SACRED COW
“That is the curse of the newspaper game,” said Mr. Nixon one busy lunch
time, a few days later, as he banged down the receiver of his desk
phone.
The office was deserted except for Cookie, over in his corner, and Joan,
who had strolled in expecting to find Miss Betty. But the society editor
had gone to report a lecture at the Music Club luncheon. Tim and Mack
were out, too; Cookie did not look up at the editor’s remark. So it
seemed that he must be talking to Joan.
“What is?” she asked.
“What?” his bushy brows went up. “I guess I was talking to myself. It’s
a sign of old age. But I meant—Sacred Cow.”
Sacred Cow. Joan didn’t understand. Cookie was busy, but she just had to
ask him. He was always nice about questions.
“Why, just a ‘puff’—you know, free publicity for advertisers. They never
seem to ask for it at a reasonable time, but always when we have to do
everything but hold the presses to give it to them.”
Then, of course, Joan knew. Those squibs Miss Betty sometimes stuck into
the society columns about what good dinners the Tea Room served. That
was Sacred Cow.
“The story is only a means of getting the store’s name in the paper,”
Cookie went on. Then he called across to the editor, “What is it this
time, Nix?”
“Window display at Davis’,” was the answer. “And every one’s going to be
busy this afternoon. Want it in to-day’s paper, too—and I’ve no one to
send.”
Cookie was not sent out on stories any more; he was too old.
Joan suddenly felt as she had when she had been tempted to change Tim’s
story about Tommy and the overcrowded Day Nursery. That had turned out
all right. Should she take a chance again?
“Mr. Nixon,” she approached his desk timidly, “couldn’t I go?”
“You?” The editor looked up. “But you can’t write.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” Joan assured him. “I can compose right on the
typewriter, too, just the way the rest of the reporters do. I—I,” she
hated to tell him this, but she couldn’t miss such an opportunity, “I
wrote part of that Day Nursery story for Tim. You see, I know more about
babies than he does.”
“Babies—” repeated the editor. “This is a baby window display. Girl, I
like your spunk and I believe I’ll let you try. Run along.”
Joan wanted to ask a dozen questions. Which window was it? Was she to
see any one in particular? What kind of a write-up did he want? One of
those chummy intimate chats that Miss Betty sometimes wrote, or a stiff,
formal article?
But she didn’t ask any of them. He had said she could go. If she
bothered him, he might change his mind. She said only, “O.K.,” the way
Chub always did, and went over to Tim’s desk. There she helped herself
to a yellow pencil, furnished by the _Journal_, and a folded pad of copy
paper. She would take plenty of notes. She had helped often around the
_Journal_, but this was the first assignment that she was to do all by
herself and as luck had it, she had on her tan sweater outfit. Chub,
appearing suddenly, slapped her on the back as she went out, with “Good
luck!”
At the corner she almost ran into Mack, who was coming out of a
restaurant door. “Where’s the fire?” he asked, seeing her hurry. In her
enthusiasm, she could not resist saying, “I’m covering a story for the
paper, Mack.”
He stared at her. He was an odd creature, she reflected. Any one else
would have been decent about it. But, of course, he disliked her because
she was the sister of his rival.
“Did you notice who was with me, just now?” he asked.
Joan shook her head. She had vaguely seen a big sort of man strolling
off, but had been too occupied with her own thoughts really to notice.
Mack continued to stare at her. “I believe I’ll tell you, kid. You see,
I found out that you and that office boy think Dummy’s a crook. Well, so
do I. So I thought I’d do some investigating on my own hook. I was just
trying to pump Tebbets about him. Keep quiet about all this.”
“All right.” Joan was too engrossed in being sent on her first real
assignment to bother much about anything, even about the office mystery.
At least, Mack wasn’t laughing at them for thinking Dummy a spy—the way
Tim probably would have. Rather the sport editor now seemed very much in
earnest. Of course, he wanted to be the one to solve the problem in
order to shine in Miss Betty’s eyes.
A few blocks more and she was at Davis’ Department Store. She got
panicky. Maybe she shouldn’t have come. After all, she wasn’t a real
reporter. Oh, what an adorable window! Chubby, lifelike baby figures,
clad in abbreviated sun suits, playing in real sand. This must be the
window. Joan pressed her face against the glass and took in details.
Writing this up would be fun! Wouldn’t Tommy look cunning in one of
those suits?
