College-journalist Johnny Dixon gets a job on the "Daily Clarion", primarily because his mother knows the wife of the hen-pecked publisher. Managing-Editor Bill Daly dispatches Johnny to City-Editor Dick Williams, where Williams and the other reporters proceed to haze and pull pranks on the egotistical cub-reporter. He is befriended by Midge Lambert, who writes the paper's sob-sister column. Johnny's lack of a nose-for-news incurs the wrath of Daly, especially after Johnny gets beat on a couple of assignments. The he attempts to prevent a bank-holdup only to fire at the wrong car...the police car...which upsets the capture of the bandits by the short-tempered Police Captain McGuire. Trying to redeem himself, he peruses the police-department's "Rogues Gallery" and identifies "Shiv" Moroni as the gang leader, only to learn from the irate Daly that "Shiv" Moroni had been executed the week before. Daly fires him. Midge suggests that they solve the holdup as a means of regaining his job. They reconstruct the crime and Johnny follows a lead which takes him to the apartment-hideout of "Flannel-Mouth" Moroni, an exact double of his brother "Shiv," and his henchmen, led by Pete. He tricks the gang into believing he is a wanted criminal. So they hand him a sub-machine gun, put him in the car and head out to rob another bank. The ultimate result, after Madge and the police rescue him, is that Johnny accidentally shoots his bride-to-be in the calf of a leg, and she is on crutches for the wedding.