The Press: Man on the Beat

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's veteran Federal Building reporter, Ray A. (for Archibald) Webster once took aggressive pity on an underpaid reporter from an opposition paper. "Listen, you," Webster gruffly told him, "the Star is going to have to raise you to $50 a week or I'll scoop you every day—and you tell your managing editor that." The Starman meekly passed on the warning and was speedily raised to $50 a week to keep Webster from carrying out his threat. There was no doubt that he could carry it out. For most of the 40 years he has covered the federal beat for the city staff of the PD, big (250 Ibs., 6 ft. 4 in.), jovial Ray Webster ("You'll never get a story until you show some sources you can drink more than they can") has been undisputed dean of the "beat men," a vanishing breed of U.S. newsmen who are more at home in the federal and county buildings and city halls than the public officials they cover.

Last week in St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch celebrated the retirement of Ray Webster, 65, with a special, four-page newspaper, Webster Good Times ("Published Once—and That's Enough"), which regretfully headlined: SCOOPS WILL

BE SCARCER AS LAST OF OLD MASTERS PREPARES TO TAKE IT EASY.

Saloon Expense Account. Reporter Webster seldom took it easy on his beat, telephoned in to rewritemen tips and stories that helped the crusading P-D break scores of exclusives on everything from protection rackets and gambling to a series on corruption on the federal bench that won a Pulitzer Prize. Many of his sources were cultivated after hours in a bar across the street from the Federal Building, where Webster was the only P-D reporter to have a special "saloon expense account." His expense account also included other unorthodox items. Once he bought an overcoat to go to Indianapolis to cover a crime story. When other reporters refused to believe that he had charged the coat to the PD, Webster told them stiffly: "If you're going to act like an office boy, you'll be treated like an office boy and you'll stay cold. I happen to be a Post-Dispatch reporter and I intend to act like one—a warm one." (The paper paid.)

His prodigious memory stored up more facts than the federal records. One judge so respected Webster's accuracy that he fell into the habit of delivering oral opinions, using Webster's report of them as the written opinion. Once, in court, while covering the arraignment before a federal commissioner of a man charged with stealing, Webster decided that the evidence had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment (illegal search and seizure). Webster took over as the man's lawyer and got him freed.