Jim Haynes wrote:

William Shirer's autobiography tells of his years in Paris as a sportswriter
for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. They would receive the scores
of U.S. college football games by cable (very costly) at the end of each
quarter. He would then fabricate a written description of the game to
publish in the paper. He tells how much fun it was to go into the bars
frequented by Americans after the paper came out and hear the animated
discussions of the previous day's games.

In his Damon Runyon bio Jimmy Breslin notes that Runyon would have a fellow
writer show his his scorecard for a game that Runyon had missed and he would
write a story replete with diving catches and bench clearing brawls.



James Thurber worked for the paper at the same time. His specialty was
fabricating speeches of Calvin Coolidge. Those were the days when
newspapers printed the full text of Presidential speeches. They would
receive word by cable that Pres. Coolidge had gone to such and such a
place and given a speech on such and such a topic; and Thurber could
write a perfectly plausible rendition of what Coolidge might have said.

If Col. McCormick in Chicago had known what was going on in Paris he
would have fired the lot of them.
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jhhaynes at earthlink dot net

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