The First Amendment; Osborne Elliot

The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Rubin. With me today is Osborn Elliott. For many years the editor of Newsweek magazine and before that he worked with Time magazine as a reporter and editor and with the New York Journal of Commerce. He's now dean Elliott at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and was known Elliott has just published a book through the House of Viking called the world of Oz. And I gather that all your friends call you on is correct. In this book I found many stories of first rate importance to students of journalism

and to students of how the media influence events. The most interesting stories deal with the changes that were affected by us at Newsweek. Some of the things you admit were failures on your part. Reluctant failures such as the treatment of women. One point you say that they they won a victory well deserved and in another point you talk about the changes in the coverage of civil rights. I like to start with that latter subject. In the early 60s Newsweek magazine which was chasing Time magazine decided to take the lead or at least to put its imprimatur upon the kind of story that hadn't been done up to that point. And you decided to give the story of a black America in the United States. You know I think tremendous story. I think you have to put it a little bit in the context. Phil Graham the publisher of The

Washington Post Company bought Newsweek in early 961. And at that point name me as the editor I was the tender age of 36. And as you will recall in the early 60s this country was in a whole new mode it was there was an excitement an expectation of things happening with the Kennedy administration taking over in Washington. And as it happened with a new administration taking over a Newsweek as the 60s unfolded the entire nature of the news changed. It wasn't just a series of breaking stories but there were deep seated social movements that were sweeping this country. Civil rights being the primary example but many other things as the 60s went on. The Vietnam War and its revolt the student revolt against the Vietnam War the kind of counterculture and the sexual revolution ultimately the women's liberation movement. There was a great concern in this country during those 1000 sixties years

under first Jack Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson about the deprived the disadvantaged and the poverty stricken because of these because of the new administration of Newsweek. Young people such as myself. And the desire on our part to break the mold of news magazine journalism and ability to do so because of the freedom that we were given by our new proprietor Phil Graham. We were able to grapple with these great social logical tides of the 60s in ways the TIME magazine our prime competitor which we later came to call Brand X could not. Time had created the mold of the news magazine had poured itself into it and in a way had poured Newsweek into it. We felt that we could break that mold and successfully compete with time and we rode the wave of those social logical changes in the 60s quite successfully as it turned out.

Civil rights being the first example of this. I was curious about civil rights because one of the. Glory's of your book The world of Oz is what you tell about yourself. I I came into this world a tolerant and respectful of everybody at the age of one day but I'm unique in almost everybody else has had to learn along the way. It seems to me that very few of us ever admit that we've learned from experience so that we weren't the very best of people in regard to what we want to believe in today. And you you show that I was reminded a little bit of lushes book about Mrs. Roosevelt and how she grew from time to time. And you tell us that you came from a family that really wasn't very much concerned about these things. Oh I came from a white only cocoon as I say in the book. I went to private schools in New York and went to a private prep school in New Hampshire St. Paul's school I went to Harvard College in the days when a black

face was very difficult to find. Well you majored in hockey. I majored in hockey and survived. And. Then I was in a navy that was totally segregated during World War Two. The only black faces that one saw aboard ship and I was incidentally on a ship called the USS Boston. The only black faces you saw aboard ship in the Navy were the faces of stewards mates who were in effect servants to young officers young white officers such as myself and older officers so I had no exposure to what later became my primary involvement for me and for Newsweek until rather late on in the game. What caused my particular interest in civil rights and the cause of the deprived people in this country. I honestly don't know. I know that all of America was affected by the nightly appearances on television of the Bull Connor's of the world and the

terrible scenes that surrounded the civil rights battles in the south. At Newsweek we happen to be blessed with a group of very sensitive and pretty wise southern reporters particularly in our Atlanta bureau. People whose names are really not known Bill Emerson call Fleming Joe coming Frank trip but a Mississippian who were very sensitive to what was going on in the south and were able to sensitise editors in New York as the civil rights movement bubbled out of the south and into the north. I would say that later on a little bit later in the 60s I was granted the opportunity of what turned out to be a kind of a life changing experience with about 12 other journalists. I spent a week or 10 days in ghetto America an extraordinary experience which was organized by the Urban League Whitney Young who was the predecessor of Vernon Jordan.

