In the spring of 1952, Kent State University student Marilyn Jean Beifus applied to be a newsroom intern with the Cleveland Press and was promptly rejected because the vacancies were filled.
Fortunately, she did not accept the rejection. She showed up at the Press and insisted, ultimately getting an internship for the first three months of 1953. I say this was fortunate because Marilyn kept a detailed scrapbook and journal about her three-month experience, and it offers a window into newspaper history.
Marilyn’s daughter, Lisa Jean, has been downsizing and called us about the scrapbook. We welcomed the chance to read it. Marilyn’s account is delightful, and the first page shows she got an A for it. “An excellent report of a very valuable internship,” her grader wrote. “This is the clearest picture of the Cleveland Press plan yet given.”
At the Press, Marilyn worked as a copy boy, a copy desk editor and in the women’s department, police beat, morgue (newspaper library), opinion department and elsewhere. She wrote birth notices, death notices and engagements. She handled stock listings and wire photos. She even had the chance to attempt editorials.
Here are some excerpts:
My first day, January 5 was a day I’ll never forget. First of all, I arrived at The Press 15 minutes late due to heavy snow and traffic tie up. (Honest!) I was flustered and embarrassed, but Norm Shaw received me in a most gracious manner. Because time is valuable on a newspaper, none was wasted on unnecessary introductions, and I was put out to work immediately.
As a Copy Boy, I carried copy from the desk of the City Editor, the State Editor and the Telegraph Editor, to the head man at the copy desk, known as the slot man. Here, the story is assigned to a copy editor, edited, slugged, and given a head. If the man in the slot is satisfied, he sends the copy down to the composing room.
One hour of my first day was spent at the Message Center. This important-sounding name is misleading, for the Message Center is nothing more than two desks, placed end to end, with four telephone extensions on each desk. The chief duty of those assigned to the M/C is to answer all questions of the callers, or refer the call to someone qualified to give an answer. Above all, the caller must be satisfied. I remember one call I got, because it certainly surprised me. His problem was this: If he put a thermometer on his car and the temperature recorded was 40 degrees, would the temperature remain the same if he drove his car 60 mph… Since I felt I was not qualified to give him a correct answer, I referred him to the Weather Bureau.
The Press gave her quite a few duties on her first day, including carrying copy all over the building and sorting mail. It wore her out.
Jim Garrett, head copy boy, said I could go home at 4:00 and his parting remark was ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at 7.’
‘Seven?’ I said weakly.
‘Seven!’ he said decidedly.
With that in mind, I wearily dragged home and went straight to bed. I was beat after my first day as a Copy Boy on the Cleveland Press.
One week into the internship, which I presume was unpaid, Marilyn was still drinking from a fire hose.
After one week of interning, I was in a state of confusion and weariness. I memorized names, places, faces, dates; I ran from one end of the city to the next. I ran up and down two flights of stairs to the composing room at least 100 times a day; I learned a new job every day; I wondered how long I could keep up at that pace.
She need not have wondered. She did fine. At one point, the interns were placed in a training program, to make sure they experienced all of the departments.
The first stop in training was the Copy Desk. How important I felt as I sat at the horse-shoe desk, completely surrounded by men, and edited each story assigned to me by the slot men. Bob Sullivan and Emerson Price sat on each side of me, and they gave me all the necessary equipment: four soft lead pencils, stack of copy paper, a straight edge ruler, an eraser, and a headline schedule book. Most of the headlines I wrote were “baby” heads. And I still say that one column heads are tougher to write than a banner head…
I shall never forget the day I was assigned to the “telephoto”… I stared at the complex-looking machine before me with all its many dials, buttons, meters, levers and switches, and I felt as if I was in the cockpit of a jet getting ready for a take-off…
I had begged and pleaded with Jim Garrett to let me go down to the Police Beat for a day. And a woman usually gets her way… Tom Brady, night man on the Police beat (1:00-9:00) was still on duty when I got there at 7:00. He told me there was a lot of action that night. Due to the powerful wind, electric power lines were down, causing traffic tie-ups and several serious accidents. Tom took me around while we checked records and the Station “guest book"...
When I found out I was going to train for a day in the morgue, I was distraught. Nothing could be worse than eight hours in the silence of the library… The head librarian, Lawrence, gave me 40 or more folders containing pictures of the Korean War and asked me to analyze each picture, picking out those that had news value. I spent a full eight hours looking at thousands of pictures from the start of the Korean War to the present. At the end of the day, I knew nothing about the work of the librarians, but I felt well-informed as to the conditions in Korea between 1950 and 1953.
The training included time with chief editorial writer Dick Peters.
I wrote two editorials. One was about income tax invasion. And Dick really hauled me over the coals. He pointed out the faults, word by word, idea by idea. Of course, when he finished, I realized how wrong I was. The other editorial concerned a public official, recently appointed Director of Public Safety, who was violating zoning regulations on his privately owned used car lot. Dick liked the idea, but said my approach was wrong, so Tom Boardman, another editorial writer, polished it up for publication. You don’t become an editorial writer in a day. It took Dick Peters almost 16 years.
Several times in her writing, Marilyn talks about some of the characters who impressed her in the newsroom. Here’s an example:
One night after work when I was on my own time, Bus Bergen, Federal Courts reporter, stopped up at the office. Bus is exactly the kind of reporter movie actors portray. He’s about six foot tall, well-built, handsome in a rugged way—blonde crew cut and all, well dressed, in his thirties, and is gifted with a smooth line of talk. Bus is a recipient of several Guild awars, and another top reporter. The reason: He has contacts with the underworld. He mentioned to me that some of the local ‘hoods’ he knew quite well are now ‘doing time.’ Through these contacts, he is able to expose the vice rings usually found in a big city.
Her scrapbook offers insight how much the modern era of journalism is similar to the 1950s and how much it has changed. The similarities are the topic areas covered. We still have police reporters and a federal court reporter. We still have characters straight out of the movies. But we don’t have enormous desks of editors to read behind reporters. We don’t have teams of people writing up births and engagements. We don’t have a message desk where we try to answer random questions from people. We don’t have unpaid interns.
Mostly, though, the scrapbook reminded me of the thrill of journalism. Being surrounded by smart, dedicated, fun and eccentric people makes the profession interesting. The late Marilyn, who worked in broadcasting in Cleveland after graduation, saw that clearly, as a entry near the end of her journal shows:
Newspaper work is everything I wanted – and more – and I shall always be grateful for this chance to make sure of it. It is said that newspaper work as shown in the movies is fake; but I say it isn’t. I find it every bit as exciting as it is dramatized. It is truly a thrilling experience to see a reporter or columnist come “home” from an assignment – breathless with excitement because of what he has seen, heard or experienced. The writer will sit at his desk, and pound out his story on a beat-up typewriter with amazing speed. I saw amazing because words just flow from the mind of the writer to the page of the machine.
Thanks for reading.
