Shake-Up

When crusty old (66) Thomas H. Beck, board chairman of Crowell-Collier, rolled up his sleeves and went to work on Collier's a month ago, the weekly was still making money, contrary to rumors. But Tom Beck, with a worried glance at Look (see above), thought Collier's needed a good shaking up. Last week he shook it.

Out from his office went a memo: "Oscar Dystel, former editor of Coronet magazine, has been appointed managing editor of Collier's, vice [in place of] Joe Alex Morris, resigned . . ." When Joe Morris, who already had the bad news, saw the memo, he took a pencil, crossed out the word "resigned," and walked out.

Crowell-Collier bosses were vague about the firing. Said Publisher William L. Chenery: They just thought "a different type of mind in the job would make for a stronger team . . ." Snapped Morris: "That's a better answer than I got."

He was the second top staffer to leave recently. In March, Associate Editor Andre Fontaine was fired. Office gossip had it that he was sacrificed because of an article on the U.S. power shortage (Our Lights Are Going Out) that brought complaints from General Electric and power companies. Fontaine had thought that Cottier's should have some of its old crusading spirit. The brass favored the editorial line of least resistance (Collier's safe-&-sane editorials are still the spare-time work, but not always the echo, of the New York Daily News's Reuben Maury).

New Managing Editor Dystel, 35, got his M.A. at Harvard Business School (1937). During the war he worked for OWI, edited the propaganda magazine U.S.A., worked with the Army's Psychological Warfare Branch. In his new job, he is supposed to make Collier's step lively; he is unlikely to step on any toes.

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