That pretty much ended in the 1970s. The king of that was a guy named Arthur Felig -- who went by the name Weegee. Later he was called an "artist." Reporters had army surplus tank radios in their cars that could be tuned to the police frequencies to get to the crime scenes often before the first patrol car...
I was neither a venom spewing reporter or a crazed punk. But I did know some of those old time reporters and the stories they told were terrific.