The Press: The Duchess

The visiting correspondent was the heftiest and one of the brassiest women of the Washington press corps, and she covered Germany like a rough-riding Valkyrie. She descended on Berlin via the airlift, sitting on bags of coal. She slept in Hitler’s airraid bunker, interviewed General Clay, went shopping with a German hausfrau on the Kurfurstendamm. In Munich’s America House, where she made a speech, Correspondent Esther Van Wagoner Tufty caused the biggest stir of all. “They thought I was Emmy Goring!” said she. “I must say I resented that. Hell, she’s at least ten years older than I am.” All this she reported in her homy, wish-you-were-here dispatches.

Last week hustling Mrs. Tufty was back at her regular job of covering the capital for 31 papers in Texas, Michigan and New Jersey. The Duchess, as she likes to be called, dashed up to Manhattan, her pincenez dangling wildly at her bosom, for a television gabfest with her good friend Mary Margaret McBride, and Congressman Fred Hartley. Said Tufty later: “Mary Margaret was a little out of her depth with Fred, so I just took over and interviewed him myself.”

Washington Story. A Brünnhildean blonde, 52-year-old Esther Tufty is no word wizard. But rival reporters respect the egocentric energy with which she has built one of the busiest news bureaus in Washington.

Twelve years ago Tufty gave up her job as managing editor of Charles G. Dawes’s late Evanston (111.) News-Index to go to Washington with her husband, since divorced. Before she left, she drove around Michigan lining up correspondence assignments from small papers.

“Washington was amazed,” she says, “at the arrival of Tufty with 26—count ’em, 26—papers.” She trained her staff of cubs to ferret out local angles in the news, peddled her clients a complete line of political stories and personality items, including her own daily columns. She soon had many a bigwig, including Michigan’s Arthur Vandenberg, eating out of her hand. Two years ago she took on as partner J. Albert Dear, a New Jersey publisher.

Local Angle. It is Tufty’s boast (among many) that “I was the only woman writer on the Dewey train in 1944” (not Counting LIFE Researcher Lee Eitingon). The trip paid off with more than news. When the train was wrecked at Castle Rock, Wash., Tufty suffered broken ribs and passed out (Westbrook Pegler passed the smelling salts). She came out of it with a $3,000 settlement, which she used to fix up her National Press Building cubicle with yellow curtains and a fancy circular desk.

“We’ve localized news until it squeaks,” says the Duchess. “If I can make my Aunt Kate back in Pontiac really understand ECA or the airlift or what they’re talking about in Congress, then I’ve got something that’s good for Aunt Kate and makes money for Tufty.”