Editors: Watchdog in Chicago

On one of his first assignments for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1923, Cub Reporter Milburn Peter Akers followed a sack of potatoes from farmer to housewife to find out why they were so expensive. He handed in a story that had plenty of potatoes but no meat. He had failed to question critically each middleman's excuse for jacking up the price. When the city editor read the piece, he tore it to shreds and bellowed: "You let everybody impose on your credulity!" "On the way back to my desk," recalls Akers, "I looked up credulity in the dictionary....

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