Bob Asbille interview about journalism career, Urbandale, Iowa, August 21, 1999

Section 1: Q: This is Bob Asbille. We're speaking today on Saturday, August 21st. What's your address? A: 7501 Beechwood. Q: We'll be talking about your time at the Register and Tribune. But first I want to start off asking you about the time you were working at KRNT because you have a degree in broadcast journalism. What kind of reporting were you doing when you were at KRNT? I think it was when you came to Des Moines in 1948. A: I was generally local. The police beat, county courthouse. I did local reporting, but chiefly I was hired as a writer. I was the second man, as they call it, in the evening news. The six o'clock news was Rud Yemick, the Tribune columnist. Then ten o'clock and eleven o'clock news was Russ VanDyke. Q: We're talking about KRNT radio, right? A: Right. I was hired because one, they were going to upgrade the station. WHO was their chief, and WHO had fifty-thousand watt clear channel and KRNT wanted to get an increase in power, I think twenty-five thousand or something like, that so they could compete farther out with WHO. They were trying to put up a fifteen hundred foot antenna tower, which would make them WMT ahead of fifteen hundred, that was, of course, the limit in those days. Q: WMT was from Cedar Rapids? A: Yes, but they had this huge power. Tripp McEwen was the morning and noon man and Walt Trabwell was his successor at KRNT. They hired extra people so when they switched over they would have enough people to cover all the bases. When they got shot down in late November, they had a lot of people there because they hadn't yet begun to get ready for television. They knew it was there and they wanted to be involved, but they had to start it. As a result, several of us were called in said, "Hey, we hired you people because we were going to expand and we aren't." They didn't say "This is it. Goodbye." Q: How soon was this after you were hired? A: I was hired in August and this was early December. So my broadcast major was only used for a few months. Q: You had a family that you brought to Des Moines? A: I had one son then. Officially, we were kind of devastated living in the rented quarters and all that. The program director, who also took care of the news, after everybody was leaving his office, he nodded for me to stay. He said, "I'm a close friend of Frank Eyerly's, the managing editor of the Register and Tribune. He tells me that they have an opening at the copy desk in the sports department. He said, "I know you probably want to be on air, but in any case they will provide you with a job while you're hunting for a job." Q: Would you have rather been on the air? A: At the time, yes. This was a blow. A friend of mine in journalism school, Tex Akers, he eventually became the head of the news department in Denver. He got them to put on an hour- long news program every evening. He persuaded me to change. I was very enthusiastic about it. It was kind of a double blow. One, I didn't have a see into the future how I was going to take care of the family. And I was leaving a job that I really liked. He'd apparently got a concession out of Eyerly before I talked to Eyerly. Eyerly says, "You want the job or you don't." He didn't say it in those words, but I got that impression. This was on a Friday and I asked him to let me consider it over the weekend and come in and tell him on Monday. He says, "That's fine. I understand your position." Monday I went down and told him I had considered it and I would take the job. He walked me over to the sports department which wasn't very far away. He introduced me to Leyton House. They didn't have the closest relationship, and Frank had some reservations about Seth Taylor. Seth had just gone through a serious heart attack and perhaps a little stroke. He had been off for six or eight weeks. Q: Seth was the sports editor at the time? A: His title was sports editor of the Register, but actually when Seth was incapacitated, Leyton was named the executive sports editor, whatever that meant. He ran the department, but if Seth didn't like something he still had power. He was a personal friend of Gardner Cowle's and he was one a board of directors and he was the vice president of the company. He had a lot of clout. Frank disliked this because it took part of the paper out from under his control. He didn't like that. He felt he could deal with Leyton. Leyton was talking to somebody when we over there and Frank says to him, "Oh, Leyton, here's your new Register copy editor." Leyton's mouth fell open. Then, Frank made a quick exit. Leyton was standing there stunned. I was a little embarrassed. He took me back to his office, which meant a little place in the back with file cabinets around it and one opening. It wasn't very modern. He says, "This comes quite as a shock to me. I just whittled a list of fifty copy editors down to four and I was going to interview the four. I'm going to have to cancel a couple of them." He was obviously not very happy. He says, "Well, when can you go to work?" I said anytime, and he says, "Be here tomorrow at two o'clock and have the early man clue you in to what you're doing. How much copy editing experience have you had?" I says, "None." Q: How did he react to that? A: He obviously was stunned. The next day I started my copy editing career. In all fairness to the assessments that the people made about me, I had once told my wife, "If there is anything I will never do, it's be a copy editor on a newspaper." When I was at the University of Missouri, I spent most of my time