The Press: Half Head, Half Legs

A Scripps-Howard star reporter emerged last week as a full-fledged columnist. Thomas Lunsford (“Tom”) Stokes signed a new contract with United Feature Syndicate, and went to the head of the columnar class in the New York World-Telegram, bellwether of the Scripps-Howard chain. Stokes’s column was appearing in 63 other newspapers, plus 32 in which it was temporarily replacing Ernie Pyle’s.

The top spot in the World-Telegram’s column of columns was last regularly occupied by Westbrook Pegler, now gone to Hearst.* But the boots that Tom Stokes is really setting out to fill are those of his great & good friend, the late Raymond Clapper.

Tall, amiable, crinkle-eyed Tom Stokes, 46, one of the nation’s shrewdest, most diligent and forthright political reporters, started work under Clapper at United News (“sort of the night side of the U.P.”) in Washington in 1923. He says, “I really learned whatever I know about politics and what makes it tick from him.”

The lesson in reporting that Tom Stokes remembers best came on the day when, with a shiny new Phi Beta Kappa key from the University of Georgia dangling on his vest, he reported for work at the Savannah Press. Managing Editor William G. (“Billy”) Sutlive looked him over dourly, barked: “There are two things I want to tell you. One is that a good reporter is half head. The other is that he’s half legs. We don’t do any telephone reporting around here; we go out and see people.”

Tom Stokes has kept himself half head and half legs ever since. He spends about as much time roving the nation as he spends in Washington. At least two of his reportorial exposes have resulted in Congressional investigations. Last week he was plugging away powerfully and persistently for another—of Thomas G. (“Tommy the Cork”) Corcoran’s reputed influence in the Department of Justice. In 1939 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his leg-&-headwork in uncovering the political prostitution of WPA in Kentucky. This year he won his fellow correspondents’ vote as the Washington reporter doing the best all-around job, “measured in terms of reliability, fairness and ability to analyze the news.”

* And last week libel-sued, along with KingFeatures and Hearst Publications, for $600,000by his longtime target, ‘Labor Leader HarryBridges.