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THE MICHIGAN DAILY
FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER24, 1965
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24;1965
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Since
1940:
Drastic Changes
In
What's News for the Front Page
The
on
Daily.E
Campus
dtor-Top
for Grief,
PG
By BEN M. MARINO.
'40 LSA
THE BUSINESS press, in many ways,.
has matured faster than the big city
dailies, radio or television. As a result,
much of the talent the popular news
media ne'ed to stay vibrant and growing
is forsaking the city room for industry.
Unless more publishers and editors
awaken to this migration and act to
check it, the impoverishment of mass
communications will accelerate rapidly
in the years ahead.
This analysis results from a three-year
stint in business communications after
25 years of professional newspaper and
radio service interrupted only by two
years of military journalism during
World War II.
Too many of our large city papers
(and radio and TV stations which love
to copy their techniques) still employ a
moss-hung old publishing formula in
which the elements remain bandits,
bombast, blood and babes.
The sensational . murder story still
commands more space and staff atten-
tion than an eight-day mission in space.
The impending steel strike draws more
headlines than all of industry's frantic
efforts to train the highly-skilled em-
ployees an exploding technology requires.
P OLITICAL shenanigans of second-rate
office seekers (or maladroit incum-
bents!) continue to take the play away
from the likes of a Dr. Jonas Salk.
(Whatever happened to him, anyway?!)
In many newspapers today "covering
education" means predicting the turmoil
almost certain to ensue when the new
semester begins and CORE launches new
demonstrations against de facto segre-
gation.
Too few reporters take the time, or
receive the impetus from their editors,
to learn the basics of business about
which they write with super-glibness,
often eliding any situation in which a
clear definition of complex matters
might make plain the subject under dis-
cussion-or oversimplify it out of exis-
tence, in fact, out of context and com-
prehension. A case in point:
SEVERAL MONTHS ago, my company
completed deliveries of an item of
ordnance we had been manufacturing
in quantity for the U. S. Army. As fre-
quently happens in the defense business,
this item had been obsoleted by a newly-
designed product. TRW Inc.'s expec-
tations of a long production run on the
design in process of manufacture were
rudely set back when no follow-on or-
ders were placed.
The division making the product was
forced to close the operation which then
involved nearly 700 employees.
The company was proud of the people
who had worked in this project, achiev-
ing as they had an exceptionally low
price to the Army for the specific item,
unprecedented levels of manufacturing
quality, and gratifyingly prompt deliver-
les. We undertook an 'ad campaign to
interest other area employers in hiring
the people being displaced. We were
beset by big daily reporters, all of whom
I knew intimately from years of working
with them "downtown," demanding to
know: "Why did you lose this program?"
"How many guys are hitting the
bricks?" "How badly is this layoff going
to hurt Cleveland's economy?"
OVER AND over it was explained, "this
ordnance program is a minor frac-
tion of our business. After all, the whole
thing amounted to only about $25 mil-
lion, and this company's sales are ove
a billion. Cleveland's economy won't
suffer-we have other contracts coming
in every month. .
Daily we told questing labor editors
"it will take about two to four months
before we can say with certainty ho
many, if any, employees are actuall3
layed off-lots of them are being ab-
sorbed by our other divisions in severa
other Cleveland plants."
The reporters were incapable, or to
busy, to understand our seniority sys
tem; too casual to plumb our produci
mix and ascertain what a small seg-
ment of our work this ordnance job
represented; too cynical to believe they
were being told the truth, the whole
truth. "Didn't take long to lose your
objectivity, did it?" was a frequent com-
ment addressed to the "renegade news-
man" who tried so hard to put the story
in perspective for them..
A FTER MONTHS of development, we
are back making the advanced pro-
ducts which replaced the terminated
ordnance program - but not a line
(truthfully, exactly one!) in the big
dailies; silence on radio and TV (whose
commentators apparently don't read the
final paragraphs of the smaller stories
on the Financial Pages.)
How much did employment suffer?
Today we have more people on the pay-
roll than at any time in our history
(42,000) and we are recruiting like crazy
(especially so in Ordnance!). Absolutely
not a line carried on this!
Perhaps this is an inconsequential ex-
ample, but it is revealing of the "black-
and-white attitude" most general assign-
ment reporters bring to an unfamiliar:
situation. The harm this kind of surface
reporting does is inestimable. (Of pass-
ing interest are such newspaper over-
simplifications as a recent description of
one of our top scientists as a "space-
engineer." He happens to be an expert
on space power systems for, generating
electricity aboard space .vehicles!).
