![]() ![]() “With a hearty laugh, the President accepted the token from Press Club Chairman Walter Ames,” the story said. “President Truman yesterday was pre- sented with a replica of the Los Angeles Press Club’s eight ball-traditionally used at the speakers’ table when guests talk off the record,” reads the accompanying story. There, on the jump page of the Los Angeles Examiner’s Jaccount of President Harry Truman’ s visit to the city, is a photo of the cheery Missourian hefting a little eight ball atop a statuette. The occasion was the club’s most famous day, which came only a year after its founding. The answer to this bit of club lore is buried deep inside the battered, leather- bound scrapbook of the early years of the budding Los Angeles Press Club. But to anyone who has grown up smoth- ered in such newspaper lingo as ledes, heds, subheds, grafs, tick-tocks, thumb- suckers and the hallowed “inverted pyra- mid,” the term “eight ball” leaves most baffled. As mysteries go, it hardly ranks with such enduring issues as the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction or the ultimate fate of the Belmont Learning Center.īut in Press Club circles, it’s a ques- tion that occasionally piques curiosity: why is the monthly newsletter called “The 8 Ball?” ![]()
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