The Press: Legmen

On the first floor of Manhattan's dingy West Side Court, busiest in the city, is a dungeon-like room with high dirty windows. A long table, two incredibly battered desks, a telephone booth and a chipped enamel cuspidor make up its office equipment. Around the walls are photographs of unidentified prizefighters and film actresses, a framed obituary of Variety's late Slangster Jack Conway, a yellowed clipping of a newspaper sermon entitled "Success," a picture of a nude dancer with a large ostrich-plume fan, inscribed: ''To the reporters of West Side Court, gratefully and sincerely, Sally Rand."

At one of the desks, which lacks two drawers, sits a dreary-looking little man with keen eyes, thinning blond hair, deep lines around his mouth. He wears a grey alpaca office coat. He is Arthur Francis Corrigan, 44, "boss" of the press room and dean of legmen in The Times Square and Hell's Kitchen districts. Last week the press room boys gave "the boss" a party because he had just rounded out 20 years on the job, ten of them at West Side Court. A magistrate was toastmaster, two others made speeches. Six deputy district attorneys, many a police inspector, dozens of newshawks made up the 80 guests.

Reporter Corrigan works for no newspaper, yet New York City's dailies could hardly get along without him. He is a district man for City News Association, which, covers Manhattan and The Bronx (pop.: 3,170,000) exactly as the Associated Press covers the world. He and 60 others like him keep 24-hour watch over every police station, every court, every jail, every hospital, every morgue and every administrative office in the two boroughs. Whenever and wherever news breaks City Newsmen are usually the first to spot it. They tell their office and their office tells the newspapers in some 75,000 words a day. Thus, when the Times reports that a woman's body was fished out of the East River, or that an out-of-town buyer was killed in a taxi smash, or that three subway beggars got 30 days, it means in most cases that City News supplied the facts to the Times.

Like most City News legmen, "Boss"' Corrigan, who started as an office boy, rarely wrote a story in his 20 years. He gathers his data from the complaint room, from the little Press table in the court room, from innumerable policemen, lawyers, court attendants, judges of his acquaintance. He makes copious notes, descends to his dungeon desk and telephones his office. Far downtown near Park Row one of four lightning-fast rewrite men takes Reporter Corrigan's tale, whips it into a precise, minutely detailed, colorless but accurate story. Page by page it is teletyped to the newspaper offices where again it is rewritten, whooped up, whittled down or thrown on the floor.