He resolved upon a radical
departure, a revolution from the policy of satisfying petty vanity and
tradition within the office to a policy of satisfying the demands of the
public.
He gave Segur temporary charge of the editorial page, and, taking a desk in
the news-room, centred his attention upon news and the news-staff. But he
was careful not to agitate and antagonise those whose cooperation was
necessary to success. He made only one change in the management; he retired
old Bowring on a pension and appointed to the city editorship one of the
young reporters--Frank Cumnock.
He chose Cumnock for this position, in many respects the most important on
the staff of a New York daily, because he wrote well, was a judge of good
writing, had a minute knowledge of New York and its neighbourhood and,
finally and chiefly, because he had a "news-sense," keener than that of any
other man on the paper.
For instance, there was the murder of old Thayer, the rich miser in East
Sixteenth Street. It was the sensation in all the newspapers for two weeks.
Then they dropped it as an unsolvable mystery. Cumnock persuaded Mr.
Bowring to let him keep on. After five days' work he heard of a deaf and
dumb woman who sat every afternoon at a back window of her flat overlooking
the back windows of Thayer's house.
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