The Press: Pretty Much Routine

As the second edition rumbled off the presses at 12:10 a.m. Thursday morning last week, the New York Times radio room picked up a staccato message from the sealanes off Nantucket Island: POSITION 40.34 N, 69.45 W . . . INSPECTING OUR

DAMAGE. Flashed to the third-floor city room, the SOS was the first any Manhattan newspaper knew of the collision between the Italian liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish American Line's Stockholm (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). The Times stopped its presses, hustled to cover the story. In the next 36 hours it proved once again what newsmen have known ever since the...