prepping to be a radio newsman. This was a change in direction. By the end of six months, Leyton called me in and says, "You haven't made it. You've got another three months." I mentioned to the early man that I was on probation and he says, "I'll push a lot of stuff your way early." His name was Norm Poder and that I lasted there I attribute to his special help. Anyway, the thing that changed it was late in January, or maybe farther than that, I was getting to go home at eleven-thirty and Bill Bryson, who was an excellent copy editor and a great writer. He would always take the baseball season off to cover the Des Moines Bruins. He wasn't impressed and he was a little angry that I'd been pushed in and they had to teach me how to be a copy editor and all that. One evening, the assistant city editor, whose name was Dixie Smith, came over and said, "Bill, do you have anybody here with reporting experience? We've got this big fire up on Second Avenue." He says, "Yeah, Asbille, he used to be a reporter for KRNT." He was doing this with a little bit of spite involved in it at the time. I ran over and they said there was a cab waiting downstairs for you now. He briefly explained that they had Ryder Richman up there. Ryder suffered from some sort of disease, he shook and he had trouble speaking. He says, "Go help Ryder out." At first when I got up there, I couldn't find Ryder so I interviewed the police chief who I knew from my KRNT reporting days. He said, "Now look, the manager's apartment is at the end of the lot. That's where they have taken all the people." So I went up there and there were all these people milling around and I just started interviewing. I talked to a woman in a wheelchair for probably five or ten minutes and got some good quotes out of her. Then I spotted Ryder on the telephone and I kept trying to get him to give me the phone so I could talk to the city desk. Finally, Dixie realizing and maybe hearing me in the background, asked if there was a young fellow standing there. Ryder says, "Yeah, he's a WHO guy." He goes, "No he's not, he belongs to us." I got on the phone and told him what I got. The next day I was riding up the elevator and Tripp McEwen was on the elevator and he says, "Bob Allen, I see your byline was on the Register on page one this morning. Great story, that's a way to go." Of course there were some Register people there. When I got out of the elevator they came out with me and one of them turned to me, "Hey Asbille, what's this Bob Allen stuff?" I told them that was my air name up at KRNT. Anyway, Eyerly called me into his office that day and said, "You did a great job up there. Maybe we'll switch you over to the Register copy desk sometime. But, Risell's such a good teacher, we'll leave you there for a while. Oh, by the way, I raised your pay fifteen dollars." I was making forty-five, maybe fifty-five dollars a week before. We were using money that we had banked to make up the deficit. Q: Who was using money? A: My wife and I. We were living on the money and we were living in a rented apartment. You know all that. That just about put us even. I called her up to let her know. Obviously, she was happy. About three weeks later, House calls me into his office and says, "Well, Asbille, you've made it. In fact, you're doing as well as anybody else on the rim. There will be ten dollars more on your check." Without thinking, I reacted, gee twenty-five dollars a week raise in two weeks. He says, "What?" Eyerly had never told him that he had given me a raise. I explained that Eyerly had given me a raise and I could tell that, had he known that, I would not have gotten that raise. Q: Let me ask you, you said that they called a cab for you to go to the fire. Is that what they did for most reporters at that time? Is that how you got to the place where you needed to be? A: Yes, reporter's all had a pad of cab tickets. There were three or four cab companies then, and they were all eager to please because there were more cabs than there were fares. Q: Did you have a car yourself? A: Yes, my car was an old 1938 Oldsmobile. I bought it used. Q: But you didn't use it to go to stories? A: No, because if you were going to a fire, for example, you had to have a place to park which meant that you had to park a couple of blocks away. A cab could get you in closer and it was quicker and they would get there within minutes when they were called. I think we used mostly the Yellow Cab. -- <br><br> Section 2: Q: You covered the fire in downtown Des Moines. Did that take you out to SportsFest, or did you do any more news reporting at that time? A: No. I often wondered about that. OK, so I had this great fire. I wonder what's going to happen. I worked hard at being a copy editor for the sports department, and I got out from under all the pressure. I even became the early slotman for a while. I filled in for Norm Kolder when he had days off. Q: There was a different rim and a slotman for sports than there was for news? A: Yes, there was a sports desk for both the Register and the Tribune. Same desk, except that we had to change over at a certain time. If you were working on the Register you didn't work for the Tribune. I did that for six years, I guess. Q: What did the work entail? A: Mostly copy editing. I put out the Tribune predate and that got me a lot of experience because I had to do all of it myself and put late baseball stories in and things like that. I got quite a bit of experience. Q: Could you explain what the predate is? Because there's a final edition and a predate? A: Yes, there's a final edition. Then you would