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Gunned down
A Crime Beat Lesson
I learned long ago that “people” make the news. And how unfair life can be.
It clicked one Friday night 60 years ago during a fatal holdup in a dingy Boston neighborhood.
A shopkeeper’s murder was a senseless tragedy. This 18 year old Journalism student’s lesson happened on the fly.
My newswriting class with renowned editor Harold Banks was a streetwise plunge into deadline reporting.
Gathering facts to update a story while on the run was a valued skill.
As I scanned old classwork years later, Professor Banks’ cross outs, style tips and inverted pyramid prompts filled my yellowed pages.
It was a road map of how he wrestled my first news writing foray into a readable story.
The savvy newspaper mastermind helped young aspiring writers through basic training. It was boot camp on the crime beat.
The art of reporting and newswriting dawned on me in a clatter of teletype and whispered phone calls deep within Boston Police Headquarters in 1967.
