Rumpus Raiser

Among all the U.S. newsmen who were put on the pan in Britain last week (see INTERNATIONAL), the hottest fire was reserved for E. T. Leech, editor of the Pittsburgh Press (circ. 277,347), most prosperous of the Scripps-Howard chain of 19 papers. After a month's stay in Britain exploring the economic crisis, Leech had turned out a series of articles which started running in 30 U.S. papers last week. Despite the newsprint shortage, most London dailies also devoted precious space to Leech's report, while the pro-Labor press rapped him as a "poison pen man."

Leech's "Utopia on the Rocks--British Socialism in Action" was a readable but superficial, highly editorialized and sparsely documented roundup of the crisis.What Journalist Leech had set out to prove was that most of the blame for Britain's plight lay on the Labor government and its Socialism. What he proved more sharply was that Britons had been largely unaware of the rising tide of criticism of the Labor government and the new crisis. They had been brushing off attacks as mere Tory politicking, were shocked to discover that many of the same criticisms were being made by an increasingly large part of the U.S. press.

When the shouting started in Britain's press last week, Editor Leech was back home in the U.S., happily out of reach of British newsmen. Publisher Roy Howard, who had dispatched Leech to Britain, was not so lucky. Stepping out of his plane at a London airport last week, he walked right into a drumfire of questions from a squad of angry Fleet Streeters. Howard stuck to Leech's guns: "Marvelous reporting!"

Top members of Britain's Labor Party and Trades Union Congress disagreed. Most of them had never heard of Editor Leech--let alone been interviewed by him--until he attacked their policies and programs in print. In Pittsburgh last week, Leech defended his legwork. Said he: "I kept away from top politicians in both parties...[They] only give you the official party line...I tried hardest to see plain people, to drop into pubs and strike up conversations, to sit on benches in Hyde Park...I don't think there is any serious charge in my whole series that hasn't been printed in British newspapers and magazines...Nobody was more surprised than I when the British press took the stories so seriously."

Down with Crump. Raising rumpuses is nothing new for Edward Towner Leech. At 57, greying, mild-mannered Ed Leech has been a Scripps-Howard editor in Memphis, Birmingham, Denver and Pittsburgh for 31 years, longer than anybody else in the chain. He started out as an $8-a-week cub, would still rather hunch over a typewriter than an editor's desk, turns out a weekly syndicated column for Scripps-Howard.

As the young (27) editor of the Memphis Press, Leech wrote a fiery editorial ("The Shame of It All") blasting Boss Crump's political machine, and accusing local judges of whitewashing Crump election frauds. Sentenced to ten days for contempt of court, Leech was escorted to jail by a brass band. Half an hour later, he was pounding out a story on a typewriter in his cell--first of a ten-day series called "Jailed." Admirers sent Leech a well-stocked refrigerator, fresh linen, flowers and cigars, and a faithful reader brought her daughter to recite the Declaration of Independence in front of his cell door.

Down with Capp. At 30, while editor of the Birmingham Post, Leech printed previous charges against a Klansman who was on trial for murder, and was again cited for contempt, jailed a second time. In Pittsburgh, Leech has aroused the wrath of left-wingers by printing the names of those who signed nominating petitions for the Communist and Progressive Party tickets. (Said Leech: "They have the right to sign the petitions. We have the right to print their names as news.") Two years ago, Editor Leech took on the citizens of Dogpatch and their Pittsburgh allies. Fed up with the way Cartoonist Al Capp had been ridiculing the U.S. Senate, Leech precipitated a flood of angry letters-to-the-editor by dropping Li'l Abner from the Press for a week. It was quite a rumpus, especially as readers charged him with abridging Cartoonist Capp's right of free speech, but it was a small brawl alongside the uproar that Editor Leech kicked up in Britain last week.

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