put out the paper that was mailed. That was the Tribune largest distribution. They had about fifty-five hundred subscribers that got this delivered. There was a train that went to northeast Iowa and there were all these bundles dropped off at the towns it went through. The date was changed so that the next day's date was put on. So the people who got it in the mail were getting the Tuesday Tribune but actually it was the Monday Tribune. It had updated stories in it. You know, some baseball figure died and you wanted to get in an obit on it. Actually, it wasn't worth the cost, but it was a big city paper that they got. There were forty thousand, forty-five thousand, subscribers. It was important enough to be concerned about. Q: You said you did this for about six years. Was there anything that stood out in your mind that you really enjoyed about it or things that you disliked? A: The things that I enjoyed about it was that it was independent. Plus, nobody ever checked it. The switch editor, to him it was kind of a throw-away deal and everybody else regarded it that way. Very few people liked to be having to do it. When I was off, somebody else had to do it and they would growl all the time. After about three years doing that, the slot man on the Tribune was recalled. This was the Korean War. He was a chemical warfare specialist. He had been a captain. He got recalled and sent to Tokyo to train people in chemical warfare. There were only two people on the sports desk at the Tribune. The rim man moved up temporarily and I was moved over in a temporary deal to the Tribune. After about a year, the kid who was then the slot man, Bill Zeima, he was at the University of Iowa later at the Journalism School. He and his wife, before they had children, wanted to take a tour of Europe. The company wouldn't guarantee him a job. They considered it as a resignation. So they decided to go anyway. They brought in another Register man, for the life of me I can't think of his name now. But he got a fellowship to Columbia University School of Journalism as a graduate student. By that time, the regular slot man had returned from the war. I spent six years there. He moved to the promotion department. Then House called me in and says, "Well, you don't really any experience as a desk chief and all this." I said, "I used to work the early shift on the Register." He said that he wasn't sure that I could handle this, but he would give me a six-month chance. They need a slot man temporary. But he did help me by not telling everybody that was the arrangement. We went six months and I was getting concerned. They hadn't made any indication. I thought that maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie, but I went in and asked him what my status was. He said I'd made it. He'd made up his mind like a month before but he didn't bother telling me. -- <br><br> Section 3: Q: Who were some of your immediate supervisors and who are the ones that you remember best? You have mentioned Leyton House. Who else stands out in your mind? A: I was there about six weeks before I ever met Seth Taylor. He walked in one afternoon and he was coming back to work. He had this column, "Sitting in with the Athletes." He walks up to me and he looks down and then I realize he's standing there. He says, "Who are you?" I told him I'm Bob Asbille. This was on the Register before I moved. He told me to come back to his office. He takes me back and chats with me and asks me about my background and all that. He says, "Well, there's two things I want to leave with you. One, we don't get coaches hired and fired. We report these things, but we don't get involved ourselves. Another thing, we don't lead cheers. Remember those two things and you're OK." Q: Was that a response to something you had done or somebody on the staff? A: No, he just let me know his philosophy. I always remembered that because that was something that a lot of sports departments actually do. They do a little of that now. Like Mark Hanson. Mark does a good job, but he sometimes becomes more of a critic than a reporter. Q: Now, was Seth there for some time? He was elderly at the time. A: Yes, he was in his early seventies. I think he was seventy-eight when he died. He was going down to cover some big event in Florida. As I remember, he was going to the plane. He always took his wife with him then because he had to have some help occasionally. He was walking up to the plane and just collapsed. That was instantaneous. Q: At the time when the two of you were working at the R and T, was there a day-to-day relationship that you had with Seth Taylor? A: No. In fact he didn't have day-to-day relationship with anybody there. He turned his columns in and usually Bill Bryson got the first look at them. I remember I did get into some trouble with Seth, though he didn't know I was the one. He was always on the lookout to cover other things. Maybe he went in for heavyweight fights, that was one of the things we always covered, a heavyweight championship fight. We covered the World Series. Pro football was really just getting started, it wasn't until later that we covered big football games. But there were several things that we automatically knew Seth was going to be at this place. He was always looking to save a little money. So he covered the Army- Notre Dame game, some big college football game in Yankee stadium. Q: The Des Moines Register covered a game in Yankee stadium? A: Well, he was there for the fight. He thought, this is a big national game, I'll cover it. This was for the Sunday Register and the game was on Saturday. The