House That Butch Built

"Of all the American newspapers," said Britain's astute Lord Northcliffe, "I would prefer to own the Washington Post, because it reaches the breakfast tables of the members of Congress."

Actually, the great British publisher (London Times, Daily Mail) stated only half the case. The real reason why other journalists praise and envy the Post is that in the past 17 years it has risen from the unenvied position as Washington's No. 1 scandal sheet to become the most independent and vigorous paper in the capital. Harry Truman regards it as an opposition organ; the capital's reactionaries have long called it the "Washington edition of the Daily Worker." Yet its news judgment is so sure, its editorial voice so forthright, that, in a city where all lawmakers and administrators reach for the New York papers, it has become must reading. It is easily among the top ten papers in the U.S.

In keeping with its stature and influence, the Post has just finished moving from its 55-year-old, dingy, vermin-infested grey stone building on busy E Street into a bright, and modern $6,000,000 plant on quiet L Street, nine blocks across town. Close to the Russian embassy and the Statler Hotel, the new seven-story building has airconditioning, soundproofing in its spic & span city room, full-color presses, and enough other trimmings to awe oldtimers on the staff. Said one old Postman: "It'll be all right once we get to spitting on the floor again."

"Every Mistake in the Book." This change of scene is no greater than the change in the Post itself since 1933, when Eugene Meyer, longtime banker, Republican and holder of top Government jobs (RFC, War Finance Corp. and Federal Reserve Board) under every U.S. President from Wilson to Truman, bought the down-at-heel sheet from the late oil-rich playboy Ned McLean.* Meyer paid only $825,000 for a property valued five years earlier at more than $5,000,000.

"In the first two years," says Banker Meyer, "I made every mistake in the book." Then he was persuaded to take on some top professional journalists. As editor he hired able, literate Felix Morley;* as managing editor he got flashy, temperamental Alexander F. ("Casey") Jones from the Minneapolis Journal. Morley, who came to the Post from the Brookings Institution, took editorial writers out of their ivory tower, sent them out to dig up their own facts, soon made the Post's editorial page the best-written and best-read in Washington. The Post supported Roosevelt in most of his foreign policies, but at home, fought vigorously against such New Deal aberrations as Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court. In 1936 and 1940 it supported Landon and Willkie.

"All in One Pail." Managing Editor Jones snapped up the news coverage. He hired good reporters and rewrite men to turn out crisp, accurate copy, set up the Post's national bureau to cover official Washington. Now staffed by such old-timers as Eddie Folliard, Al Friendly and Ferdinand Kuhn (at State), it is still one of the capital's best bureaus.

The Post added top comics and a chatty women's page notably enlivened by "Mary Haworth's Mail," an advice-to-the-lovelorn column (now syndicated in 130 papers), which is the most popular feature in the paper. It also took aboard so many columnists that one rival newsman cracked: "Now we can get all the garbage in one pail." It still has six local and nine national columnists, including Walter Lippmann, the Alsops and Marquis Childs. It gives Drew Pearson his all-important Washington outlet, but its estimate of Pearson is pointedly low; he appears on the comics page.

The Payoff. All of Gene Meyer's changes paid off. Since 1933 the Post has nearly quadrupled its circulation, and it has been operating well in the black since 1944.* Both Morley and Jones have gone --Morley (after an interval as president of Haverford College) to the Washington staff of Barron's, Jones to the Syracuse Herald-Journal. Under Managing Editor Russell Wiggins, the Post's news coverage has lost none of its ginger; it is still the most crusading paper in the capital. The editorial page has lost some of its consistency and original spark. The five-man editorial staff, under British-born Editor Herbert Elliston, onetime Christian Science Monitor columnist, is scattered all over the political lot.

Although the editorial line is set at conferences, the pressures of conflicting views are such that it bends from time to time and occasionally has to go embarrassingly into reverse. Example: the Post, which doggedly sympathized with Alger Hiss during the early stages of his trials, has come to the conclusion that Hiss was a "cool and cynical perjurer." It has opposed such Fair Deal projects as the Brannan and Ewing Plans; in foreign policy it has generally strung along with the White House and the State Department, reserving its most vigorous thumps for the Chinese Nationalists.

Attack Invited. Post Chairman Eugene Meyer, now a vigorous 75, goes regularly to the office, where he is known (behind his back) as "Butch." The top operations boss of the paper is lanky, 35-year-old Philip Graham, who married the boss's daughter and took over as president and publisher (TIME, July 1, 1946). Ex-Air Force Colonel Graham, a Harvard Law School graduate and prewar secretary to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, has spent most of his time on the business side. Now, with that well in hand, he plans to turn more & more to editorial matters, where he has occasionally shown a keen nose for news.

It was on Graham's hunch that Reporter Folliard went to Atlanta three years ago and won a Pulitzer Prize for his series on the anti-Negro Columbians. It was also Graham who recommended Pulitzer Prize-winning Cartoonist Herblock for the job as Post cartoonist.

Publisher Graham doggedly hopes to preserve the Post's independence. "The Washington Post's positions," he wrote recently, "do not always jibe with prevailing opinion, conservative or liberal. Its independence invites attack. But if a newspaper professes to have a personality, and is known as disinterested, the mud in the long run fails to stick."

*No kin to Robert McLean, owner and president of Philadelphia's staid, prosperous (circ. 723,589) Bulletin.

*Brother of Author Christopher Morley.

*But its circulation (187,369) and advertising (20,521,756 lines for the first eleven months of 1950) still lag behind the round-the-clock Times-Herald (circ. 275,314, advertising, 21,042,854 lines) and the conservative, workmanlike afternoon Star (circ. 223,547, advertising 34,039,026 lines).

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