How I got the job

(The Tribune was the establishment voice, but the Chicago Sun-Times, its morning competitor, was in many respects the best of the four dailies in that town, and the perfect place for a kid like me to learn how to compete in the big leagues. It had the hungriest and most talented staff of reporters, and the editors who knew how to deploy them. We were every bit the Trib’s equal in quality, and could even imagine in some distant time overtaking the Other Paper in circulation.)

When I came back to Lawrence for my senior year at the University of Kansas in September of 1965, I got serious about a job after graduation the following spring. Today the idea of a kid right out of college being hired by a metropolitan daily newspaper is the stuff of fantasy. In fact, by the mid 1970s it seemed to rarely occur. But there existed in the mid 1960s this sweet spot of supply and demand. The newspapers made lots of money and needed people. You didn’t necessarily have to spend years in the farm leagues. I was simply lucky by reason of my date of birth to even think of pulling off what I was about to launch.

Ken Smart, the city editor at the Dallas Times Herald, where I had just interned, had said to keep in touch, which was next to a job offer (he later made one). My chances at the Kansas City Star were good, too; I’d been the KU stringer to the Star for more than a year, and they seemed pleased with my work. Mike Miller, the KU stringer before me, became a Star lifer.

But what I really wanted was a job in Chicago. Chicago represented the apex of my world, the top of the pyramid, the capital of American journalism with four daily newspapers and the capital of American railroading, where every line seemed to meet. I downplayed the railroad part to people because it made me seem irrational, but such was and remains my love of that business that getting to Chicago mattered everything to me.

I had four choices, four potential employers, in Chicago. The Tribune I had no use for, and the same with Chicago’s American, the Tribune Company’s afternoon paper. The class act in Chicago, I thought, was the Chicago Daily News, the afternoon newspaper owned by Field Enterprises. It looked great—I had developed a liking for newspaper design—and read like a Midwest version of the New York Herald-Tribune. That’s my way of saying the Daily News people were of a literary bent and seemed to step back half a step from events and consider The Big Picture, which impressed me. I set my sights on getting aboard the Daily News. But then Charlie Corcoran messed with my mind.

Charles Adam Corcoran was (like me) a fourth-year journalism student who the previous summer had interned at the Chicago Sun-Times, a morning tabloid and sister to the Daily News in the Field Enterprise fold. Charlie, a Long Islander, transferred to KU from Hofstra University after his sophomore year, and the two of us became tight. He was irrepressible. Charlie said the Sun-Times had a younger staff than the Daily News and that the Sun-Times people were light years better in quality. The Daily News people went around with frowns on their faces, he said, while the Sun-Times folks had a lot of fun. And the Sun-Times was getting better whereas the Daily News sort of floated along.  Charlie went on and on like this—just wouldn’t shut up.

So instead of scanning only the Daily News and Herald-Trib (my two favorite papers) in the J-school library every day, I added the Sun-Times to the mix. Charlie also lent me a tabloid-sized book the newspaper had recently published explaining and illustrating its highly innovative design. The genius behind the fresh, bright look at the tabloid newspaper every day was Quentin P. Gore, a Tennessean (Al Gore’s cousin, legend has it) and assistant managing editor. Gore said no two Sun-Times front pages ever looked remotely the same, and as I looked at the hundreds of examples in his book, I had to agree.

Charlie did his sales job well. I decided to write letters to the city editors of both the Daily News and Sun-Times to tout my qualifications and ask for a job. I can’t recall who ran the Daily News city desk. The Sun-Times city editor was Jim Hoge, described by Charlie as young, handsome, rich, and incredibly smart. As I came to discover, Hoge was all those things.

The two letters went out in early December. Then I waited. My wife Maggie and I were visiting my parents in Texas over Christmas break when the phone rang. Mom picked it up, listened, and handed the receiver to me. “Somebody named Hoge,” she said. I swallowed and said hello.

Hoge said he’d gotten my letter, read my clips, and was interested. Could I come see him in late January and talk this over in person? So on Sunday, January 30, Maggie and I drove from eastern Kansas to Chicago. Maggie wanted to go to law school and had gotten appointments at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago on Monday.

It was a brutally cold day. Over the radio as we drove up U.S. Highway 66 in our 1956 Chevy, WLS reported that at 2 o’clock that afternoon the temperature had finally climbed above zero for the first time in 96 hours. We got to our hotel near the Water Tower late that evening, excited and exhausted at the same time.

Monday morning at 10 o’clock sharp I entered 401 N. Wabash and was directed to the fourth floor. In the newsroom, Hoge’s administrative assistant, Irma Weiner, was surprised to see me. She had never heard of me, actually. “Mr. Hoge won’t be here today,” Irma said, looking uncomfortable. “He and his wife are skiing in Colorado.” But she got on the phone and located Hoge somewhere in the Rockies. “He says he’s sorry and asks if you could come back at 10 tomorrow.” I said sure and spent the day watching trains.

Back I went on Tuesday morning. This time I really did get to meet James Fulton Hoge Jr. Raised in New York City, he was the son of a partner in a white-glove law firm and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale University, and then (for good measure) the University of Chicago. From there he appears to have gone straight to the Washington bureau of the Sun-Times. His wife Alice Patterson Albright came from Chicago royalty. Her grandfather was Joseph Patterson, founder of the fabulously successful tabloid New York Daily News, and Patterson’s grandfather was Joseph Medill, founder of the fabulously successful Chicago Tribune. Just thinking about this today makes my sinuses sore. By 1964, still shy of age 30 and a journalism rock star, Hoge had become city editor of the Sun-Times.

The man totally unnerved me. Look, he had movie star looks and, so far as I could tell then, Einstein brains. You couldn’t help but notice his thick blond hair, piercing blue eyes and Kirk Douglas chin. Everything he wore looked as if it had been cut by the tailor’s scissors, because it probably had. He spoke with authority and (according to Charlie) had the loyalty of his staff. To put this another way, Jim Hoge was all the things I was not.

I cannot recall a single thing that was said that morning. Our meeting was brief. Hoge had been on vacation and had lots to do. I think he was inclined all along to hire me but wanted to look me over first and make sure I didn’t slobber as I spoke. Hoge said he’d soon be in touch. I collected my wife at the hotel, and we drove like crazy back to Kansas.

A few weeks later I got a letter. Or maybe it was a phone call. Whichever, Hoge wanted to know when I could start work. I’d start at $112.50 per week, union scale for newbies.

Hooray! Freddie Frailey from Sulphur Springs, Tex., had made The Big Time!

I thanked Charlie Corcoran then for beating common sense into me. I tried to thank him again the other day, and all I got when I Googled his name was an obituary.

PS: Maggie got a full scholarship to Northwestern University’s School of Law.

PPS: The following summer, the post office in Lawrence forwarded a letter to me in Chicago. It was from the city editor of the Chicago Daily News. He had just assumed his new duties. In going through his desk, he came across the letter I had written his predecessor—the letter that never drew a response. The new guy was impressed. Did I still want a job at the Daily News? I walked to the other side of the fourth floor, introduced myself, and thanked him sincerely for the offer. I think how this all worked out was God’s plan for me.