story came in and, my god, it ran from here to there. I stood on the chair holding this story up and Bill Bryson was at the desk and I said, "Bill, how much of this do you want?" He said facetiously but I thought he was serious, "I only need half of that. That's too long." So I sat down and cut half his story out. When Seth got back to the office on Tuesday, he was ranting and raving. Whoever edited his story, he wanted them fired right then. Leyton protected me and said, "I'll look into it and see that he gets his come-upins." So he called me and said, "Don't tell anybody that you edited that story. Seth wants you fired." I said that Bryson told me to cut out half of it. He didn't actually say that, but your superior's word is the law. At least that's the way I thought. I always remembered that if Seth had still been in charge, I would have been cut out. Q: Again, he was out covering a fight on the East Coast. How was it that the Register deciding to cover that? A: He was deciding to cover that. He was vice president of the company. Q: He picked and chose what he wanted to cover? A: Yes, we would often try to persuade him to cover something in the area. It was understood that certain sports he would cover. Like the World Series. Bryson would go to the World Series and write the game story and Seth would write a column. House would have wished that he could make the decision on it because he wouldn't have done that. We would have used AP just as well and made it fit into twelve inches. Instead, we had a six-column story. Q: With the exception of that, what was your coverage area generally? A: We covered Iowa because more readers came from Iowa and Iowa State. We covered Drake as they were one of these equals. The major college games, we would cover. We flew planes to these games and brought back photographs. Q: But these were Iowa teams. A: Mostly, yes. Occasionally, Nebraska would be playing somebody in Lincoln for the national championship, and we would cover that game and have a plane for pictures and all of that. Q: Were there ever any financial considerations? Were you in on that? Were any decisions based on that? A: No, we used to battle that all the time. Seth would say, "Well, we can afford it, I'm going to cover or we'll send somebody to cover it." On the board of directors, he outranked Eyerly. This bothered Eyerly terribly, I think. He didn't think that he could make the correct decisions. This fight between the managing editor and the sports editor. Plus, Seth's health indicated that he wasn't going to be there very long. I'm sure that Eyerly didn't want to cause too many waves because of that. Seth did drop dead while going to some site. -- <br><br> Section 4: Q: You had an early meeting with Frank Eyerly when he hired you. But do you remember any other things about Frank? Something about his personality that stands out? A: The friendly reaction that he had when he hired me. I didn't know that he was considered so much of an ogre by some of the other editors. He was a strong hand on the throttle. He and [Ken] MacDonald had come together and they always kind of worked as a team. There was one other, I can't remember his name now, and the story was, there were three of them, they always promised each other when they came from Iowa, when one went up the other would turn around help elevate the other two. Q: I'm trying to remember the other guy. They worked on the DI together. Did you ever feel the brunt of Frank Eyerly's wrath? A: For one thing, I got to be the copy desk chief when I was twenty-nine. He would sometimes be mad at something somebody on the Register did. He would come over and you could tell when he was mad with the steam coming out of his ears. He says, "I want you to tell whoever is responsible for this that I want to see them." I would say, "Yes, sir." And then House would come back from coffee or something and I would explain the situation to them. One of the things is Eyerly kind of vented his anger on House a lot of times. He would often take money from his budget and put it in the newsroom budget. Frank made quick decisions and everybody followed his decision. When they retired him, I think he was over 65. The rumor was that he felt a little betrayed that his friend MacDonald hadn't retired. Q: It was a forced retirement? A: As we all knew. They weren't confiding in us. But the rumors would spread and the rumors spread faster in a newsroom that any other place. Sometimes, Frank would deal with reporters. There were some people that were kind of odd balls, like Tony Cadaro, he kind of liked them. Bill Bryson was respected by Eyerly. He definitely, in those days, had a lot to say about them. When he left, it was shock. We always thought that he and MacDonald would go out together at some time. MacDonald kept going up and I don't think Frank ever wanted to be anything but a managing editor. Q: Were you on Frank's good side? A: Most of the time, yes. -- <br><br> Section 5: Q: Now you talked to us about the pay when you first started, but could you talk to us about throughout your career? Was it fair? Were you getting the raises that you wanted? A: Later on I did, but the beginning reporters had to fight a little bit for money. When I got to be head of the copy desk, I began to get regular raises. But before then, there were no regular raises. Sometimes you had to go in and ask for more money. Later on, the company started realizing they were losing a lot of top people and they started a regular raise period. You know, six months or a year. You knew you were in good graces if you got a dime raise