4 4 S '4' es If . 1 4 4 4 -: _ 'AGE EIGHT 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 ' ' Si;.:oxrr." vto : wr " sv: rse r.. :{H.rF G ""; xx ";w. .vtry ";rF ".."Sri 'rr vfr.,.j..r r_. y.. r . ... :^r .: . ......................... .t r.": + iv.{4a: '" :{5 ..?:;' : r." 'rv . r$r. ."-'}. r. r.' '"3:.'. r :~.++ .:{ r, . : {S:. ; .:. : ". ......::<:140.."....a.+ ' .............rV rf..w'.{S:.i F.rS"r.::fii }af:' r...r F. ',{arndn.".rr.."$rfr r. ,"r.v$:: :vi f".:v.,........Da...... ".....'rF. "rk'4.v...v .'.^_:::..vr.. ' ' . ..........:"ti:""""::4".v 01, >4 f.' Y mot=' 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 .....:'#VXfA.::::.."::r: . ..::)>;i: ?{ . . r.. . _ 'rr. r.,.:. v.9: . {f;:i; {',:'rr '11 r i/-~.:SC:'' i ........... ..