The Big Story
Bobby Sox Hustling, Girl Gangs & Vice
by
The Big Story turns the work of newspaper reporters into radio drama, presenting stories inspired by journalists’ investigations and the people behind them. This episode spotlights Paul Schoenstein of the New York Journal-American, a crime reporter and editor whose work is associated here with two reporters, Jim Huran and Leon Racht.
The account centers on vice raids in Manhattan, with Harlem raids forming part of the story’s reported background. The broadcast’s closing telegram connects the dramatization to raids in early 1938, when newspaper reports described hundreds of arrests. Rather than offering a straightforward news report, the program shapes investigative journalism into a dramatic narrative about reporting, police activity, and the effort to expose wrongdoing.
Schoenstein is presented as a forceful, resourceful newspaperman, skilled at getting to the heart of a story and pressing for public action. The episode offers a crime-and-newsroom drama grounded in the work of a real reporter, with the tension coming from the pursuit of facts and the consequences of bringing them to light.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.