That reminded her that Tommy’s mother was in Davis’, just inside the
door at the handkerchief counter. She would ask her about the window.
“Mr. Dugan, the floorwalker, will be glad to tell you about the window,
Joan,” Tommy’s mother said. “He adores kids, and that window is a pet of
his.”
Mr. Dugan was lovely (Joan’s word), a tall man in striped trousers and a
cutaway coat, who looked more like an usher at a stylish wedding than a
floorwalker. He took her to the window and explained about the suits,
saying that Davis’ was the first store in Plainfield to show them. Joan
made a note of that on her pad and underscored it.
“You see, in these suits, the babies get all the necessary vitamines
from the sunshine.”
Joan bent over her pad. “Vitamine—” she didn’t know how to spell it, but
she could look it up when she got back to the office.
Mr. Dugan saw her dilemma. “V-i-t-a-m-i-n-e,” he spelled, without even
smiling. He went on and told her about the New York lecturer who would
talk to the mothers on the importance of sunshine.
When Joan thanked him for his kindness, he said, “I’ve enjoyed it all,
too, for I never was interviewed by such an inspired young newspaper
reporter. Most of them are so bold and prepossessing that you hate to
tell ’em anything.”
That was because this was her very first assignment and she had been
scared to pieces. Of course, it was probably just good luck that Mr.
Dugan had proved so amiable—what Tim called a “lucky break.”
She hurried back to the _Journal_, meeting Amy just at the big double
doors of the red-front Five and Ten. She was on her way to buy a
heart-shaped powder puff, special that day for only ten cents. She urged
Joan to come in and indulge, too.
“I can’t,” Joan displayed her yellow notes, importantly. “I’ve got a
dead-line to make.”
“You funny kid. Your nose is shiny.”
Joan didn’t mind her laughing. She was too happy over her assignment to
let anything worry her. Amy knew that she had not started powdering yet,
except when she went to parties.
Luckily, Tim was still out on his assignment, and she could have his
typewriter undisturbed. It wasn’t a good machine; it worked hard and the
commas were all headless, which made the composition rather confusing.
Chub came over and hung around her typewriter, while Joan worked on her
story. She had read scores of fashion notes, store openings, and so on,
following Miss Betty through all her literary adventures, so that she
now had a fairly clear idea of how to go about writing up the Davis
display window.
Just as she had with the Day Nursery story, she made the youngster who
was to wear the sun suit, and receive its benefits, very real and
fascinating. No one could resist the story’s appeal. Every mother who
read it would say, “That’s just the thing for Billy and Betty,” and
would go right down to the store. She had the facts, too, and even
quoted the New York lecturer and Mr. Dugan.
She looked up every word she was the least doubtful about in the worn,
coverless dictionary. She remembered that Miss Betty counted four
triple-spaced typed pages to a column. Recalling Miss Betty’s recent
write-up of a toggery shop, she planned to make this the same length,
about a third of a column, and figured that would be a little more than
a page of typewriting.
At last the story satisfied her and she retyped it. She had made too
many changes in the original to hand that draft in, although she knew
that was the way real reporters did. What name should she put in the
upper left-hand corner? If she put simply Martin, every one would think
Tim had written it, and he would be blamed if there were any mistakes in
it. “Joan” would be too informal, so she decided on J. MARTIN, and typed
it in capitals, the way Tim did.
She left a space for the “head.” The _Journal_ headlines were written
right on the copy. What kind would it have—a No. 1 italic, or a
two-column boldface? Joan had often tried to learn headline writing but
discovered that finding words to fit the spaces was harder than
cross-word puzzles.
She knew that a news story should, if possible, answer the questions:
Who? What? Where? When? and How? in the first sentence, and she had
devised such a “lead.” She remembered that Cookie once told them about a
young reporter, who, in writing about a young man who had been drowned,
started his story by telling how the youth had left home that morning,
and gone on a picnic with his chums, how they had enjoyed lunch, and
then hired a boat to go rowing. Not until the last paragraph did the
reader learn that the young man had been drowned. That was the wrong way
to write news stories, Cookie explained.
Was her story good enough? For a moment, she was tempted not to hand it
in, after all. Still, Mr. Dugan would look for it in the _Journal_.
