What's a Professional, Pop?

Is journalism a profession, a trade, a game or a 6% investment? H. L. Mencken once gave his answer: "A journalist still lingers in the twilight zone, along with the trained nurse, the embalmer, the rev. clergy and the great majority of engineers. . . . [He] remains, for all his dreams, a hired man . . . and the hired man is not a professional man."

In Washington last week, the Wage & Hour Division was mooting the question again. It was trying to determine whether journalists are "professionals," thus not entitled to overtime pay.

Said Cranston Williams, general manager of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association: "Journalism has grown, as the professions of law and medicine grew. It is now a full-fledged profession."

Said Sam Eubanks, executive vice president of the C.I.O. American Newspaper Guild: the realistic test is salary. If a professional can't get overtime, only those making over $500 a month should be called professionals.

Even the journalism schools could not agree. Missouri's Dean Frank Luther Mott sided with the A.N.P.A.; Ralph L. Crosman of the University of Colorado leaned towards the Guild. As for working newsmen, few were likely to yearn for professional status if it meant no overtime pay.

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