In casual conversation one quickly
discovers general reportorial ignorance
of common industry expressions such as
"standard hours generated"; "short-
range and long-range sales forecasts";
"operating efficiencies"; "performance on
major cost savings"; etc.
No business writer can last in ignor-
ance of these terms.
YET, GENERAL reporters who are in-
nocent of the facts behind these
concepts, daily interpret for the world at
large the industrial and business scene.
Magazines, and especially some of the
more prestigious trade books, do an in-
comparably more knowledgeable, under-
standable and accurate job. Yet, for
nearly a year, Sigma Delta Chi in
Cleveland has barred from membership
"public relations men, publicists, and
those not affiliated with a recognized
news medium." (Those who joined before
the deadline remain, of course, on good-
natured tolerance.) If you do not 'work
for a newspaper, a radio or TV news
bureau, you can't be a member of this
professional journalistic society. _b-
viously this means that anyone not in
those slots can't be a reporter, writer
or editor of any merit.
On science, education, manufacturing,
economics, finance, employment, tech-
nology, management techniques, the
bread-and-butter aspects of earning a
living, and union affairs, today's news
media are defaulting on their pious
promises to "report in depth" and "to
interpret meaningfully the facts behind
the headlines."
The business press, magazines and
periodicals are doing it better. And re-
porters and writers worth their salt are
discovering it, and flocking to their
staffs, leaving the mass media with a
dearth of talent with which to reverse
the tide. Many of the emigrees would
return to the newsroom post haste if
editors and publishers would cure their
myopia on what is news in this "space"
age.
1944: Want ToBe a Sportswriter?
Don't Join The Daily Sports Staff
by ERIC ZALEz
'44 LSA
DO YOU WANT to be a sportswriter in
the colorful tradition of the great
Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Bob Consi-
dine and Dan Parker?
Or would you prefer to add your name
to the list of such sportscasting im-
mortals as Graham MacNamee, Harry
Wismer, Bill Stern, Red Grange, or
Michigan's Tom Harmon and Bill Flem-
ing?
If you do, one of the best guarantees
for such a career is to enroll at the Uni-
versity of Michigan but NOT to sign up
as a member of The Daily sports staff.
The odds would be overwhelmingly
against you if you defied this advice.
However, if you are not really set on
such an illustrious career, but would pre-
fer to find a future in a less exciting,
more stable and better-paying area, then
by all means DO enroll at Michigan and
be sure to sign up as a Daily sports
staffer.
What can you substitute for the excite-
ment of the football or baseball press
box, or the annual sports banquet? Con-
sider some of the following possibilities
and make your choice : general in the
Regular Army, professor or department
head at major university like Michigan,
retail merchant, certified public ac-
countant, business or bank executive,
lawyer, dentist, or, if it appeals to you, a
housewife and mother. These are but a
few of the many areas that former Daily
sportswriters have moved into after an
exciting apprenticeship on "the sports
desk in that familiar landmark on May-
nard Street called the Student Publica-
tions Building.
THE LONG NIGHTS and days amid
the debris of The Daily editorial room
have left their permanent mark on a few
of the old-time sportswriters, or else the
violently peripatetic sports career on the
Michigan campus has prematurely "aged"
others. In either case, there were only a
few who managed to get up from the
sports desk and stager out of the room.
Roland L. Martin ('35), is now manag-
ing editor of the Flint, Mich., Journal.
Eric M. Zale (how I hate to talk about
myself) is an associate professor of Eng-
lish at Easter Michigan University (and
teaches a course in journalism). Present-,
ly, I'm on leave, but still in the media
field as associate director of dissemina-
tion (a combination of writing, editing
and public relations) for the Center for
Research on Language and Language Be-
havior at the University of Michigan.
Irwin Zucker ('48), is president of his
own public relations firm in Hollywood,
Calif.
Roger Goelz ('49, '50), an associate sports
editor in '50, is now news editor of the
Associated Press in Detroit.
Presley D. Holmes ('50) is director of
television at Ohio University.,
David L. Miller, ('51) is now managing
editor of Modern Photography Magazine
in New York.
Marvin M. Epstein, ('51), is manager of
Some Books by the
Paper's Alumni
Valentine Davies-screen script writer
(Columnist for Daily, 1924to '25).
Wrote story, Miracle on 34th Street,
published by Harcourt Brace.
Joseph Gies (Book Editor, 1938-39),
Bridges and Men (1963), Adventure;
Underground (1962), A Matter of
Morals (1951) They Never Had It
So Good (1948).
Frank Gilbreth (Managing Editor,
1932-93), Chraper by the Dozen.
