Crimson Issues Confidential Guide to Press Box Personalities and Tactics

During the fall football season at least, it is a physical impossibility to pick up a Boston paper which does not contain some news on Harvard football practice. Who writes this stuff, and why is it necessary it undoubtedly is for a man to read more than one paper if he is really to "follow" Harvard on the gridiron?

No man, not even a newspaperman, can write without showing something of himself and this, of course, accounts for the different views that the reader gets of Harvard football if he reads more than one paper. But even the writer's personality has, in some measure to yield to the stamp of the paper he works for, so that there exists a definite Transcript style, a Globe style, a Post style, and so forth.

In order that students of Harvard may not waste their pennies experimenting, the CRIMSON, with its customary desire to set everybody off on the right foot, offers this "guide" to Harvard sports writers, modelled to a certain extent on the Confidential Guide to College Courses, the Guide to Fields of Concentration, and the Student Vagabond. In order that no prejudice may be charged, the papers have been listed alphabetically and for obvious reasons the CRIMSON itself has been omitted from the survey.

The Boston American

Mr. Hearst's personal representative at Harvard is T.F. Lynch '29, known more familiarly as "Ted."

Aside from the fact that Mr. Lynch lives in a Business School dormitory which overlooks at least a part of the secret football field, his qualifications as a sports writer are based upon his ability as an amateur hockey player and the possession of a W.O. McGeehanesque acepticism. As a hockey player, Mr. Lynch was one of Boston's best amateur puck-stoppers and this position naturally gave him a detached view of the game that was bound to make him a student of the ice sport. Though still an undergraduate, the rotund Hearst man is already the Boston American's hockey expert and as such he "does", besides his Harvard sports, all the professional hockey games in Boston. His prowess as a hockey referee makes him one of the most sought-after of ice officials so that, though still in the cub stage, he has referred some 125 games.

Very few things that Mr. Lynch sees in an athletic way are not "in the bag." Even college athletes, according to his views on the subject, don't die for dear old Rutgers without the Rutgers A.A. assuring responsibility for funeral expenses. No master is a hero to his valet, and very few athletes are anything but names to Mr. Lynch.

Of course, this is just his personal opinion, and doesn't appear in the stories he writes. Hot tips on "dark-haired Woburn boys" and "phantom half backs" are his specialty, but while his typewriter is busy clicking off these potent concoctions. Ted is not very much fooled, and casual observers may note a bulge in his left cheek as he builds a second string tackle and third string guard with a "likely-looking monkey wrench in Yale's classy juggernaut."

The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe has the distinction of having in its employ the dean of all Harvard sports writers, Melville E. Webb, Jr, known more familiarly as "Mell". "Mell" has probably seen more Harvard football games than Mike Denihan, and is the most veteran follower of the Crimson's fortunes. Mr. Webb covered his first Harvard game when the Crimson met Pennsylvania in 1895, and he has not missed any important games since then.

As dean of Harvard writers, Mr. Webb is in charge of the Stadium Press Box, and as those who have tried to crash the sacred portals will testify, he runs it in a very efficient manner. The system of "spotters", announcers, and operators, explained elsewhere in this issue, is his invention, and makes the Harvard press box one of the easiest to work in.

Besides his administrative duties, Mr. Webb does considerable writing. Every Saturday he shatters the doctrine that only one thing can be done at one time, for while Harvard and Yale will be battling on the turf this afternoon. Mr. Webb will be keeping a chart of the game, observing the individual play of each of the 22 men; but the "System" will be running the press box.

Not only is "Mell" the dean of Harvard writers, but he does not hesitate to associate with the callow Harvard correspondents who get their news daily form the official spokesman of Soldiers Field. True, he does not depend entirely upon this source, for his friendship with coaches, officials and former players is a wide one, but he is on the spot almost every afternoon when the news is given out.

Besides his duties as college sports editor of the Globe, Mr. Webb writes professional baseball and hockey for his paper. He is the New England College Sports correspondent for several New York and Philadelphia papers.

