The Press: Depth in Dixie

After the May 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools, most Southern newspapers played up stories of anti-integration violence, but shied away from the more significant story of desegregation’s quiet progress (TIME, Jan. 17, 1955). But the Southern press is changing its ways. Last week Don Shoemaker, onetime editor of the Asheville, N.C. Citizen, who heads the nonprofit, nonpolitical Southern Education Reporting Service, said that “objectivity is clearly on the rise” in Southern news columns.

Shoemaker told a University of Illinois seminar for political reporters that the South’s 38 biggest dailies (all but a dozen of which editorially defend segregation) are now playing desegregation stories “straight down the line,” seem less inclined to emphasize news that depicts the Negro in a bad light. Said Shoemaker: “The feeling at first was that any news treatment of the problem would be resented by readers, because it was such a highly touchy subject. Now newspapers have found readers don’t resent it, and use their own staffs to cover the problem instead of relying on the news services. There is more reporting in depth.”