Gael Greene (early 50's)-
Sex and the College Girl, Don't
Come Back Without It.
Arthur Miller (Night Editor, 1937-38),
Plays: Death of a Salesman, The
Crucible, Incident at Vichy.
Paul S. Mowrer (Managing Editor,
1907-08), author of numerous books
on foreign affairs published during
'20's and '30's: Balkanized Europe
(1921), Red Russia's Menace (1925)
and others.
Fred Warner Neal (Associate Editor,
(1936-37), War and Peace in Ger-
many (1962).
Arthur Pound (News Editor,, 1904-05),
author of numerous novels, and non-
fiction dealing mostly with industry
among others: The Telephone Idea;
Fifty Years (1926), Detroit, Dynamic
City (1940), Transportation Pro-
gress: A History of Self-propelled
Vehicles (1934).
Marshall Shulman (Associate Editor,
1935-36), Stalin's Foreign Policy
(1963).
Leonard Slater (Night Editor, 1939-
40), Aly, biography of Aly Kahn,
published last spring.
Gurner Williams (Managing Editor,
1930) cartoons, forthcoming Look-,
ing Over Your Shoulder, to be pub-
lished Oct. 19.
International Advertising and Public Re-
lations, the Austin Company, in Ohio.
Charles L. Towle, ('64E) is now technical,
editor for the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory, S1 v e r
Spring, Md.
LEST WE FORGET, two ex-Daily
sportswriters somehow managed to
stay in the groove. Bruce G. Bennett,
('58), is now executive sports editor and
sports columnist of the Duluth, Minn.,
Herald & News-Tribune. Albert H. New-
man, ('34), who served as a war corre-
spondent for. Newsweek during World
War II; made it to the Newsweek sports
desk.
Those who didn't make it to another
sports desk have managed to achieve
recognition in a variety of fields.
Philip C. Pack, ('18), became a brigadier
general in the U.S. Army (now retired
and a "semi-retired" attorney in Ann
Arbor.)
Robert C. Angell, ('21), is now a profes-
sor of sociology at the University of
Michigan.
Joseph A. Bernstein, ('22), is now editor
and director of planning for Metro As-
sociated Services Inc., New York.
Joseph A. Russell, ('31), is now professor
of geography and head of the Geography
Department, University of Illinois.
John W. Thomas ('33)), is now an at-
torney in Flint.
Raymond Goodman, ('37), is now owner
of Goodman Jewelers, a retail store and
manufacturing firm in Indianapolis, Ind.
Harvey Frank, '44), is a certified public
accountant in Detroit.
Mrs. Harold Bornstein, ('46), is a teacher
in Detroit..
Mary Lu Heath (now Mrs. Maurice J.
Matteson), ('46), is a housewife and
mother, although she manages to type
manuscripts, term papers and theses at
her home in Secane, Pa.
Murry J. Grant, ('49), is a business
executive in West Hartford, Conn.
Allegra W. Goelz, ('49), is a housewife
(and husband of Roger Goelz) in De-
troit.
William J. Connolly, ('51), is manager of
distribution planning, Industrial Sales
Division, General Electric, Schenectady,
N. Y. Joak Ketelhut, ('52), is Mrs. Con-
nolly. Work on the Daily sports desk
does have its obvious compensations.
David G. Livington, ('55), is vice presi-
dent of the Bank of New Mexico, Albu-
querque, N.M.
James Baad, ('58), is a dentist in Howell.
David L. Good, ('64) is a graduate stu-
dent at the University.
Willis C. Bullard Jr., ('65), is a student at
the University's Law School.'
But what happened to the scores of
other Daily "sports" who didn't find time
to respond, or perhaps, never learned of
the anniversary? Well, the odds are about
100 to 1 against many of them being in
the "sports" business.
Sportswriting, it seems, is simply a
means to a more lucrative end.
B~y ROBERT WEEKS
'38 LSA
WRITE about The Daily also-rans-
the staff members who work for three
years hoping to win the top job, Editor of
The Michigan Daily, and fail - calls
for the skill of an F. Scott Fitzgerald. For
like the ceharacters in his best stories-
or Fitzgerald himself at Princeton-the
also-ans throw themselves into a strenu-
ous contest for fame and power, full of
romantic hope and with the sort of total
committment a vulnerable 18-year-old
makes without hesitation. And the prize
-the editorship-is like the beautiful
rich girl in a Fitzgerald story: shim-
mering, infinitely desirable, and unat-
tainable-except by one.
