friends and he was pissed and kept asking me whyhe couldn’t get
Similar Books
