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Threading its way through Washington's crawling traffic, a black Buick convertible with red leather seats glided along the capital's stately avenues and slummy byways. Its driver, a man with a kindly but slightly worried expression, was as inconspicuous as his car was flashy. He looked like any slightly battered citizen going about his slightly battered business. And so he was. Columnist Drew Pearson was on the prowl for news.
At the Pentagon, he quizzed Chief of Staff Omar Bradley about a caustic letter from Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (an Army source informed Pearson) complaining about the Army's "slipshod" training program. ("As a result," said Pearson, "Bradley has called in four 'top-ranking generals and raised hell.") Over lunch at the Mayflower hotel, War Crimes Prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan, just back from Tokyo, fed Pearson an "inside" story that Emperor Hirohito wants a military alliance with the U.S. An anonymous telephone call brought a chance to throw a dart at a favorite target, Senator Owen Brewster, for taking free rides on Government planes.
Round & Round. This week all these items were tossed in the firebox of Drew Pearson's clangorous Washington Merry-Go-Round. Such fuel, some chestnut-sized, some no bigger than pea coal, and every now & then a nugget as big as a man's hand, has kept the carrousel spinning for 16 years. Next week, the column and its author will share a milestone: on Dec. 13, Pearson's 51st birthday, the Merry-Go-Round will start its 17th year. Under a newly signed contract, Pearson can be pretty sure of four more years as the world's second-best-paid newsman, and its second-most-widely-syndicated columnist. (The yip-yippity-yip of his frenetic friend Walter Winchell has 200 more outlets, and pays about $140,000 a year better.) His fellow journalists measure Pearson by a different yardstick. In 1944 Washington correspondents rated him at the top of the list in national influence. But in terms of "reliability, fairness, ability to analyze the news," they rated him tenth.
Pearson's Merry-Go-Round appears in 600 newspapers with 20 million circulation. (Estimated income to Pearson: $2,000 a week.) Then there's the radio. On Sunday nights he talks over ABC to 10 million people, for a weekly wage of $5,000 plus all the Lee hats (his sponsor) that he wants. His sponsors claim 77% accuracy for the predictions which, along with his disclosures, are his stock in trade. The batting average means little: "We can always boost it," a staffer explains candidly, "by predicting things like tomorrow will be Monday."
In all, Pearson takes in about $350,000 a year, and, after taxes and necessarily heavy expenses (including a cut for Robert S. Allen, no longer his partner but still part owner of the column), keeps about a tenth of it.