My Library

Numerous other media types subsequently visited the ASPR, and left equally uninspired with regard to "visual materials." But the overall upshot was that the venerable ASPR now had more potentially positive media interest than at any other time in its history. And members of its Board antagonistic to Dr. Karlis Osis, the ASPR’s central feature, STILL DID NOT get the message. * Ruth Hagy Brod got her ball rolling almost immediately. I was soon told to suit up in order to take lunch with her at the Overseas Press Club at noon on Thursday, September 29, 1972, that Club residing on Park Avenue South in New York City. Thank goodness I had lost nearly nineteen pounds during the two weeks of the pneumonia affair, and so I could get into some of my more up-stat suits. Press Clubs worldwide constitute conveniences for media types who can go and take a few or more sustaining beverages, meanwhile finding out what’s going on behind the scenes, what gossip is thumping about, in order not only to discover "leads" but what everyone else is officially and unofficially saying about them. As I had learned from my wage-slave days at the United Nations, media types consider themselves sort of a communal brotherhood which has a number of unwritten codes -- one of which is to try achieve newsworthy consistency among themselves when reporting on this or that story. One such consistency has to do with "angles" as to whether a given event or personality target is to be consistently dumped upon, played down or up, or consistently supported as significant.