rather than a nickel raise. That's five dollars and ten dollars. That told more about your progress in the company than anything else. Q: Any effort to unionize? A: Yes, there was a very bitter campaign. Q: About what year? A: [Ed] Heins had replaced Frank Eyerly. I can't remember the year. It had to be when I was in my forties. I'm getting old, I have trouble connecting all those dates. Q: So shortly after you were hired in the late forties? A: No, that was my forties. By that time I was the assistant sports editor of the Tribune. I was the picture editor for the football section while I was working on the Tribune Saturday night. Saturday afternoon and nights I was the leader of putting out all these pictures. The paper was then somewhat famous for that, they did more with photography than anybody else. Then I finally got to the point where I was getting enough money where I didn't have to worry about that job. We used to pay our tuition bills and everything else on that extra money, because you got time and a half. In my forties, I got to be one of the editors. Of course, being assistant sports editor of the Tribune was not like being assistant sports editor of the Register. The whole paper was always Register-oriented. See, I didn't even know there was a Tribune connected with it until I got here. In journalism school, they always talked about the Des Moines Register. I remember Ed Lambert, our news instructor, he was from Iowa originally. He would say the Des Moines Register is one of the ten best newspapers in the country. So when I got an offer from KRNT, and I realized that they were the radio station for the Register, I knew something about the operation here. Q: You knew about the prestige. We were talking about unionization. Do you remember much about that? A: Yes, well the photographers actually started the unionization. They got the guild to come in and then they would set up meetings. By this time, we had Heins as the managing editor. He violently protested. Big Ed was about six-two. We should have called him the Hulk. Ed didn't have any use for photographers for some reason. He always thought they cost us more than they were worth and there weren't a lot of photographers who were having extra money in the expense accounts with money they hadn't spent. He was suspicious of them and some other people. He ranted and raved around there a lot about production and cost and all that kind of stuff. Eventually, they were building up a way for everybody to join them in the newspaper guild. I don't know whether Ed had anything directly to do with this, but a lot of people who would have been eligible to vote got promoted. It failed about 97 to 94, something very close. The guild then filed a suit that the Register had promoted the people who could vote. Once they got promoted they were executives and ineligible to vote. They went to court and some other things that I wasn't privy to. A year or so later, we had another election. They had added some people on the staff and these people were eligible to vote. It was thought that it would squeak by that time, but it failed by just about the same margin. Three or four votes. That was the end of that. Everybody used to say that some of the photographers in disgust went and got other jobs. I remember Bill Bryson, "Well they were getting other jobs because the ax is going to fall if they don't." Q: The photographers started it, but were there other people that got on board? A: Oh yes, well there were hundred and ninety people eligible to vote. This included some non-newspaper personnel. Like the information girl at the front desk. They got to vote to. It didn't change the vote very much. I was originally for it, but then when I saw everything involved. My brother-in-law worked for the St. Louis Globe and they had gone guild, he was the head of the classified advertising section. He says, "Oh Bob, it's really difficult to work with the guild. If I were in your position, I would tell you not to vote for the guild." But I had already made up my mind that I wasn't. There was a danger that my pay would have gone down. Q: You were concerned that maybe your pay might go down. What were some of the other reservations that you had? A: I didn't like the fact that your job would become structured under the guild. They would tell you what things you were responsible for and what you weren't. I did a lot of extra things, so I thought those would be affected. It would limit my job and what I could do. Q: Before you had to vote, there was the talk that the photographers wanted the guild. What were their grievances? A: Oh, pay and I think a lot of it was over expense accounts. There was one photographer, I won't mention his name, but he was notorious for going out with a reporter and having the reporter pay all the bills and then he would come back and put in for the same bills. Q: You can't say his name? A: No, I don't want to say his name. There were things like that. Their editors eased up a little bit, I think, so the guild just kind of floated away. I think everybody was relieved after a while that we weren't involved in that. Q: Again, in regard to the grievances, was it an issue of the conditions of the work place or anything like that? A: Well, I think some of the grief was that the managing editor would sometimes sit on a department harder than what they thought it should be. In fact, I think that as the years went on, they did delegate more authority to the desk chiefs and the department heads. Then they started dealing only with those people. Some of the editors, and I had this, too, they