Monday, May. 24, 1943

News Notes

Boston Globe is a combined morning & evening newspaper, put out by two separate staffs. The morning editions are more or less orthodox. The evening Globe has a splashy, garish makeup, screams in black, tricky headlines. Sample: MRS. COOLIDGE DOES NOT CHOOSE TO RUN (when the former President's wife refused the commandership of Massachusetts Women's Defense Corps). Last week the evening Globe headlined a story of Axis forces trapped on Tunisia's Cap Bon: BOTTLED IN BON.

>Last week's libel news: 1) Washington Times-Herald Publisher Eleanor ("Cissie") Patterson withdrew her $250,000 suit against Columnist-Radio Commentator Walter Winchell, who had criticized a Times-Herald editorial. One reason: she had learned that "Winchell's contract with his radio sponsor . . . allows him to escape payment of any judgment that may be rendered against him. ..." 2) When New York Daily News Washington Bureau Chief John O'Donnell's libel suit against Publisher J. David Stern's Philadelphia Record, which had called O'Donnell a "Naziphile," was tried several months ago, O'Donnell was awarded $50,000 damages (TIME, Feb. 8). Last week a three-judge Philadelphia court (including the judge who had presided at the trial) set aside the verdict on the grounds that improper evidence had been admitted, ordered a new trial. O'Donnell intends to appeal.

>Pudgy, genial Hal O'Flaherty, 52, whom Columnist Westbrook Pegler once called "a Model T, or primitive, Americanist," recently took leave of absence from his job as Chicago Daily News managing editor to go back to an old love. A war correspondent in World War I and head of the News's European staff in 1924, O'Flaherty will leave for the Southwest Pacific to report World War II, replacing the News's George Weller, Pulitzer Prizewinner, who is ill. New News managing editor: Lloyd Downs Lewis, 52, a jack-of-many-newspaper-trades (book reviewer, historian, drama critic, author, sports editor) whom the late Raconteur Alexander Woollcott once called "the best newspaperman in the United States."

>Small, begoggled, part-time Copyboy Shelton Newberger of the Chicago Sun is also a student at the University of Chicago. He wrote an article for his college's undergraduate newspaper, distributed clippings of it to Sun staffers, including Founder-Publisher Marshall Field. It berated the Sun for departing from its liberal line, for failing to live up to its possibilities. Cried Copyboy Newberger: "Get rid of Publisher Silliman Evans and assistants . . . and replace them with fighters of the Sam Grafton, Max Lerner, Ralph Ingersoll type. . . . What the Sun needs is dynamic leadership." (Copyboy Newberger still has his job.)

Two Oregon newspapermen shifted jobs last week. Edwin Palmer ("Ep") Hoyt, husky Portland Oregonian publisher, whom Elmer Davis originally wanted for domestic director of OWI and from whom he got a turndown, finally agreed to take the post for six months. He succeeds Gardner ("Mike") Cowles Jr., who retires at the end of a stipulated year to return to his Des Moines Register & Tribune and perhaps to campaign for his good friend Wendell Willkie, with whom he flew around the world. Donald J. Sterling, Portland Journal managing editor, resigned as the War Production Board's consultant on newspaper and publishing problems to return to the Journal.

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