Manhattan Merry-Go-Round

It was 4:18 p.m., and in the littered city rooms of Manhattan's four afternoon papers, the day was all but done. Most staffers had knocked off; the desks had released the legmen who had kept watch up at the Russian consulate. Soon the men on the Babe Ruth watch, at Memorial Hospital a mile away, could go home, leaving the watch to the morning papers. Next door to the Soviet consulate, half a dozen photographers idled. Across the street three reporters lolled in the lobby of the Hotel Pierre.

A minute later, at 4:19, Mrs. Oksana Kosenkina jumped out a window of the consulate (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), and the most sensational story of the week tumbled right into the lap of the press. The men went to work on it as swiftly as firemen sliding down a pole.

From the Pierre, the A.P.'s Vincent O'Mahoney saw the photographers come to life. He dashed out, with the Daily News's Frank Ross and the Daily Mirror's Ara Piastre at his heels. While they stared at the crumpled figure in the courtyard, Russian-speaking Reporter Piastre (daughter of Conductor Mishel Piastre) heard her moaning "Ostavte! Ostavte!" (Later, only the Herald Tribune went out of its way to credit Miss Piastro with the translation: "Leave me alone.")

All's Fare. It was 4:33 when the police ticker tapped out the news. City rooms broke into a well-ordered uproar. Flagged by telephone, the reporters at Babe Ruth's hospital hustled over to the consulate in a taxicab. They almost missed their editions: all four had just been cleaned out in a poker game, and the cab driver refused to let them out until they had ransacked their pockets for enough nickels & dimes to pay him off.

Barred from the consulate, the press had a troubled half hour making sure that it was really the schoolmarm who had jumped. The conservative Sun, no slouch at handling a fast-breaking story, won the race to tell the news. It hit the street with an eight-column headline at 5:06 without at first identifying the woman.

Indecent Exposures. By next morning the story was on front pages all over the country. The New York Times wrapped it up in nine lively columns, including an eyewitness account by its Johnny-on-the-spot photographer, Fred Sass--but not including any of his pictures. An editor explained: "Her skirt was way up over her legs, and the Times doesn't print pictures like that." Everybody else did.

There were minor conflicts in the hip-shooting coverage; the dotted-line artists couldn't agree whether Mrs. Kosenkina jumped two floors or three (it was three).

By week's end, the Journal-American persuaded itself that the story was "already the most sensational cause celebre since the days of the Dreyfus case in France." The Communist Daily Worker announced darkly that it "was timed with the negotiations for a peace settlement in Germany--and timed to prevent such a peace settlement."

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