The Press: Doctor in the House

Colonel Guy T. Viskniskki is celebrated as a newspaper doctor, an efficiency expert. He is tough, ruthless, and almost as bald as a hard-boiled egg. Called in to operate on the frumpy Portland Oregonian in 1934, Efficiency Man Viskniskki took one look and laid about him with his cleaver. Deadheads rolled, deadwood was chopped away, and the "old lady of Alder Street" woke up with her face lifted.

An interested witness to the Colonel's drastic surgery was young Edwin Palmer ("Ep") Hoyt, the Oregonian's sharp-eyed managing editor. Last week, having left the streamlined old...

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