Mr. Webb's style, like the Globe style in general, depends upon facts. He is not unconscious of the drama of football, but he is not given to printing intimate little scenes from the lives of great college athletes. He seldom wakes a coach up in bed, and if he does he does not describe the tone of his voice. When facts are not available, Mr. Webb's hunches are based on the facts of the past, plus such facts as he learns through his contacts.

The Boston Herald

Richard Hapgood is the power behind the typewriter on which the Boston Herald's news is daily pounded out. He prepared for Harvard at Andover, and graduated from the University in the class of 1925. His dignity makes up for what it loses in not being paraded through the Herald sport columns on a "by-line" by the fact that he has an office of notorious hospitality in the Cambridge Savings Bank Building. If the mere possession of an office with all rent paid is not sufficient to prove Dick a thoroughly good correspondent, let it be mentioned that he possesses a Ford which has served as official conveyance of the press this fall.

Hapgood's jovial plumpness is kept from developing into uncomfortable obesity by at least weekly workouts on the Charles in a single shell. When this turbulent river is frozen over, Dick, versatile athlete that he is, turns to fancy skating. He is a member of the Boston Skating Club and those who have seen him perform in the Boston Arena say that he cuts a mean figure "S".

He is a capable correspondent, and it is seldom that anything interesting or uninteresting can take place around Cambridge without its finding its way into the columns of the Herald via Hapgood. His pleasant easy-going style is famous for taking a longer space to say nothing than the style of any other one of the similarly accomplished Harvard correspondents. On some mornings when the official spokesman of the H.A.A. has been especially vague and Hapgood's football story has been exceptionally long. Dick has been known to break down and tearfully confess that, long as the story was, it had been cut mercilessly by the Herald copy editors.

The Boston Post

Readers of the great breakfast-table paper of New England find their Harvard news pour le sport under the line "By Roger Birtwell." Mr. Birtwell is one of the most unmistakable of the correspondents who frequent the Soldiers Field Locker Building, Harvard Square, and the Cambridge Savings Bank Building.

He appears as a long man shrouded in a tight-fitting overcoat. At one time, he affected iron hats, or derbies, under which his benevolent spectacles gave an effect of incongruity. Of late, he has reverted to soft hats, less like the headgear of the proverbial hotel detectives.

According to his own statement, he "attended Exeter for four years", and entered Harvard with the Class of 1922. He did not graduate, not because he loved Harvard less, but because he loved journalism more, and preferred writing about Harvard sport to sitting in the stone seats in the Stadium.

Although he has been covering Harvard sportdom for only five years, he possessses an encyclopaedic knowledge of Soldiers Field doings within the memory of man. With very little encourage- ment he will give the scores and details of Harvard football games between any two given points in the past 20 years. His brothers in the fraternity of the press turn to him as to Volume XXII of the Britannica.

Mr. Birtwell's style affects the colorful and dramatic. By deft combinations of his typewriter keys he can invest an incident of seeming insignificance with an ours of mystery, a glamor of confidential secrecy, or a cloak of magnificent magnitude. At times he adopts, and very successfully, the attitude of an author of "Things I Shouldn't Tell". The fact that he never does tell them only renders his writings more interesting to the reader.

An inexhaustible fund of stories, suited to all climes, ages, and moods, makes him one of the most congenial of the Cambridge newspapermen. It is not so much the stories which he tells, as those which he might tell, which renders him a popular speaker in any gathering of the Fourth Estate. His popularity with the fraternity is increased by his ability to be, on occasion, a very good listener.

When a person has something to say, the bespectacled scribe can generally be relied upon to extract the important features of the matter. Perhaps it is his glasses, or his ingratiating air, or his professed fondness for aesthetics, which gives him the faculty of getting statements on vital issues where others have failed lamentably. With a minimum of apparent effort, he covers as much ground as any of his fellow football recorders.

