Legwork in Megalopolis

It was one of the worst subway accidents in New York City's history, and the New York Times emptied its news room to cover the story. Three dozen Times reporters galloped to the scene. They not only outnumbered all rival reporting teams, but proved almost as numerous as the accident victims.

That happened 31 years ago. And, in the opinion of Abraham Michael Rosenthal, 41, who now commands the Times's 160-man army of local news men, it was symptomatic of much that has long ailed the Times's coverage of its own home town. The mere fact that so many hands could be mustered so fast for any single story suggests to Rosenthal that a lot of Times reporters must have been sitting around the news room. It is Rosenthal's fervent conviction that the newsroom is the last place a reporter should be. News doesn't break there. In the seven months that Abe Rosenthal has been the Times's metropolitan editor, this conviction--and Timesmen's leg muscles--has gotten plenty of exercise.

Herculean Task. Rosenthal's staff is kept so busy these days that a hallowed Times institution, the newsroom pinochle game, has been brushed into history. Where once a Times reporter was lucky to get one story a week, he now gets more than he can handle. In the old days, a cub reporter spent his first six weeks writing radio copy for WQXR, the Times's station; today he is likely to go out on a story his first day on the job. "If anything, we overload him," says Rosenthal. "We want to see what he's got."

That might not seem remarkable to most other U.S. city editors. Nor is Rosenthal's conviction that a city cannot be covered from a desk exactly revolutionary. But then the Times is the Times, and New York is New York. Traditionally, Times readers have been better informed about events in Ghana or Gulistan than developments in their own backyard. One reason is that even with the Times's resources, covering New York City and its populous suburbs is a herculean problem. The megalopolis, from Greenwich, Conn., to Greenwich Village, East Hampton to the West 90s, encompasses one of the world's most diffuse, complex and heterogeneous clutter of communities. No single daily can easily reach all the assorted facets and tastes of Greater New York. In fact, none of Manhattan's dailies has ever really bothered to try.

Newsroom Nashua. Last summer, when Times Managing Editor Turner Catledge invited Rosenthal to do just that, there were those on the paper who felt that the boss had lost his mind. In 15 years Rosenthal proved to be one cf the paper's liveliest and most perceptive foreign correspondents, but he had little administrative experience. Says Catledge: "I was asked, 'Why plant a crack foreign correspondent like Abe in the newsroom?' My answer is: 'Why did they put Nashua out to stud when he was winning races?' "

Challenged and excited by a city that to him was as strange and fascinating as any foreign capital, Rosenthal got off to a fast start by putting an end to the endless round of staff conferences that had kept his predecessor deskbound. Instead he began to prowl his new exotic beat--and he found stories just about everywhere he went. One of the strangest local stories in recent years came to him in just this casual fashion. Lunching one day with New York City Police Commissioner Michael Murphy, Rosenthal asked about the public image of New York's Finest. Not good, admitted Murphy, and he gave an example. From the public's fear of involvement with the police came the Times's Page One story last month of a woman in Queens who had been murdered within sight or sound of 38 neighbors--not one of whom called the police during the 35 minutes in which the screaming victim was stalked and repeatedly stabbed by the killer. From Hearst's evening New York Journal-American, the Times's story evoked one of journalism's highest compliments. Together with an admiring note of its own ("The New York Times did an important job for New Yorkers today"), the Journal-American reprinted the Times story verbatim on the front page of its second section.

Setting the Standards. Rosenthal's imaginativeness and enthusiasm infected his staff. All New York City papers naturally carried the story when a group of young civil rights demonstrators stalled rush-hour traffic on New York's Triborough Bridge. But the Times went beyond the event to delve into the motives of the demonstrators, came up with some memorable insights into a youth movement militantly eager to protest not just for civil rights but against practically all of society's ills. Rosenthal's casual observation while apartment hunting, that there seemed to be a lot of unmanly men on Third Avenue in the 50s, sparked a thoughtful and--for the Times--daring study of homosexuality in the city.

The Times may not yet have fully earned its merit badge as a local paper, but Abe Rosenthal has at least got everybody working for one. "It's sometimes forgotten," he said last week, "that the New York Times is a paper for New Yorkers. This is a hell of a sophisticated city, and the paper should reflect it. I want to make the standards for local writing and reporting at least as high as anything else in the paper. And maybe higher."

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