You recount that you were housed with an elderly black gentlemen. Yeah we visit about eight cities and stayed in the ghettos of these cities every night either in a black home or in a black owned motel in Detroit I think it was my partner who was a fella called Joseph harsh for many years a correspond of the Christian Science Monitor and who after many years in London had acquired something of an English accent rather clipped tones he and I were paired off and the first night on the road and spent the night with. Someone elderly black gentleman whose last name by Marotta miraculous coincidence was the same as my first name. He was Mr Osbourne. He was a UAW official and over a bottle of the hard stuff he explained what was going on I gather and well you know hours of the morning he in those days and I suppose today might be considered to be an Uncle Tom because you remember he said you know I don't think we ought to

blame the grandchildren of white people for the sins of their grandfathers. And he viewed him self as a kind of a middle class black or negroes as they were called in those days and Joe Hart of the Christian Science Monitor spotted a bottle of Black Label and Mr Osbourne Our host said well after your travels I imagine you'd like something to put body and soul together and harsh said. Well Mr. Ozment if you have in mind what I think you have in mind it sounds absolutely delightful. Well between us we killed off that bottle that night I think and it was a wonderful experience that was just the first day as a matter of fact in what turned out to be a real eyeopener of a tour of America. We went to Chicago we went to Oakland we went to Los Angeles San Francisco Atlanta Detroit and Cleveland. And it was like looking at the other side of the moon for me the dark side. In regard to the other topic that I mentioned women again

I wouldn't say that the Elliotts didn't know fine distinguished women when they saw them they even produced some of them. But you didn't hold them in the highest regards as professionals. The curious thing is your is your honesty. And it must've taken a lot of courage to be that honest with the reader. You report that it just didn't occur to you to act differently. It just wasn't done. And many women were told exactly how far they could rise at Newsweek or in the American press and what jobs they shouldn't aspire to. In fact almost in almost every business institution in the country there was a systematic Sometimes I like to think inadvertent discrimination against women. I was surprised by the women's movement when it hit Newsweek in 1970. You know we talked a little bit about the decade of the 60s. How did you think about women like Flora Lewis for example. Did she

strike you as being the oddball the extraordinary character who was a great journalist or did she strike you as being someone that you need to be considered with the other women. Well I've always had a very high regard for Flora Lewis. As it happens Strangely enough I grew up surrounded by very strong women. My mother after my father lost all of his money in the crash went to work in New York real estate and became the primary broker of New York Manhattan real estate in the 30s and 40s and 50s became vice president of a major New York City real estate firm at the age of 75 her mother even more remarkably by far. Started a business in 1890 eight in New York City designing and importing dresses and she became a costumer to Ethel Barrymore. She built up a very successful business in a day when ladies were not supposed to go into trade. And one year I think is about 907 this

is a grandmother whom I never knew because she died long before I was born. She resolved that she would make as much money as the president of the United States in one year and in those days the president was making $50000. There were no taxes. And she succeeded in making $50000 in one year and retired. Well I'm sort of getting at the concept of The Invisible Man or the invisible person that so many of the things that we deal with as media people are hard to see and that a new generation of reporters we have to expect that the reporters won't see certain things now. Well I did it late in the 70s you didn't think it was a winning at Newsweek Newsweek by 1970 Newsweek had become very successful. It was competing very successfully and was considered really to be a better magazine than time. I viewed this magazine which we had taken over in 1961 as being the paradigm of liberality in

all all senses in its approach to the nudes in its treatment of its employees etcetera. And I was totally shocked in 1970 when the 50 editorial women of Newsweek filed suit against the magazine charging systematic discrimination on grounds of sex over a long period of time. I couldn't believe it. I called the women together. I tried to head off their public press conference by calling the leader of the women and saying look why don't we talk. And she said sorry. It's our turn. It's too late. Too far down the pike. And of course we editors of Newsweek played exactly into the hands of the women inadvertently when in 1070 we decided to do a cover story on the women's lib movement without having one of your own women on this don't we looked around the office. We knew that a woman would have to write this story. We concluded quite correctly that we had no qualified woman to write the story.

