The Press: Columnists v. Editors

Are syndicated newspaper columnists worth printing? Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington last week, editors and columnists jumped into the ring to answer the question. Editor J. Donald Ferguson of the highly successful Milwaukee Journal (circ. 324,-268), who booted out all canned columns years ago, threw the first punch.

“Frankly,” said he, “I think the syndicated column is one of the biggest rackets ever put over on editors . . . We wouldn’t trade one experienced reporter for all the syndicated columnists we could crowd on the editorial page of the Milwaukee Journal.” Any enterprising editor can get better facts and opinion from his own staff, he said, if he spends a little money to send them off to the spots where news is breaking. “A page of these syndicated columnists is a perfect reproduction of the yakety-yak that fills the room after the third or fourth dry Martini.”

Another trouble, said Ferguson, “is that [the columnist] begins to believe, after he has 20 or 150 editors . . . that he is endowed with prophetic powers* … If [an editor] throws him out … or so much as changes a comma, the columnist immediately denounces him as trampling on the freedom of the press.”

Bell Syndicate’s Drew Pearson, introduced, in recognition of his libel docket, as “the only man . . . with more suits than Hart Schaffner & Marx,” rolled with the attack. He realized, he said, that some “indefensible things” had been published by columnists, “and I myself have sinned. I’d like to forget a number of things.” But alert columnists have kept the lid on graft, have “been able … to give to newspapers some things which they would not otherwise get.”

But Pearson had a Sunday punch. The Milwaukee Journal itself, said he, knew all the facts in the celebrated case of White House Aide General Vaughan and the deepfreeze scandal (TIME, July 4, 1949 et seq.) and was “afraid” to print it. Instead, it passed the story on to Congressmen to investigate. When Pearson picked up the trail in Washington, he risked libel and printed as much of the story as he could get. Said Pearson: “If Mr. Ferguson’s paper had published and not banned columns, they would have published the story of General Vaughan.”

Said Ferguson: “It isn’t always because we’re afraid. We like to get all the facts before we print a story.”

The argument did not settle a question which deeply troubles the U.S. press. But it did throw a light into the heart of the matter. The columns, for all their faults, are good reader bait, and at their best, often give news and views that the mine-run newsman does not produce; they will continue to be popular as long as editors rely on them for the work their staffs are unable to do.

* Walter Winchell last week needled the Cincinnati Enquirer for disagreeing with him three years ago, and warned it against cutting his columns. Snapped Managing Editor Everett Boyd: “We’ll cut him or drop him any time we want to. We’re still running the Enquirer . . . We’ve cut Pegler too, and he got mad at us. But he got over his mad. Winchell didn’t.”