The Press: Disloyalty

A poker player who usually wins and a pinkish liberal who earnestly omits tact is Columnist Heywood Broun. One day last week, the following announcement appeared in the New York World at the top of the space usually devoted to his column:

“The World has decided to dispense with the services of Heywood Broun. His disloyalty to this paper makes any further association impossible.”

Mr. Broun had done every sort of writing for the World except giving advice to the lovelorn. He had been reporter, book reviewer, theatre critic (before he developed a phobia for the theatre), sports writer, columnist. His whims had upset the World routine; but his stuff had a following. Last August, he came to a stalemate with Publisher Ralph Pulitzer of the World because he insisted on writing very, very pinkish words on the Sacco-Vanzetti case (TIME, Aug. 22). It was not until late in December that Mr. Broun’s column again appeared in the World. Meanwhile, he took to writing—and still does—a page in The Nation (small but earnestly liberal weekly).

The immediate cause of the World’s dismissal of Mr. Broun was an article he wrote in The Nation last week. He discussed U. S. journalism, using the World as an example of how bad the best is: “The World on numerous occasions has been able to take two, three or even four different stands with precisely the same material in hand. So constant were the shifts during the Sacco-Vanzetti case that the paper seemed like an old car going up hill. In regard to Nicaragua the World has thundered on Thursdays and whispered on Monday mornings. Again and again the paper has managed to get a perfect full-nelson on some public problem only to let its opponent slip away because its fingers were too feeble. It does not seem to me that the paper possesses either courage or tenacity. . . .

Not so long ago a Sunday editor [of the World) insisted on editing a contribution to one of the newspaper columns. Somebody had written in to say that before the triumphs of Lindbergh most Americans had regarded all Scandinavians as dullwitted. ‘Heywood,’ said the responsible editor, ‘don’t you realize that our Swedish readers would be offended?’ ”

After the ousting, Mr. Broun issued a statement concluding: ” ‘Disloyalty,’ unexplained, might mean to the reader anything from robbing the till to sitting on Ralph Pulitzer’s hat.

“When I returned to the World after a witch’s Sabbatical, they told me I should blow off steam in The Nation. They told me there was no governor on that steam. Previously the World maintained its right to censor what I wrote for them. Now it wants to censor what I write elsewhere. After the tradition of Uncle Tom, I can still say that, while my body may have belonged to the Press Publishing Company, my soul belonged to God.”