THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION

Obviously grounded in Sylvester's own twenty odd years in the newspaper business, this is a fairly facile if loosely focussed story of one reporter in the heyday of big by-lines and crusading journalism. In the story of Ned Gorse, this follows his career from cub reporter to city editor, his first splash on the New York Globe in an expose of city tenements after a slum fire, the meeting with Vicki Stanton, the Assistant D.A.'s girl, whom Gorse is to marry. And through the years there is always the rub between his personal and professional life, as Vicki, will have no part of Hodgman, publisher of the Globe, later breaks with Gorse when he insists- on the evidence of a dubious witness- on reopening the prosecution of a murder case, forfeits human values for the sake of a story. The speedup of this business, the slowdown in alcohol, this follows the accepted preconceptions of the newspaper world, the way it probably was rather than is.