Another reporter wrote an amusing story about a fat policeman posted at the Battery, who chased a tramp through a pool of rain-water. The policeman fell into the water, and the tramp got away. No report of the occurrence was made at police headquarters, but a Sun man saw the incident and wrote it.
“It’s an amusing story,” said Clarke to the reporter, “but they read the papers at police headquarters, and this policeman may be put on trial for not reporting the escape of the hobo. Suppose we drop this classic on the floor?”
A telegraph messenger-boy once wrote a letter to the police commissioner, telling him how to break up the cadets (panders) of the East Side. A Sun man found the lad and got an interesting interview with him.
“Leave my name out, won’t you?” the messenger said to the reporter. “If you print it, I may lose my job.”
He was told that his name was known in the Sun office, but that the reporter would present his appeal.
“Did you find the messenger?” Clarke asked the reporter on his arrival.
The Sun man replied that he had found him, and that the interview was interesting and exclusive. Before he had an opportunity to repeat the boy’s plea for anonymity, Clarke said:
“Is it going to hurt the boy if we print his name? If it is, leave it out, and refer to him by a fictitious number.”
Two reporters, one from the Sun and one from another big daily, went one night to interview a famous man on an important subject. The Sun man returned and wrote a brief story containing none of the big news which it had been hoped he might get. The other newspaper came out with some startling revelations, gleaned from the same interview. Mr. Lord showed the rival paper’s article to the Sun reporter, with a mild inquiry as to the reason for the Sun’s failure to get the news.
“We both gave our word,” said the reporter, “that we would keep back that piece of news for three days, even from our offices.”