The Boston Transcript

The Transcript is so much a Boston and Harvard tradition that it is only with deepest reverence that this article is approached. One cannot lightly review the Bible or Shakespeare, and the Transcript is probably read a good deal more widely among Harvard men than either of these other classics.

Writing football, and Harvard sports in general, for this paper, is Mr. George Carens. Here again reverence and great humility is needed. It is no simple ordinary task to sit down and write of a newspaperman who has lunch with William T. Tilden 2nd "Big Bill", Mr. Carens would call him, just like that who drops into Mower Hall, and engages in pillow fights with the first-string half back of the University eleven, who wakes up Mr. Bingham at midnight, who knows just what the Harvard stroke told the cox at the 3 3-4 mile mark, and who talks with Tad Jones before Fishwich has even finished dressing. Such a man, it is obvious, is no scribe, no more athletic back. He is an artist, an author, a man with important contacts.

Perhaps the fact that the Transcript does not appear until after all the morning papers have explained in great detail the features of the games and practices, that makes Mr. Carens a searcher after side-lights. It would be patently ridiculous for him to write a play-by-play account of the Saturday games, or even discuss the strategy of the rival elevens, on Monday afternoon after all the others papers had done this. Thus it is that Mr. Carnes is driven to seeking boudoir interviews with the Crimson athletes, the recording of quaint statistics, and the unearthing of other "an'des".

Even more important is the work that Mr. Carens does as the undeniable authority on Harvard athletic policy. No man, at least so it seems, is so thoroughly informed as to what is going on inside Mr. Bingham's mind as the genial Transcript news gatherer. He is seldom seen on Soldiers Field for the afternoon practice sessions, but he spends a good deal of time at the Harvard Athletic Association during the morning hours. He but seldom waits for Harvard news to be released through the official spokesman, much preferring to get his stuff straight from Harvard's athletic head in an intimate manner.

Mr. Carens is, of course, a very welcome guest at the H.A.A. He is to be envied and is by the other Harvard correspondents his "entree." Perhaps the fact that he always has something nice to say, no matter how badly the team played, no matter what evil deeds were done, may have something to do with his having the goodwill and confidence of the Harvard sports authorities.

The Boston Traveler

The Boston Herald's sister sheet, the evening Traveler, is graced with having on its staff, the greatest athlete who ever graduated from Boston Latin. In his final year at school, Frank Ryan played on no less than four major teams--football, hockey, baseball, and track, we think it was. Nor was he any mere substitute in these sports, a specialty drop kicker or a pinch hitter. Quite contrary, he captained three of the four teams on which he played.

From school, Mr. Ryan went to Boston College, but transferred after a year to Harvard. But at Harvard, Mr. Ryan was not known for his athletic ability but as one of the most brilliant scholars of his class, a man who graduated with honors in English in three years.

If these two careers are taken into consideration, it is natural that Mr. Ryan should be an expert writer on football and sports in general. He has, besides, a manner that makes it hard, evidently, to refuse him news. It would not be kind, or perhaps even safe, to tell Mr. Ryan that there is "nothing for publication".

Incidentally, Mr. Ryan, besides knowing the King's English and Harvard's football, also knows his college spirit. Vide, for instance the following, taken from his account of the Penn game:

"For one thing, this Harvard indifference is being worked to death. The team left Cambridge with no demonstration.... There were two graduates waiting for it when it arirved in New York. Rather a poor way to support even a losing team. The Harvard undergraduate body shows that it hasn't much spirit, and the editors of the Crimson show they have none." As nice a lift of straight forward reasoning as ever clinched a point for an expert on college spirit.

Attaches

The men who, though they seldom write a line aid vastly in the dissemination of Harvard football news, can scarcely be forgotten. Sitting, nominally at least, at the top of the hierarchy of the H.A.A. publicity department, is S. deJ. Osborne '26, while in college manager of both the football and track team. A step below him stand George Baker '25 and A.M. Blackburn '28, acting publicity direc-1