The Press: Bums' Rush

The pampered paladins of the newspaper business are the sportswriters who freeload Florida sun and Kentucky dew while their less glamorous associates are slaving back home over typewriters and copy desk rim. Thus it was with a small apologetic note about their "pretty good life" that the New York Herald Tribune's Red Smith reported a wave of indignation among his colleagues last week. New York sportswriters, wrote Smith in his syndicated column, are getting the Bums' rush from their longtime friends and hosts, the Los Angeles Dodgers, last year the Dodgers of Brooklyn.

"The deteriorating press relations of the Dodgers," said Red Smith, "have been the liveliest topic of conversation in the training camps this spring. To put it simply, at least some of the Dodger executive family are assiduously courting the California press, a wise policy, and wish the New York writers would get lost, which is stupid. They feel they no longer need the New York press, and have gone out of their way to make this clear."

One clear sign of the new order, Columnist Smith noted at the Dodgers' camp at Vero Beach. Fla., was "the impounding" by club officials of Manhattan newspapers that carried stories critical of the Dodgers, "lest the Los Angeles contingent be contaminated." Other "small reprisals": the Dodgers' announcement that their plane would take only California sportswriters to citrus-circuit exhibition games; the "eviction" of New York newsmen from sleeping quarters at Dodgertown; timing of press releases, which in the case of a spring-training automobile accident involving Duke Snider and two teammates were held up to favor Western dailies' later deadlines. The Associated Press was so miffed at how the Dodger management broke the accident story that it threatened to withdraw its correspondent, who, as Red Smith pointed out, serves papers in California as well as New York.

While Los Angeles and San Francisco dailies are splashing news of the Dodgers and San Francisco's Giants, New York newspapers had not decided last week whether old loyalty to the westering prodigals will be strong enough to warrant staff coverage of West Coast games beyond the first weeks of the season.