And so for the first time in history Newsweek went to the outside to hire somebody to write a cover story and the person we hired was a woman called Helen dude or wife of Newsweek's star writer Peter Goldman. She wrote a wonderful cover story and of course the women of Newsweek the verge of the revolt sees this as the perfect example of the discrimination and the day that that women's lib cover story landed on Kay Graham's desk. Ok by then being the owner of The Washington Post Company and of Newsweek that very day also landed on her desk a letter from the women saying that they were suing Newsweek for discrimination. Well this all came as a great surprise and a shock to me. And what came as a greater shock was my final realization that the women were right. By the way you mention the name Katharine Graham She's an extraordinary woman. Even more extraordinary when you think of what she's had to go through. You mentioned at the start of the

book The world of Oz as one Eliot that you thought Phil Gramm was the end of the world as far as good people what he was you were in love with him he was electric and magnetic magic. He was a wonderful beautiful articulate brilliant witty bright humorous man who was also crazy. That is a classic manic depressive. He was a suicide at the end but what I'm interested in was that in Katherine Graham without any experience she picks up the thread of The Washington Post company gives you encouragement at Newsweek gives you your head as it were and says Don't chase after US News and World Report go for broke. Go for the best. And yet there again in her own experience it was very late in the game that she thought that she would have to do something in life and that she forced herself to do this right. Phil Graham killed himself in the summer of 1963 only two and a half years after he had bought

Newsweek. Kay Graham had grown up in the shadow of her powerful parents Eugene and Agnes Meyer. And in the shadow of her brilliant husband Phil Graham. She always viewed herself as an ugly duckling. She's told me this herself. And here suddenly in the summer of 63 she had to face a decision as to what to do with this already huge communications empire including The Washington Post newspaper Newsweek magazine television radio stations. She called a meeting of the board the day after Phil's death or or perhaps two days after was a day before his funeral. The board of The Washington Post Company I was then one of the two Newsweek members of the board and she announced to this group of men that number one she appreciated and that we had been through a very difficult year nowhere near as difficult a year she had been through because her husband had flown off with another

woman flown around the world and left her and four children and she just going through hell for that year. She said Well gentlemen I want to tell you that I appreciate what you've been through I know what you've been through and I want you all to know that no part of this company will be sold. It's a family company there's another generation coming on and we will proceed as before. A very courageous first gesture to her management. She obviously knew almost nothing about management. Not much about journalism at that point although she had I think served as a reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle and perhaps on the Washington Post for a year or so when her father was running the paper. And gradually she started to insinuate herself into the workings of the Washington Post Company. She was tentative and deferential at first and of course we know her now today as what is described at least as the most powerful woman in

America. You know it's also extraordinary in that she is the second woman one thinks of in terms of Washington journalism coming into a situation as overwhelming the first turned out to be a complete character. And when While not a sissy Patterson Right. But in the case of Katharine Graham it is this it is a steady hand at the at the helm. And The Washington Post has has established itself as one of the great newspapers of the country as Newsweek has established itself under your leadership. Now when we talk about women and we talk about about your experiences learning about the black ghetto What do you make of the fact that today and I'm sort of referring to my earlier statement that we don't see in each generation some things they're only about sixteen or seventeen hundred depending upon which figure you believe minority people working for the American newspaper I think in the United States are terrible shame. And I think that the press is culpable

of about the worst hiring record concerning minorities of any industry in this country. I didn't realize the figures were as you suggest of twelve hundred or sixteen hundred figures that I have seen have suggested that only 4 percent of the people in this country's newsrooms are minorities. We've seen figures such as 70 percent of all the newspapers less than ten thousand circulation have no minority have no use at all you know. Well I think it's a terrible situation and I'm happy to say that at Columbia the journalism school at Columbia we've been trying to do something about this and yes that was where one of the best programs was aborted. It was aborted by the ford for minority training. Yeah. And the Ford Foundation aborted it. But this year's graduating class at Columbia numbers 25 percent of its members are minorities. And this didn't just happen it happened because we went out and recruited them very actively We had minority journalism days in Boston with the Boston Globe and Chicago with the Sun-Times

and washing with the post and so on. And I also was able to get a hundred thousand dollars each from the Washington Post Company my old employer and from Time Inc my older employer to provide money for financial aid to minority students. So the result finally was that the recruiting drive was very successful and we didn't lose a single minority student for reasons of economics. And yet when these minority students that is an extraordinary record and again due to your own personal intervention when some of these minority students go to some journalism schools or to some universities indeed they hardly run into any minority professors. They could be studying their trade and their trade seems to be an image of a world that they cannot participate in. Is there anything we can do about that. I'm thinking of the fact that one of the largest industries in the United States is the press one of the richest industries of the press. It would seem to me that a fund in the

order of 5 or 10 million might be drawn if we were really serious about this plan to do something collectively I think would be wonderful if that happened. And as for professors teaching journalism you know you have to you have to get people who are experienced in journalism to teach it in my view with the presses terrible record in hiring minorities. It's going to it's very difficult to find minority teachers to teach it who have the experience. Columbia as it happens we have out of our out of our out let's say 10 tenured nine tenured professors we have one black person who is a very able journalist. We have another black person a woman who is also up for tenure No. Incidentally I think tenure is a terrible idea but we can get into that.

