A.P.--the Story of News

A GEORGIA newspaper man one day in 1918 was engaged in answering endless telephone inquiries into the authenticity or otherwise of a World War I Armistice report. He told them all that the State Department had at last verified the report. Still this didn’t satisfy one testy old lady. ‘Pshaw!’ she retorted. ‘Does the Associated Press say it?’ Such is the reputation for accuracy that the A.P. has built up in the ninety-five years of its existence. To accuracy in later years was added speed, and the world’s greatest news-gathering organization has managed, miraculously, to run these attributes in harness. The story of its achievements is told in the careful manner which characterizes an A. P. dispatch. But this is the only likeness. Mr. Gramling shows us the long procession of A. P. reporters engaged in their work all around the globe. I he consolation of the newspaper man used to be that if he couldn’t retire with three acres and a cow, at least he would get an obituary notice. This book gives him an added honor. The record of the A.P., however, does more than that — it is a part of the American history which it has recounted with so much zeal and integrity. Here is one of the American institutions in which Americans might well take pride.