Conscience of New England

Into a Boston court last week walked Denis W. Delaney; ousted collector of internal revenue, who was convicted more than a year ago of accepting a $7,500 bribe (TIME. Feb. 4, 1952). Delaney was in court because of evidence that had been dug up by the Providence Journal and Bulletin's Reporter John Strohmeyer, who thereby helped touch off the nationwide cleanup in the internal revenue bureau. But the U.S. court of appeals set aside the first conviction and ordered a retrial mainly on the ground that the press furor prevented a fair trial. Reporter Strohmeyer had no intention of letting the case die, kept hammering away. Last week, before the second trial got started, the pressure of the press and of the evidence in the case got to be too much for Grafter Delaney. He unexpectedly pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe and evading income taxes, was sentenced to a year and a day in jail and fined $5,000.

For such feats the morning Journal (circ. 46,023) and its sister the Evening Bulletin (142,658) have won a reputation as the "journalistic conscience of New England." But they do more than bring wrongdoers to the bar. By giving their readers a blend of New York Times-like coverage, combined with the reflective aura of Boston's Atlantic Monthly and the hominess of the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, they have become the best and most respected New England dailies.

Hell & Unemployment Compensation. The papers go after spot news with the same vigor they apply to a crusade. Last year, after the city desk picked up news of a $51,000 bank robbery, the papers sent out two-way radio cars to chase the police and the fleeing robber. Their coverage of the chase won the staff the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting "under pressure of deadlines." At the head of that 220-man staff is Publisher Sevellon Brown, 66, who has bossed the papers for the past 32 years.

Sevellon Brown, who looks and often talks like a college professor, never went beyond grammar school. He started out in newspapers as a $10-a-week ad salesman on the Milwaukee Journal. After working for the U.P. and newspapers in the East, he got a job in the Journal and Bulletin's Washington bureau as a correspondent. When he first joined the staff, the papers had a far different reputation from the one he eventually gave them.

Under General Manager John Revelstoke Rathom, a firm believer in the old newspaper saying, "Raise hell and sell papers," the papers were sensational, slapdash crusaders. Even before the U.S. got into World War I, Rathom was convinced that German diplomats were spies. He liked to brag that he planted secretaries in the offices of high German diplomats to intercept secret correspondence, and used Secret Service men as reporters. Over and over, other dailies around the U.S. carried Page One stories of German intrigue that began, "Tomorrow the Providence Journal will say ..." But Rathom's enterprise got him in trouble with Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the papers ran a sloppy, muckraking series that implied widespread homosexuality at the naval base in Newport, F.D.R. blasted the papers. Three years later, when Rathom died, Brown moved up from Washington and became managing editor.

Brown kept up the crusades, but changed their direction and tone. The papers launched campaigns for the improvement of Rhode Island law on everything from reorganizing municipal fiscal procedure to stopping the flow of liquor into state prisons. Staffers roamed the U.S. to see how other cities were run, returned with recommendations that have made many Rhode Island city and state government bureaus models of good organization.

Father & Sons. The papers' activities have not always made them popular. Often readers in predominantly Catholic, Democratic Rhode Island regard them as Republican papers owned largely by Protestant stockholders. In some parts of the state a Democrat can hardly expect to get elected unless he attacks the Journal and Bulletin. Actually, the papers list themselves as independent, have supported most of the policies of the city's Democratic Mayor Walter H. Reynolds and the state's Democratic Governor Dennis J. Roberts; in the last presidential election they were behind Ike. Readers have also criticized their monopoly position. Publisher Brown himself regrets this. In 1939, when the competing Providence Tribune was ready to fold, "we published an offer," recalls Brown, "to make it available to anyone who wanted to run it; no one did and the advertisers wouldn't support it."

Publisher Brown has little fear that his papers will ever fall into the slothful ways attributed to some monopolies. Five months ago, 40-year-old Associate Editor Sevellon ("Jeff") Brown 3rd moved into the editor's chair that his father occupied, while Publisher Brown held his title as the paper's boss. Jeff Brown, Amherst ('34), joined the Journal and Bulletin in 1939 after working for the A.P., U.P. and Pathfinder. He was followed to the paper a year later by his brother Barry, 38, chief editorial writer, who last month won a year's Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. Says Jeff Brown: "I've learned from my father the fundamentals of good newspapering."

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