Before I went into the army after graduate school, I was certain that I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. After two years of service at a regional army headquarters in Chicago, I wondered if I should look at other opportunities. For one thing, newspapers did not pay very well for beginners. A half-year before I was due out, my father had emergency major surgery, which effectively ended his full-time work. I expected to help support my parents.
About three months before my discharge date, I was asked if I wanted to stay in the army. My answer was negative, if not profanely so. A week later, I was told that I had an appointment with a “Mr. Brown” the next morning. “Who he?” I asked. “He will tell you, if he thinks you need to know.” “Mr. Brown” represented a civilian federal agency that, even after 50 years, I will not name. That agency was looking for recruits. Would I be interested? If so, they would send me back to graduate school and to language school and then, he declined to say what would happen. At his direction, I took a battery of tests, which I must have passed. The pay, when we finally came to that, was even less than the army was paying me. I explained my obligation to my parents and declined. “Memorize this telephone number and call me if you change your mind,” and we parted. I have forgotten the number.
The very next week, the precinct captain who worked our apartment building told me that he had arranged a city job for me. “But I don’t want to drive a garbage truck,” I responded. “It’s a job in city hall as assistant to the mayor’s press secretary,” he said. “The salary is not very much. But a clever lad like you can find plenty of opportunities to help people.” From my two years in the city, relating to public agencies, I knew what a tight organization ran the city and how it was wired together. Besides, the mayor’s press secretary was under investigation for bribery and was indicted a few months later. “I’m just a poor country boy from the south,” I told my sponsor. “I don’t know if I could get along with all those city folks.” I talked to the press secretary. My qualifications were fine, he said, but my political connections were marginal. I declined.
I went back to my original ambitions. The managing editor and city editor of the Chicago Daily News were both alumni of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, as I was. I wrote asking for a job interview. I got a call back. “Come for an interview?” I met with both of them. “We’ll take you,” they said. “But first, you have to go to the City Press Bureau for a few months to learn your way around Chicago. Then we’ll pull you back here.”
I went to see the manager of the press bureau. This was an organization sponsored by all of the Chicago daily papers. Its employees were people like me. We covered police precincts, fire stations, schools, the county jail, and other marginal news sources. They gave us subway and bus tokens to get around. I told the manager that I had just spent two years learning my way around the city doing investigations for the army. “In that case,” he responded, “I’ll start you at $5 a week more than our base pay.” The base pay was just half of my army living allowance.
I went back to the Daily News and explained my money problem. The city editor was sympathetic but said he could not tell the City Press Bureau to pay me enough to meet my needs. Nor could he start me on the paper at much more than I was getting from the army. He suggested that I try for a job in public relations and gave me some leads.
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