Editing Ben Hecht (section)

===Journalist===
[[File:Hecht Earlyportrait.JPG|thumb|{{center|Hecht in 1919}}]]
From 1918 to 1919, Hecht served as war correspondent in [[Berlin]] for the ''[[Chicago Daily News]]''. According to [[Scott Siegel|Barbara and Scott Siegel]], "Besides being a war reporter, he was noted for being a tough crime reporter<ref>Jobb, Dean (2015). ''Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation''. New York: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.</ref> while also becoming known in Chicago literary circles".<ref name=Siegel/>

In 1921, Hecht inaugurated a ''Daily News'' column, ''One Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago''. While it lasted, the column was enormously influential. His editor, Henry Justin Smith, later said it represented a new concept in journalism: 
{{blockquote|the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often flatly unimaginatively told, lay life; that in this urban life there dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote places, either, but walking the downtown streets, peering from the windows of sky scrapers, sunning itself in parks and boulevards. He was going to be its interpreter. His was to be the lens throwing city life into new colors, his the microscope revealing its contortions in life and death.<ref name=Kerrane>Kerrane, Kevin, Yagoda, and Ben. ''The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism'', Simon and Schuster (1998)</ref>}}

While at the ''Chicago Daily News'', Hecht famously broke the 1921 "Ragged Stranger Murder Case" story, about the murder of [[Carl Wanderer]]'s wife, which led to the trial and execution of war hero Carl Wanderer. In Chicago, he also met and befriended [[Maxwell Bodenheim]], an American poet and novelist, later known as the King of [[Greenwich Village]] [[Bohemianism|Bohemians]], and with whom he became a lifelong friend.

After concluding ''One Thousand and One Afternoons'', Hecht went on to produce novels, plays, screenplays, and memoirs, but for him, none of these eclipsed his early success in finding the stuff of literature in city life. Recalling that period, Hecht wrote, "I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls, and bookshops. I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me".<ref name=Eszterhas/>