The Press: In Bay Front Park

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Any newspaperman will tell you that Fred W. Mizer, manager of Miami's radio station WQAM, missed the chance of a lifetime one night last week in Miami's Bay Front Park. When stumpy little Joe Zangara started shooting at President-elect Roosevelt. Mr. Mizer had the story—or at least the means of getting it instantly to the nation—right in his hand. No newshawk, he let the chance go by out of diplomacy or excitement.

Mr. Roosevelt finished his brief broadcast, handed the lapel microphone to the station manager. To fill in, Mr. Mizer began to describe the crowd scene when the eccentric little Italian stood on tip-toe to open fire. Though Mr. Mizer later declared he had signed off when the excitement began, Miami's famed Pressagent Steve Hannagan, who sweated with the Press to get the story out on the assumption that for publicity purposes any news is good news, said he heard the soothing voice of the announcer report: "There seems to be some excitement here in the crowd. But it's nothing, folks, it's nothing —probably just a little noise by photographers' flashes. . . ." Other listeners distinctly heard five shots and the screams of women.

Two hours later Manager Mizer retrieved some of his lost ground by broadcasting over a large CBS hookup an eyewitness account of the attack.

Chance also smiled that night on Rex Saffer, Associated Pressman. He was standing directly in front of Zangara who fired over Saffer's left shoulder, scorching his coat. At first Newshawk Saffer thought it was "some fool firing blank cartridges." Not until he saw Mayor Cermak drop did he realize what was happening. Then he wriggled out of the crowd, raced by Mr. Roosevelt who was calling out "I'm all right," and dove to a telephone under the park bandstand to send a flash.

By lingering in the park when most of the Press photographers had started ahead to the Roosevelt special train, 27-year-old Sammy Schulman, for 14 years an International News Photo cameraman, was rewarded with a startling action picture of Mayor Cermak a few seconds after he had been wounded. His picture of the bleeding Mayor (see cut) was also distributed through Acme because Acme carried the photograph in its plane to Manhattan. The picture approaches in sensational spontaneity the picture that alert William Warneke made for the oldtime Evening World of New York's Mayor Gaynor within a few seconds of his being shot in the neck aboard a steamer bound for Europe in 1910.

The nearest thing to a beat occurred when the New York Times was the first in print with a long-distance telephone interview with Heroine Lillian Johns Cross. The New York Journal rang through first but, being an evening sheet, did not use its interview until hours after the Times. Mrs. Cross was kept awake most of the night responding to other press queries.

Walter Winchell, New York Mirror colyumist, had just filed his "On Broadway" from the Miami Western Union office when a messenger dashed in with the news from the park. Winchell sprinted straight to the jail where he talked his way up to the cell block and eavesdropped on the sheriff's examination of Zangara. He wired the Mirror that night that Zangara "gave every indication of being crazy."