I prefer 38 contracts and high salaries. Well you know when I went to Columbia about a year ago Bill McGill it was from the president of Columbia now retiring. I said Listen when you come in here you want to have tenure. You want to be a full professor as well as being dean. And I said I don't approve of tenure and I don't want tenure. He said Believe me you've got to have it so he launched the process and I went in as a full professor with tenure. And I suppose politically in dealing with the faculty it's a good idea to have tenure but my own view is that particularly in a school of journalism where things change over the years people should not have tenure. I believe that you know to be a professional world and not a tenured world where so much of the world of journalism though is outside of the daily craft of journalism while so much is inside the daily craft. As you know the Association for education in journalism like to require a majority proportion of the courses in the liberal arts and one. One doesn't know what journalism

consists of is it. Like other professions where you can say study the profession only rather I don't know your life. I certainly agree in fact as you know but many in the audience may not know the Columbia Journalism School as a graduate school is just a one year graduate course for a Master of Science in journalism which is a misnomer as if as if there were a science of journalism. And when we select our students we look for people who have a broad based education in the humanities liberal arts history political science government etc. in the belief that in this ever more complex world we need people who can grapple with these situations these complex conflicts between interests in some sense making a way and they bring a sense of proportion and of history to covering the news we can teach in the trade. That's that's that's easily done. I don't try to lead a transition and have a

story that has a beginning middle and an end. But we can't teach them the depth and Laura when we combine some of the things that we learned to do for example the Nieman fellowships are awarded to people and you didn't get one your boss wouldn't let you get one he said. If you wanted one I'd still like one or two things that anybody wants to graduate from Harvard and to work a time and therefore he rejected your doorstep lying for an even has a membership in the Harvard Club and a job of all time members you're going to have an over why don't we tie in such things as a year studying whatever journalism is. Plus a year of studying in order to get a degree. Oh I think we should and I think that there are all sorts of opportunities such as the Neiman fellowship offers to those lucky 10 or 15 people every year. But for instance at Columbia we've had a program called the badge and fellowships for mid career journalists quote unquote mid career meaning you have to be about 30 years old today. I think this is for journalists who are interested in covering business and economics and they spend a year at Columbia under the auspices

of the journalism school but mostly studying the business school economics and business and so on. We're about to launch a similar program for mid career journalists who want to get expert in the subject of Japan. I would like to see similar programs in science and political writing and Urban Affairs and so on across the board. We have to restructure our ideas about curriculum when we're talking about the kind of journalism that we're pointing at. Well you know it's very hard for me to make the judgment because I'm so new in the game I've only been at Columbia for a year that's the point at which your judgment will be best before you get older the gain of some of those tenured professors you're really basically off the top of the head. Answer that I would give. I believe that everybody who goes through at least our graduate school of journalism ought to have an exposure to some area of expertise.

And we have begun to offer year long courses in business and economics reporting and writing. This is separate and apart from the badge and fellowship thing that I was talking about. We have begun to offer a year long course in critical writing about the arts. Next year we will be offering a course in what I call what I would call Race Racism and reporting. Its title is going to be the people of New York which is sexier I guess. And I hope that in the next few years we will have a year long courses in science writing in urban affairs in political and national reporting. I dont think that we can hope or should expect to turn out experts but I think that we owe it to our students to at least expose each of them to some specialized field in the course of the year at Columbia. Is there any way in a moment or two that we have left to convey to them the frustration the exhilaration and the joys of both the office and McSweeney's

bar in the real world. Well I hope that the young people who are coming into journalism today are not coming in simply with stars in their eyes all wanting to become the Woodward's and Bernstein's of the next decade. But who do indeed come into the field believing that it is a higher calling and believing that that higher calling brings with it higher responsibilities. And I would like to see them come into the field with a particular fire in the belly as well as their broad grounding in the liberal arts. There must be some satisfaction amongst the faculty and students that you've had all of this background and you're not lost in the nuances of academia. Well you'll have to ask them. I have tenure. Well I was going to Eliot it's been a joy to have you on the program and I appreciate your new book The world of Oz published by Viking for this edition. Bernard Reuben.

The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The engineer for this broadcast was Margo Garrison. The program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast has produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University which are solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.