Stop, er, start the presses!
By: James F. Lee
When Richard Kluger walked across Princeton University’s McCosh Quad on his way to class around 9:30 on the morning of April 18, 1955, the Monday issue of The Daily Princetonian, Princeton’s student newspaper, had already come out. Yet he overheard some people talking about the big news news that wasn’t in that day’s edition. Einstein was dead.
Mr. Kluger, chairman (or editor-in-chief) of the "Prince," would win a Pulitzer Prize 40 years later for "Ashes to Ashes," an indictment of the tobacco industry. But for now, he had made up his mind to do one of the toughest things for a college daily to do: come out with an extra.
He immediately turned around and headed for The Daily Princetonian office on University Place, and a few hours later under a screaming headline EINSTEIN DIES! the students at Princeton beat the big-city morning papers.
Richard Kluger never made it to class that day.
At the Prince office, R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr. was already typing away, hammering out the lead story. The future associate editor of The New York Times had already been to Princeton Hospital and had confirmed Einstein’s death directly from the great mathematician’s housekeeper.
"Apple was the guy," said Mr. Kluger.
"On fire with enthusiasm," said classmate Paul Klingensmith.
Johnny Apple never made it to class that day, either but, then, he never did anyway.
Mr. Kluger figured he had about three hours until lunch, when a special edition could be distributed near the dining halls and eating clubs on Prospect Street. And he also knew that his reporters wouldn’t be showing up for assignments until that afternoon for the next day’s issue.
So he had to round up some people in a hurry to jump on this story. Somehow, he got hold of Eberhard Faber IV (of pencil fame) and Robert Bolgard. They were told to get on the phone to get reaction from prominent people.
Together, they got quotes from J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for Advanced Study; John Von Neumann from the Atomic Energy Commission; Allen Shenstone, chairman of Princeton’s Physics Department; and Princeton President Harold W. Dodds.
Mr. Faber even tried President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "but I couldn’t get a hold of him," he said.
By late morning, they had the story nailed: two bylined stories above the fold, Mr. Apple’s news piece and the Faber-Bolgard reactions, and two smaller stories without byline below the fold. The back of the single sheet contained a full-page ad from the Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain.
That afternoon, they would start on Tuesday’s regular edition of the paper. Before that, though, they had to get the special printed and distributed and, to do that, they had to deal with Larry Dupraz.
Mr. Dupraz, a union printer from the Princeton Herald, a weekly newspaper in Princeton, was subcontracted to the Prince, and printed the paper five nights a week for more than 35 years. A stickler for detail (things like spelling and punctuation), he ran printing production with a firm hand.
William Greider who would find success with the Washington Post, Rolling Stone and The Nation and as the author of several bestsellers, including "The Soul of Capitalism" and "Who Will Tell the People" said Larry was the kind of guy who would drop a hot slug of lead type in your pocket if you were being a wise ass. Truly an unforgettable character.
Mr. Dupraz, now 86 and still living in Princeton (and still a consultant for tThe Daily Princetonian), puts it best: "I’d tear into the kids quite a bit. I’m a perfectionist. That’s why those guys from way back remember me." Last year’s Prince editor-in-chief, Zachary Goldfarb, calls it "institutional memory."
In those former days, once the stories were written, sophomore staffers, called associate editors, took turns at night assisting with printing the paper, usually starting around 11 and getting through as late as 2 or 3 in the morning. Generally, there were three editors per night one to copy-edit, one to write headlines and a main editor. Often the chairman or managing editor would come in to see how things were going.
The Herald operated a flat-bed press. A linotype operator would type out the stories. Mr. Dupraz would put story galleys of type on a steel frame and put the galleys on to the press. He would run the hot-metal press then put the pages together as they came off the press and were cut into sections.
Photographs were run down to Trenton every day to an engraving company and made into halftones. They were brought back to the printing shop about 1:30 a.m.
Around 4:30, some students would come in to distribute. Another student would mail out to subscribers.
This is what the students had done the night before and would do again that night, but for now they had the one-page special to put out. And they did it assigning, writing, printing and distributing by early afternoon hours before the professional, commercial press.
After 50 years, memories can be a little hazy, and one point about the Prince’s coverage of Einstein’s death raises an interesting question: Which Prince reporter first went to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Study to check things out? Managing Editor John Doyle insists that he and Chairman Kluger went that day, where "we just stood there for a few minutes and left. Nobody else was there." Mr. Kluger can’t remember this but, of course, his mind was occupied at the time with a thousand details.
On the other hand, Associate Editor William Tangney says he was first there that day, assigned by his roommate, John Doyle. Mr. Tangney convinced Einstein’s longtime secretary to lend him a key to the office. Alone for a few minutes with the door locked, he was free to look around. One thing Mr. Tangney remembers is finding on a shelf beside Einstein’s desk a copy of Erle Stanley Gardner’s "The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde," a bit of information he kindly kept to himself. At this point, a Life magazine reporter was knocking at the door. The student let him in.
Once again the Prince had beaten the pros. Maybe now they could get to class.

