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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
THURSDAY, MAY 23, 1940
Number One news spot in the U.S.A.
ALL IN!
It is the voice of Bill Donaldson, Superintendent of the House press gallery. Every Friday morning at 10:30 and Tuesday afternoon at 4, that familiar call resounds through the oval inner room of the White House executive offices.
And with these two words, as free of ceremony as the shout of a subway guard, proclamation is made that the accredited correspondents of the nation's newspapers—75 to 200 strong—will now proceed to question the President of the United States.
Let no foreign newspaperman suppose (and several of them are usually present) that the absence of fanfare implies any lack of seriousness. Not these days.
In the doldrums of last winter, the spot news men in the front row and the stiff-collared Mark Sullivan at the rear exchanged many a wisecrack with the man in the chair. But now the correspondents' questions, always prepared in advance and carefully worded, are asked with a full sense of their national and international import.
The front row may occasionally relieve the tension with a jest, but for the most part the problems of the hour are too harsh and dire for anything but the gravest faces, the most searching and genuine thoughtfulness on both sides of that famous, gadget-laden desk.
Number One news spot in the U. S. A? Yes, and in this portentous year of 1940, it may well be more than that. For this year, a World War and an American presidential election cross each other's paths—a meeting more weighted with destiny than any conjunction of planets.
Third term possibilities...changes in defense plans...developments in foreign policy...no newsman can go through these doors now without feeling that he may come out with a story for the history books.
Not always have the Presidential doors swung open to correspondents. Most 19th century Presidents, even Lincoln, were suspicious of newspapermen. But during the reign of the unbending Cleveland, a reporter named Bill Price hit on the scheme of hanging around the White House gate to buttonhole the departing visitor, and he soon had plenty of initiators.
It was Theodore Roosevelt who first saw the possibilities in that little group of gate-watchers. One rainy day soon after the assassin's bullet had catapulted him into the Presidency, he called them in, gave them an anteroom of their own, and established the custom of face-to-face questioning of President by press.
This journalistic questioning has really become part of the American governmental process. It means that Democracy gets more than lip service between elections. It means that it is somebody's regular job to report to the stockholders of U. S. A., Inc. what their chief has on his mind. Extended to all other public servants in Washington, it means that the citizen learns what the government is doing, and the government learns what the citizen is thinking.
White House coverage, of course, is only a fraction of the complicated Washington assignment. The queer little political island of D. C. is dotted with news sources. There is the Senate, which can (and has) upset the Presidential foreign affairs apple cart. There is the House, which must untie the purse strings for every Presidential project. There is the Supreme Court, which can topple his legislation after it's all signed, sealed, and delivered. And the Executive Departments . . . and the 79 independent administrative agencies . . . and the foreign embassies and legations . . . all gushing news from time to time faster than the White House itself.
It's no job for an amateur—and there are no amateurs in the Washington correspondent corps. Many have been foreign correspondents in important European capitals, editorial writers on great metropolitan papers, managing editors or city editors.
Mally write books, magazine articles, syndicated columns. Though their median age is only 37, every one has proved himself on some lesser firing line. And they are paid accordingly ...$25,000 for the tops, $6000 for the average.
No other group in Washington is their superior in intelligence. None has fewer axes to grind, fewer oxen to be gored. And few men, even in public office, have deeper responsibilities to the people.
Together with TIME's own Washington staff of eleven, these men supply the rich harvest of news from which the Newsmagazine extracts the most significant kernels.
Because the Presidency is the hub around which the nation revolves, TIME has always accorded leadoff position to what is virtually a diary for the President. No week of his life is unimportant, and TIME readers always know what he has done with it. And they know, too, every noteworthy event in the other departments of the government, for the Presidential "diary" is followed by a review of all Washington during a week of the nation's political history.
One integrated, dramatic story...this is what TIME creates out of the two million words that pour forth from the city by the Potomac each week. Every piece of vital news is fitted into every other piece ... out of the week's haze of details emerges a clear, consistent, meaningful picture.
Democratic government will survive in this unfriendly world if the electorate knows and cares what its public servants are doing . . . faces its democratic decisions with an informed understanding. TIME takes the responsibility for seeing that a most influential section of the electorate knows, cares, and understands.
This is one of a series of advertisements in which the Editors of TIME hope to give College Students a clearer picture of the world of news-gathering, news-writing, and news-reading—and the part TIME plays in helping you to grasp, measure, and use the history of your lifetime as you live the story of your life.