"Not, especially. Got to get this ready for my seven o'clock stint tonight and knock out the rest of next Monday's column, and then there's some of the routine junk but that can wait. Why?"
"I think I need your personal reaction to—well, to be frank about it, to a new angle the committee's got in its sights on this UMT business. I want to know what you think the radio—and the press, of course—will do with it."
"I guess I better put the pencil away?"
"Afraid so. But you'll get it first when the time comes. And perhaps you can help me decide when that should be, too."
"Shoot. All ears and no memory." He folded the uneven sheets of newsprint, crammed them in an inner pocket.
"The story I've just given you, Carl, is a lot more important than it looks. At first glance it's just Sunday feature stuff—that's the way you'll play it in your column, and you'll probably just give it a tag-end spot on your program. And that's the way I want it played. But—it is important. I think you could call it a sort of—of a corner-stone story."
"Thinking of a series, you mean? Hell, Doug, you've got the next elec—"
"Not as a series, that's the point. Not so direct. More like a good propag—public relations campaign I mean. The development will be gradual, and not too regular—that part of it I'm going to leave up to you to some extent, I think—until it automatically becomes the top news."
"Don't get it, Doug. I've told you before what's page one and what isn't. This thing you've just given me hasn't any big names in it, anything about money, taxes, or things to make anybody good and sick at heart. This is just—well, just opinion. Thoughtful analysis. The thoughtful stuff never makes the front pages, you know that."