No campus position is as powerful and
prestigious as the editorship of The Daily,
yet only those who have for three years
competed for it realize the awful sig-
nificance of the Board's announcement
of new appointments each spring. To the
professors on the Board in Control of
Student Publications, the selection of
the new editor is a routine administra-
tive chore inuch' like any other. But
to many a student governed by the
Board's decision, perhaps to most, no
single act by a faculty member through-
out the undergraduate years will af-
fect him as powerfully, as memorably.
Like Fitzgerald who in his forties was
still carrying around in a bound vol-
ume the love letters Ginevra King wrote
him at Princeton, most of us are still
carrying a few poignant memories of
what the Board did to us that spring. I
have no reason to believe mine are in
any way exceptional.
TO-BEGIN with, an undergraduate is
likely to be twitchy and vulnerable
in the spring of his junior year. He's like
a pregnant woman in the seventh month:
the novelty is gone, but the excitement
of the finish isn't on him yet. The first
part of the ordeal-and maybe today's
arrangements are more civilized-was
the formal interview with the Board. In
my junior year the chairman of the
Board was an elderly professor of French
who I suspected lacked the fineness of
judgment and the good sense to see my
qualifications for the editorship-which
weren't terribly conspicuous, anyway. In
the course of the interview he confirmed
my suspicions by referring several times
to the wire service as "the A & P."
The next step in the process, a secret
poll of the staff to secure their prefer-
ence for the top jobs, was inoffensive
except for the rumors it generated. But
the senior staff members' recommenda-
tions produced great suspense and some
agony. Because of the general suspi-
cion that the Board with its confusion
of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea
Company and the Associated Press might
want to rely on something more sub-
stantial than its own grasp of the situ-
ation, we became convinced that the
senior editors' recommendations would
probably be decisive.
As April approached, there were three
or four night editors whose work had
shown most promise. I considered my-
self one of these. As a result, when one
of the editors asked me to come into
the seniors' office for a private chat, I
was excited and happy. He was a person
I deeply admired-and still do-a schol-
arly idealist whose rimless spectacles and
kindly but aloof bearing reminded me of
a young F.D.R. He told me he wanted to
read me his recommendation for editsr. I
could hardly-wait.
SLOWLY and thoughtfully he read to
me, and I began to see myself take
shape as he saw me: a person of no great
promise; shallow- but pleasant; hardly
to be entrusted with editorial respon-
sibility, but a writer of passable feature
stories. It was like having a leg ampu-
tated without anesthesia. What can com-
pare to those good old college days?
My lot as an also-ran was certainy
more abject than sublime. But to some
who missed the top job by a narrower
margin than I did, their defeat was al-
most tragic. It took me years to realize
this. In my eyes then, the editor, city
editor, and editorial director had all
successfully stormed the walled city. They
ran The Daily; they belonged to Michi-
gamua; they were god-like figures to
the lower staff. Only in recent years have
I realized that to some and maybe to
many of those who aspired to the top
job, being appointed to one of the two
lesser jobs was a bitter disappointment.
This consoling realization has arrived
along with certain other over-estimated
dividends of- middle age. But my envy,
even awe, of the editor has persisted. As
an undergraduate I never -had a pro-
fessor who moved through the corri-
dors of Angell Hall with the authority
and commanding presence of Tom Kleene
proceeding into the city room-even after
he had spent most of the same evening
in the Pretzel Bell. And when I meet him
today my first impulse is not to shake
his hand but to salute.
BUT PERHAPS even the editor, that
most enviable of undergraduates, has
his own special disillusionment, keener
and more sublime than that suffered
by the also-rans. This occurred to me
one spring several years ago when I at-
tended The Daily's annual awards ban-
quet. After the writers of the best fea-
tures, sports stories, news stories, and
editorials were rewarded and the heads
of the various sub-staffs had spoken
briefly, the editor addressed us. He was
at ease, confident, at the climax of his
powers. He spoke earnestly and thought-
fully of campus affairs, then turned to
domestic and international affairs.
The students listened attentively as
the editor pulled off a tour de force that
could have been duplicated only by a
By DWIGHT P. JOYCE
'21 LSA
I STARTED WORKING for The Daily
right after I got out of Service in
January, 1919 as an advertising "heeler."
One of my early assignments was to do
some market research in Ann Arbor on
a Near Beer (noh-alcoholic) called Bevo,
put out by Anheuser-Busch. This
company was doing considerable adver-
tising in college newspapers throughout
the country in an endeavor to promote
their product.
I did a conscientious job of calling on
dealers, drug stores, restaurants, and a
cross section of the student body. Alas,
the responses I got to my questions were
very negative.
FAITHFUILY recorded all these nega-
tivebresponses (there was not one
favorable one) and had the report typed.
