Deadline

Mark Johnson on the following story from Mike Berger: It’s about 60 years old, but is the best piece of deadline writing I think I’ve ever read. According to the explanation, Meyer Berger was assigned to the story shortly before 11 a.m., caught a train from N.Y. to Camden, N.J. and turned in 4,000 words by 9:20 p.m., an hour before deadline. One account has it that Berger interviewed 50 people that day for his story and wrote it in 2 hours. However he did it, it is amazing.

However he did it, it is amazing.

Here’s Mike Berger’s story: CAMDEN, N.J., Sept.6–Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed twelve persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden this morning. He wounded four others.

Unruh, a slender, hollow-cheeked six-footer paradoxically devoted to scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history of mental illness but specialists indicated tonight that there was no doubt that he was a psychiatric case, and that he had secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more.