The Press: Little Caesar

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New York is the capital and crossroads of the world's press. No papers anywhere gather and print more straight news than the morning New York Times and Herald Tribune. The tabloid, comics-choked morning News has the largest daily circulation (2,007,797) of any newspaper. The conservative Sun and its afternoon feature-story rival, the World-Telegram, are commuters' specials. And there are half a dozen other papers not counting The Bronx News.

This vast daily fountain of print is a national press. But it is also a hometown press and as such, for nine long years, it had been full to bursting with news of its own kinetic, photogenic mayor, Fiorello Henry ("Butch") LaGuardia. Whether as fire buff, civic scold, uplifter, ambulance chaser, hemisphere-defense expert, official greeter, fashion critic or hometown booster, Butch always has been copy. And the press has been good to him. Few politicians have ever received the continuous campaign support that New York's newspapers have bestowed on their bumptious little dictator and fiery reformer.

The Mayor has not responded in kind. Suspicious of the press from the first, he nonetheless got along well enough with them for a while. Then Butch decided to abandon regular press conferences. The occupants of "Room 9" (City Hall pressroom) took that in stride and kept the copy rolling. He got mad at a reporter, tried and failed to persuade his publisher to fire him. Warier after that, Room Niners still kept up the coverage.

These painful episodes were neither continuous nor frequent, but they kept up. Last winter they became intolerable. In February LaGuardia told Room Niners that he wouldn't talk to them again until they learned how to quote him accurately. In the spring, overworked and editorially battered, he resigned as head of the Office of Civilian Defense. By then he showed unmistakable signs of being unable to distinguish between criticism of his public acts and his oversensitive self.

The result was a series of high-pitched outbursts. LaGuardia served notice on New Yorkers that hot water would have to be rationed to save fuel. When it was discovered that the public did not like it, the Mayor blew up, blamed the press for misinterpreting the story. Actually they had published the story exactly as he gave it out.

Later, when Room Niners asked the Mayor to comment on the gubernatorial campaign, he replied that he didn't propose to be quoted on that or any other matter until they had learned the ethics of their profession. The only newspaper folk he was interested in talking to, he said, were sportswriters, music critics, and women's page people.