would call in, like an editor on my staff did something once and he got called in and chewed out. That was my job and I had said something to him before, but I didn't rant and rave about it. I just told him to watch it. And then the managing editor, at that time it was Ed Heins, called the guy in, too, and threatened him and all that kind of stuff. I thought that was bad for morale, you're always looking over your shoulder. Those situations did change after Gardner came aboard. In fact, Heins was told that his services were no longer going to be needed. He did have a contract, so he stayed on about nine months. Not in the office. He would come down and collect his paycheck. Then he went down and got involved in the newspaper and magazines somewhere down in Missouri. I haven't heard of him in twenty-some years. -- <br><br> Section 6: Q: A little bit ago, we were talking about the Des Moines Register's prestige and the fact that you knew what you were coming to when you came to Des Moines. A: Yes, it's like if you were in insurance going to Equitable of the US. I knew that it was a first-rate paper. Q: What do you think made it so great? You saw it from the outside and then you saw it from the inside. A: One, they did spend money on some projects. They were willing to do that. Two, they generally had very capable editors. One of them was Parker Mize, he was called Bud Mize. He was the news editor of the Tribune and he was kind of a legend. He yelled a lot, but you could learn a lot of things from him. And then the paper, design-wise, was always trying to keep up with the design. Larry, I can't think of his name now, but we changed designs and I remember our Look Magazines staff came in and made suggestions on the paper. I remember I followed one of them. I said, "They've got this guy in here and he says this is good." So I tried it and two minutes after the papers came up, I got a call from upstairs. He says, "What in the hell is this? What did you have to take out?" I had a story in there that left a space. There was a story up here, go down three inches and there was a story over here. They had told us to follow these peoples' directions and I did. Q: This person from Look was telling you that white space was important? A: Right, so I thought OK. They had told us to listen to these guys. I wasn't convinced myself. We had to redo the sports page on the run. Everybody outside the newspaper thought it was something that we had chiseled out at the last moment. It wasn't that. I remember these people didn't really know about newspapers, they were magazine people. Q: Their ideas didn't take, then? A: No, there were some things we used but they were kind of minor. Q: I'd like you to go on about that, too, because you had mentioned you were the sports editor of the Picture magazine part of it. A: No, not then. Druggner had called me in one day and said, "There are three candidates for Picture Magazine and you're one of them. And I think with your expertise in handling photographs, you're my choice. Don't let me down." Q: What was your expertise from the copy desk? A: I had become known as a good photo editor. In fact, that's what they based making me Picture Magazine editor on. I was there about two and a half years. I lost a battle with the art director. There was a little house gossip involved in that. Q: Do you want to share that? A: No, it had to do with MacDonald, mostly. I was one of those that didn't believe it in the back, behind-the-scenes, political infighting. Gardner was on my side, but MacDonald was president of the company. He decided that she had been a magazine make-up expert in New York and she must have known more than I knew. I got moved back to the Tribune this time. I was doing the back page and the family living section. I bounced around in there. I discovered by accident that in the personnel department, I had a title of assistant news editor. I hadn't even known about that. I don't know if it was a mistake or not, but Gardner might have been putting me in line but not telling me about it. -- <br><br> Section 7: Q: You said you were known as a pretty good photo editor. Maybe you could describe for somebody who doesn't know what a photo editor does and what makes a photo editor a good photo editor. A: For one thing, I used to claim that often really great photographs were not run large enough. Some people called me "Big Picture Asbille." Q: Big Picture Asbille, what was that about? A: I would often say that if a picture is really good, it ought to be run large. None of this two-column picture to illustrate a good story. A suitable photograph makes a big story even bigger. I remember when the big four-hundred pound wrestler was at Iowa State, Chris Taylor. I had a picture of him at an Iowa State Wrestling match against some team in Pennsylvania, LeHigh. He was on top of this fellow who was facedown. It was a tremendous picture illustrating what a 410 pound wrestler who's really good can do. This guy looked like he was flattened out like a pancake. I ran a six-column. I cut the size of newsprint down so you went from eight columns to six columns. Everybody was running up to the copy desk saying, "What a tremendous picture!" Here comes the assistant managing editor saying, "If you had run that four columns, it would have had the same effect." I said, "No." He went away shaking his head thinking it was a waste of some space. Later he came in and said, "I looked at that thing a half a dozen times and I think you were right. I might have bargained for one column, but that picture had to be run big." Q: I'll be darned.