Question & Answer

Across seven columns of the pro-Ike New York Times last week ran an ad that demanded in inch-high letters: WHY DOESN'T THE TIMES SWITCH ITS SUPPORT TO GOVERNOR STEVENSON? Bought

($3,500) and written by Mac Cache and Joseph L. Morse, Manhattan book distributors and publishers (Unicorn Press), the ad asked the paper to switch because "there is genuine discord . . . between the Times and the vast majority of its readers." Eisenhower, said the ad, "has gone so far off the deep end politically as to support such men as Rush Holt and Chapman Revercomb, who repulsively stand for what the Times has always courageously fought." Cache and Morse urged the Times's readers to "besiege our favorite newspaper with thousands of letters, cards, wires" asking the paper to "reverse its stand," and asked: "Gentlemen of the Times, when have you ever before sacrificed principle to political expediency --and in so large a degree?"

Forthwith the Times got a lesson in 1) the power of advertising and 2) the readiness of Stevenson followers to write for their candidate. Overnight, 2,120 letters and wires flooded into the Times offices. Only 142 urged the paper to stick to Ike; the other 1,978 called for a switch. Next day, just as it would with any other news story, the Times dutifully reported the avalanche of "restrained communications" in response to the ad. It answered the communications by reprinting a three-column editorial that it had run only three days before, reaffirming the Times's support of Eisenhower.

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