The Press: Feminine Touch

It was never like this in the old days when Forty-Niner James McClatchy founded the Sacramento Bee as a rootin-tootin’ goldtown sheet.

Last week Spinster Eleanor McClatchy, third-generation queen of the Bee (and president of a humming little chain of three California papers and five radio stations), had a bright little idea for making the drones work better. She had recorded music piped in: loud and animated in the composing room, soft and restful in the city room. One sour newsman, after hearing out Ole Buttermilk Sky, said it didn’t do a thing for his writing.