Muscle journalism includes the gentle arts of kidnapping, wire tapping, burglary, bribery, plus cunning and unlimited nerve. Frank Carson gave it its name and was one of its chief practitioners. Out of it, in the '20s, came journalistic legends and one ripsnorting play, The Front Page.
Last week when Frank Carson, 60, died, Playwright Charles MacArthur (coauthor with Ben Hecht of The Front Page} declared: "He was the newspaperman's dream of a city editor—a hatchet man with a heart of gold."
In Carson's desk, at Hearst's Chicago Herald & Examiner, was an arsenal of blank...