The Press: What's News?

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New York City newspapers have always considered district reporters necessary and important. Stationed in grubby "shacks" near police stations, the district men cover anything from a murder to a treed cat, phone in the facts to rewrite men. "The foundations of good coverage are laid in the staff of district reporters, who never get bylines or much notice, but who have a lot of friends among the police." So wrote Herald Tribune City Editor Joseph Herzberg last year in his book on the Trib (Late City Edition).

Last week Joe Herzberg seemed to have changed his mind. He called in seven of his ten district reporters and fired them.

The district man, he told them, was obsolete. The Trib was changing its ideas about what was news. It thought its readers were no longer so interested in murders, explosions and suicides as they had been in the turbulent '20s and '30s. A radio car could cover whatever stories of that type the Trib wanted.