Press: Pulitzer Pains

As thunder follows lightning, so grumbling follows the annual award of the Pulitzer Prizes. This year's controversy centred around the placid, bespectacled head of Arthur Krock, chief of the New York Times Washington bureau, whose exclusive, authorized interview with President Roosevelt in February 1937—the only one given in five years—won him the $500 prize for distinguished Washington correspondence.

White House correspondents work on the understanding that the President plays no favorites, grants no exclusive interviews. Krock's colleagues, good and sore, promptly obtained from Press Secretary Stephen Early a promise that this kind of thing would never happen again. Many newshawks felt the...