She placed it timidly upon Mr. Nixon’s desk. He was talking over the
telephone, listening with one cheek held against the mouthpiece to shut
out the office noises. He nodded at her and began to read copy on the
story while he listened to the telephone conversation, answering with
monosyllables. It might be a tip for a big news story he was getting, or
it might be Mrs. Editor on the other end of the wire, telling him about
the baby. Once Chub had told Joan that Mrs. Editor had telephoned that
the baby had a tooth—her first. The connection had been poor and for a
few moments the office was thrown into consternation, because the editor
had understood her to say, “Ruthie has the croup.” Perhaps, though, Chub
had made that story up. You never did know what to believe, for the
_Journal_ family liked joking so well.
The editor slammed down the receiver and walked toward the composing
room with Joan’s story. How would she ever live until the middle of the
afternoon when the paper came out? Miss Betty had come back and was
working feverishly to get her copy in. Tim came, too, and when he wasn’t
busy, Joan told him she had interviewed a Sacred Cow.
“Too bad I wasn’t here to help you,” he said.
Joan kept thinking about her story. The linotype men must be through
with it by now. It had been written off by one machine, she was sure—for
only the long stories were split up by pages and handed around in order
to keep all the linotype men busy. Then the proof was “pulled” and Dummy
read that. He would have her copy to follow and would see her name on
it. Would he know who J. Martin was?
She heard the presses going—and a sick feeling clutched her. Suppose she
had made some terrible mistake in the story?
One minute she wanted to run out after the papers as she often did. But
that would seem over-anxious. The next minute, she wanted to run home
and not even look at the story. Oh, wouldn’t some one ever go back after
the papers?
Finally, Chub and Gertie emerged through the swinging door. Gertie had a
bunch of papers over her arm, and so did Chub. Hers were for counter
sales in the front office. Chub handed one to each member of the staff,
as was his custom. Then he came to Joan, sitting there, silently
twisting her tie.
“Here’s yours.” He handed her a copy, damp and limp, it was so fresh
from the press.
She took the paper. She remembered that day, so long ago it seemed,
though it was only a month and a half, when she had read Tim’s first
story, and now—she was going to read her own. Her own first story. In
the _Journal_. “Thank you, Chub,” her voice came in a whisper.
Chub looked at her, staring at the paper. “Gosh, ain’t you going to hunt
up your story? Ain’t on the front page, for I saw the page proof of
that. Here let me help you hunt. Don’t you know a reporter,” he drew the
word out, deliciously, as though he were chewing a caramel, “should read
over his stuff _after_ it’s printed?”
“Yes, I know.” Her hand actually shook as she turned the pages. Together
they scanned the paper, down one column and up the next, their eyes
darting from one headline to another. At length they found it buried on
one of the inside pages, but with an italicized headline that made it a
really, truly feature story. There it was, just as she had written it.
Only one word was changed. She had used the word “ladies” and in the
paper, it was “women.” She remembered now that the booklet, _Journal
Style_, had said, “Do not use the term ‘lady,’ except to designate the
wife of an English lord.” Of course, that was just part of the _Journal_
policy, but she wished she had not forgotten.
“That’s a good story, Joan.” Mr. Nixon was smiling at her. “I guess the
Davis Department Store won’t have any kick on the kind of stuff we give
’em.”
“What page?” Miss Betty was turning over her copy of the _Journal_.
After she had discovered it and read it, she announced, “That’s a dandy
story, Jo.”
“It is that.” Cookie added his bit.
Tim glanced at it, rather casually, Joan thought, and decided, “It’s
pretty good for just a sub-cub reporter.”
Even Mack was nice enough to nod.
Joan could only grin like a Cheshire cat, blinking in the bewilderment
of so much praise. Then, hugging the paper to her, she started home to
show it to Mother. Mrs. Martin was busy cutting up an old dress, but she
put her work aside and sat down in the porch rocker to read the story.
“Why, Joan,” she finished it at last. “I didn’t know you could do things
like this. It sounds as good as what Tim writes. I believe you’d make a
better reporter than he, after all. I feel as though I had seen Davis’
window, myself. I’ll go around past there on my way to the Auxiliary
Meeting, just to see it. I want to.” She smiled. “Guess I’ll have to let
you be a newspaper woman, after this.”
That from Mother!
To cover her confusion at Mother’s words, Joan dashed into the dining
room and started setting the table, though it wasn’t nearly time. As she
placed the silverware around, she began to wonder about Mack. She wasn’t
sure whether she was glad or sorry that he knew they suspected Dummy of
being a spy.