WHILE the big guns of Senator McCarthy's Wisconsin campaign were firing away at Administration policies, a smaller, but at times almost as nasty skirmish flourished between the Senator's staff and national reporters covering the campaign.

Newsmen griped--constantly in private, sometimes in print--about the ineptness of McCarthy's organization. McCarthy staffers retorted in private that the reporters didn't understand that McCarthy was trying to create "a new 1968 politics" by building much of his organization from political amateurs. And, one day, McCarthy himself said that some of the press were "frustrated campaign managers."

It was more than the usual crossfire between politicians and press. In this case, the newsmen were concerned not with the ultimate aims or tactics of the McCarthy machine, but rather with its efficiency. One newsman, who admitted that he didn't care for Nixon's personality or his policies, nevertheless said that the former Vice-President's well-oiled campaign "almost makes a man prefer Nixon."

From their point of view, the reporters had reason to complain. The McCarthy organization could muster thousands of volunteers from throughout the nation to canvass Wisconsin voters for the Senator, but it often broke down when confronted with the more sophisticated parts of running a campaign, particularly the delicate job of managing the media.

McCarthy himself often irritated the newsmen by junking speeches prepared by Richard Goodwin in favor of his own at the last minute. Reporters who had early deadlines and thus field their stories from the advance text boiled at this habit.

CONSTANT confusion--most due to simple staff errors--in the scheduling of the campaign was another sore spot. "Somebody thought it took two hours (instead of half an hour) to drive to Fond du Lac," was the explanation for one such mistake. "Must be the same person who thought it took two hours to fly there," a reporter commented.

A Los Angeles Times reporter waiting through another delay took a light view of the matter and produced a "revised schedule":

1:10 p.m. Leave for Ripon

1:15 Wrong turn at Woodhill

2:40 Error discovered at Ladoga

4:00 Directions asked at Pickett

6:00 Arrive at Ripon

Pick up rest of schedule advancing times by four hours.

Thirty-year-old Seymour Hersh, McCarthy's press secretary at the time, picked up a copy of the fake schedule. Though described by Time Magazine as "an unexcelled master of profanity," he just laughed a little nervously. But, a few hours later, Hersh justified Time's description when he found that someone in McCarthy's headquarters had handed out an important news release in Milwaukee while most of the newmsen were jogging along Wisconsin back roads in the press bus.

Hersh, of course, was caught in the middle of the crossfire between press and McCarthy staff. A former Associated Press reporter, he often reddened at the errors of local McCarthy workers. "NTTL"--Never Trust The Locals--Hersh sometimes muttered during the campaign. Such organizational problems may have eased Hersh's decision to resign a week before the primary, when he felt that McCarthy was not campaigning hard enough in the Milwaukee ghetto.