Washington Shift

Editor Whitelaw Reid of the New York Herald Tribune has long wanted his paper to run the column "State of the Nation," written by the Christian Science Monitor's able Washington Bureau Chief Roscoe Drummond. But the Trib could not buy the column; the Monitor allows no syndication of its features. This week "Whitey" Reid took more direct action to get the column and, at the same time, filled the top spot in his paper's 15-man Washington bureau, second largest newspaper bureau in the capital (first: the New York Times). He named Roscoe Drummond, 51, chief of the Trib's Washington bureau to take the place of Bert Andrews, who died of a heart attack last month (TIME, Aug. 31). With Drummond as bureau chief, the Trib expects to put more emphasis on interpretive reporting.

For such a change, the Trib could not have found a better man. Drummond, a Syracuse University graduate ('24), started out with the Monitor as a reporter 29 years ago, and has since been everything from correspondent and European manager to chief editorial writer and executive editor. In Washington, his staff spent little time trying for beats, filed only interpretive stories under his ironclad rule: "Relate yesterday's facts to today's events to produce tomorrow's meaning." Says Drummond: "A lot of papers would say we didn't write anything but Sunday features." Drummond, like most Monitor staffers a devout Christian Scientist, will write four columns a week which the Trib will syndicate, will still do an occasional piece for the Monitor.

Into Drummond's place as the Monitor's Washington bureau chief will go the paper's managing editor, William H. Stringer, 44, a Harvard Law School graduate who for the past 14 years has been a correspondent in Monitor bureaus around the world. Stringer, appointed managing editor (i.e., chief administrative executive on the Monitor) less than a year ago, will not be replaced in that job.

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