My immediate boss was a woman, who
was out of town for the weekend, so I
mailed my report in to Anheuser-Busch
and sent her a copy,
team consisting of Harlan Hatcher, Lyn-
don Johnson, and U Thant. And as he
leaned across the lectern in the Union
ballroom, there was no doubt that he
felt firmly in commaid not only of the
attention but also of the respect and
affectionof the hundred or so members
of The Daily staff before him, the fac-
ulty members of the Board in Control,
the three University vice presidents, and
the president of the University.
It was the pinna
ate career, of th
moment. But very
to say probably-
from which the r
gently fall off. Fo
the years after fif
ering anti-climax
a lifetime to prep
editor of The Dail
two.
Learning Business
The following I
into her office ar
a big ,way. She wa
in this instance v
dressing me down
she told me how i
send in such a ne
I should have wai
before it was sent
ed quite sarcasticE
there must be at 1
Arbor who liked,]
I LEFT, quite cr
About four day
me to Come in an
did she showed
Anheuser-Busch p
most complimentE
saying that it wa
they had received
the country and,
were going to dot
paper.
My boss gracioi
and put me back tc
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Bits of the Past Recalled by Alun
Daily Misses
N THE FALL of 1916, when Pres-
ident Wilson was running for
re-election on his peace platform
against Charles Evans Hughes, The
Daily's telegraph editor was the
late H. C. L. Jackson, who later
conducted the "Listening is on De-
troit" column in The Detroit News
for some 25 years.
Because it was one of the closest
elections in American history, Jack'
waited with the rest of us at mid-
night for the final five-minute
summary by telephone from the AP
office in Detroit.
At 12 o'clock the wire service re-
ported that the outcome depended
on the California vote, and pre-
dicted a Republican victory in Cali-
fornia and the election of Hughes.
There was nothing for us to do but
to put the Wednesday edition to
bed with "Hughes Wins in Heavy
Vote."
What happened was that Hiram
Johnson had refused to support
Hughes in California. He split the
Republican vote by running for
Senator on the Progressive ticket.
Wilson won California by only a
few thousand votes and the nation-
al election by a few electoral votes.
Johnson won his seat in the U.S.
Senate.
C. M. JICKLING
'17 LSA
The Famous A
O NE OF THE famous anomalies
of The Daily is a man whose
middle name is A.
The only reason there is a period
in the foregoing sentence is that all
sentences must end with a .period.
Lee A White has no period in his
name.
One of Michigan's most famous
newspaper executives until his re-
tirement 15 years ago from the De-
troit News, White had the unusual
posts of editor of both The Daily
and the Gargoyle in 1910.
He was one of the original mem-
bers of Sigma Delta Chi, the na-
tional professional journalism so-
ciety; had a long association with
t h e Cranbrook Institutions in
Bloomfield Hills, and has been an
adviser to both the Board in Con-
trol of Student Publications and
the journalism department here for
many years. He is a former lec-
turer in journalism here.
The family legend is that when
he was born a girl was expected,
and the name of Adeline had been
chosen. When the child turned out
to be a boy, the family was stopped
in its tracks in search of a, name.
So it left the "A" alone.
During a leave of absence from
his 40 years at the Detroit News,
White was chairman of the jour-
nalism department at the Univer-
sity of Washington. Because of the
"no period" oddity, when he left
Seattle the University of Washing-
ton Daily published a "no period"
edition-a considerable task for
both editors and printers.
Despite a long history of counsel-
ing president and regents of the
University of Michigan and his af-
fection for The Daily, he could not
attend this weekend's reunion. He
suffered a stroke last fall and,
though physically well at the age
of 79, is confined to his home.
Responsibility
113E DAILY'S voice, rightly or
wrongly, speaks for Michigan
and for those faculty-student-
alumni subscribers
does.
It is a trustee t
there is little or n
publication for Un
the expression of c
With this in mi
Diamond Annivers
not alone on re
achievements.
It can have root
The Daily's consec:
impartial journali
reporting of news
sion of editorial o
Such an object
cluding imbalance
news selection an(
point, is not nec
one; it comports v
istic ethics of mar
cations recognize
leaders.
'ROBEF
Uniont
N 1919 I sold a
Almondinger N
forgot to turn in
day crew to set.
A Mr. Washburn
Linotype machine
and the only uni
(at the Ann Arbor
He refused to
went into the "ty
dark and set the a
It took a lot of
the right letters, b
pleted the two-miel
and slipped it intc
Washburn founc
quite a lecture on
but left the ad in
stone proof of it
reunion.
WILLIAMV
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